NEW exclusive from @georgejoseph94 and me — In the rush to incarcerate as many immigrants as possible, ICE is putting civil immigration detainees into general population units in federal prison, creating a wildly dangerous and cruel situation.
I think immigration discussion doesn't belong in the "Punch a Nazi" thread for too many reasons to detail. But I think the immigration discussion has three parts and people rather randomly jump between them.
1. What is the current law?
2. Is the actions of this administration in accord with current law?
3. What should the law be?
1. The current law is that we do have strict immigration and border controls on the southern border. Not as strict as the southern border of our southern neighbor, but that's a different point. Current law says there are ways to come into this country, and if you do it differently you are breaking the law. Breaking the law is the definition of criminal, whether or not you agree with the law. Civil Rights activists have been known to become good criminals for breaking bad laws.
Those coming in are entitled to a hearing, but that process has been abused. They would be given a hearing date, released on their own recognizance, and fail to show up for the hearing and disappear into the crowd. That is why every administration has to choose between civil penalties or criminal penalties for those who break existing law. Civil penalties do not involve incarceration while waiting for the hearing, criminal penalties do. It is harder to skip your hearing when you are in custody.
The photos we are seeing are crap, propaganda, and nonsense. They MUST temporarily separate children because some of the children are trafficked and they are required by law to get the children away from the adults long enough to ask them if they are trafficked. Also, since Trump was choosing criminal proceedings instead of civil proceedings, and children cannot go to adult criminal facilities, they had to go into separate ward of the state facilities. Not the chain link cages of the propaganda pictures.
I have in the past argued in favor of executive discretion, which includes the ability at any stage in the executive branch to say "I decline to enforce this law." I was roundly ridiculed for it on the basis that the ability to temporarily subtract a law is actually the ability to create a law. It is an idiotic argument that only an idiot would make, and given his inability to distinguish between addition and subtraction I'd hate to see his checkbook. Still, DACA was actually nothing more than a great big "I decline to enforce this to the fullest extent of my ability."
2. Sadly, I think Trump was not going beyond the law. Instead he was giving us a demonstration of how bad that particular law is by actually enforcing it fully.
It is not legal to keep children in adult criminal detention centers. It is required to process them in separate lines. The current immigration law does indeed put limits on immigration. Those who violate immigration law can be tried criminally. This isn't genocide, it waters down the meaning of the word to say so.
"If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen."
-- Samuel Adams
You did see the actual photos of children in wire-fence cages sleeping on floor mats under foil blankets, right?
“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
Yes, I saw those. Those weren't the dorms prepared for the kids, those were the waiting areas as they are in processed.
Both sides of this argument are very guilty of false propaganda and taking things out of context. You don't make your own argument stronger when you do that.
"If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen."
-- Samuel Adams
If "no", then you've just admitted there are exceptions.
"If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen."
-- Samuel Adams
Gosh, I don't know. CPS? I am no expert but I think the general idea there is to try to do what is best for the kids, though of course they screw it up very badly sometimes - it is easy to find news reports about their screw-ups. That said, separating a kid from ... to take an example ... physically, mentally or sexually abusive parents might be better for that kid that separating them from parents trying to move them from a dangerous situation to one with more opportunity. ( By the way, I've lived in a third world country where I've quite literally feared for my life, so I understand some of the drive of these asylum seekers. I bet anybody else who has had to live that experience would feel empathy for their situation. ) So I'm not quite convinced that the CPS should be dragged into this conversation. I don't think "exceptions" are quite the same as "different things". So let's not get into "what about" here by dragging tangentially related stuff into the conversation. Make stronger points than ones that rely on "What about this vaguely similar thing? AH HA GOTCHA HAHAHAHA".
As for laws and enforcing them: surprise. I am a law-abiding citizen, and I believe in following laws and enforcing them, but not to the point of apparent inhumane cruelty. If enforcing a law is cruel, then the law needs attention. Okay, so some of the kids are being trafficked. I wonder, can officials tell the difference between a kid being separated from his or her parents, and a kid being separated from a trafficker, without detaining the kid separately for an extended period of time? No? Then what the hell? Can they get some actual human beings in there to help make that call? You'll get some grey areas you'll need to pay special attention to, but I don't buy that a kid forcefully removed from their parents' presence would act identically to a kid being forcefully removed from a trafficker. I could be wrong, though. Some frank interviews with experienced, level-headed border agents would be good data points to have.
