My Facebook feed is alight with hysterical headlines regarding the Federal government’s treatment of undocumented immigrants who are younger than age 18. The worst horror described in the headlines is separation from parents, but also there are some articles about abuses suffered in what are essentially government-run short-term orphanages.
My stupid question for today is How does our government deport any person young enough to credibly claim to be under age 18?
Suppose that a young-looking person shows up in the U.S. and says the following:
- “I am 14 years old”
- “I grew up in a small village, but I don’t know what country we were part of.”
- “My name is Santiago, but I never was told about a last name.”
- “Adults brought me here against my will.”
How would our government go about deporting such a person? By definition this undocumented immigrant has no documents. It wouldn’t make sense to deport him to a specific country and there would be no reason for any specific country to take him.
Minor children are entitled to food, shelter, health care, and education, right? So Santiago would have to be provided with all of that for $50,000(?) per year in a government-run facility or maybe put into foster care (table of rates by state). He would have to be given education through age 18, perhaps at about $25,000 per year including the capital cost of building a school.
He can’t be imprisoned for the crime of breaking U.S. immigration laws, can he? He says that it was an adult who brought him here.
What actually happens in the above case?
[Separately, what is happening with the separation of children from parents that the headlines are screaming about? One article that I saw was about a father who came here from Central America as an asylum-seeker. He brought one child with him and left the wife and two or three additional kids back home to face whatever violence and oppression qualified him and the apparently favored child for asylum. He and the child (10 years old?) were separated for four days and then reunited to spend a few years in the U.S. waiting for the asylum request to be resolved.
My Facebook feed is on fire regarding this, but nobody mentions that separating children from parents is a common commercial activity in the U.S. We have boarding schools. We have summer camps. We spend hundreds of billions of dollars on a family law system whose primary function is separating children from one parent (see the “Children, Mothers, and Fathers” chapter for statistics on how 2/3rds of children report not having seen the loser parent within the preceding year). Obviously the govenrment-run orphanage is not an elite boarding school or a lakeside summer camp, but of all of the bad things that the Federal government does, why are people obsessed with this one?]
Related from Facebook:
- From our Native American senator, Elizabeth Warren: “Cardinal O’Malley is right. Tearing children away from their families is cruel and unconscionable — and goes against everything our country stands for.” and “At our town hall in Newburyport yesterday, people wanted to know: how can we stop the horror of the Trump administration ripping children from their parents? #KeepFamiliesTogether” (Warren sued her own husband and successfully separated two children from the person who had been their father; she also advises other women to keep a divorce litigation fund at the ready)
- “By now you’ve likely seen all the headlines about the children being separated from their parents at the border. It makes me sick, and sad, and I don’t know what to do. I’ll admit to writing this post in anger, but I know I’m not the only one with these emotions. When we hear that 2,000 children are being taken from their parents, what can we do?” from Mayim Bialik, an actress who sued her husband for divorce in 2012, thus separating her own children (age 4 and 7) from their two-parent family.
- “There is no excuse for inflicting these abuses and trauma on children. The Administration must immediately reverse course. #KeepFamiliesTogether” and “I’m standing