Immigration into the US is a mess. South of the border there are a lot of desperate people suffering under their governments. I personally don't think the solution to that answer is to open the US border to them ( and nor, as I hope I've made clear, do I believe the solution is to treat them poorly at the border ). I do believe the US benefits from controlled immigration, because immigrants are generally smart and hard-working, but this does mean that the US siphon off the best ( sorry, Donald Trump. I said the best ) from other countries, and their origin country is the poorer for losing them.
I don't have solutions for all the cruelty in this world. I wouldn't even know where to begin if I were to make suggestions for how other countries can become havens for their citizens instead of prisons their citizens try to flee. It would involve both the governments of those countries and the inherent unfairness of global politics if you really boiled it down, I think. The West like to believe they are innocent in all this but they are not.
The one thing I do stand firm on is that you cannot act like a monster and claim to be a good person. Many of the things the current administration is doing is monstrous, hateful, and inhuman. Every Republican in Congress who claims to follow Jesus but says nothing about human suffering better hope they are right when they go to sleep saying "That Jesus thing is just a lie I tell my supporters to get votes" because they are headed for a handbasket if they're wrong.
And of course, to acknowledge the next round of whataboutism, previous administrations did bad things too. I am not a Democrat. I am not a Republican. I am quite comfortable calling out an administration regardless of who's in power. This administration is in power now. I'm calling them out.
Thank you, Griffy. I don't really have anything to add but I wanted to acknowledge an excellent post on a very tricky issue.
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"Spirits in the shape of hawks and eagles flew ever to and from his halls; and their eyes could see to the depths of the seas, and pierce the hidden caverns beneath the world."
Look, I'm just discussing what the law is, not what it should be. And by admitting that CPS has a job to do that sometimes means separating from kids, you've just conceded that the empty empty platitude about never ever doing it is not useful in a rational discussion. Nor is saying "oh but they're doing it for the good of the kids unlike that meany Trump."
When I get to what the law should be, I do have things to say about it. Right now I'm trying to cut through all the hyperbole about what the law is so that we can more realistically assess what it should be.
If the Border Patrol agents have no ability to determine whether a kid is trafficked and traveling with a stranger versus a kid traveling with a family, what are they there for?
"If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen."
-- Samuel Adams
yovargas wrote:I find the idea that the reason this is happening is because they are deeply concerned about child trafficking highly dubious.
I find that the alleged reason for most laws to be highly dubious. But is what was going on in accord with the law as written?
In theory asking "what is the law as written" is not controversial at all.
"If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen."
-- Samuel Adams
(Putting this here, because well I don’t know where else....)
The crux of most bigotry, racism etc is as we know, defining a group of people as “other”. Which is why it is a mind opening experience to be the “other”. In India, Muslims are considered as “other”. It’s good for my mother to experience jolts when her child is clubbed with them.
So, we are roaming around Battery Park and there is a statue labeled “the Immigrants” (which portrays the immigrants as quite pitiful, but that’s what a 3 month journey across the Atlantic would do, am sure). My daughter asks me “what is an immigrant”, I answer. Her next Q: “are you and Papa immigrants”. Me: Yes.
My Mom: No... you are not. These people, like the Muslims, coming into the US, they are. You were students and have jobs...
Me: We are immigrants. by law, by definition, we are.
Mom: Oh.
Oh, indeed.
'You just said "your getting shorter": you've obviously been drinking too much ent-draught and not enough Prim's.' - Jude
I donated. Thanks to our old friend nel for bringing this to my attention.
"Spirits in the shape of hawks and eagles flew ever to and from his halls; and their eyes could see to the depths of the seas, and pierce the hidden caverns beneath the world."
V, I value your optimism, but I put these posts where I put them for a reason. I am not asking you to move them back but I do wish to register my disagreement.
If there was anything that depressed him more than his own cynicism, it was that quite often it still wasn't as cynical as real life.
The discussion very clearly did not belong in that thread. I should have moved it much sooner.
[ETA: I'm not optimistic at all, although I do find the surprising success of the RAICES fundraiser encouraging.]
"Spirits in the shape of hawks and eagles flew ever to and from his halls; and their eyes could see to the depths of the seas, and pierce the hidden caverns beneath the world."
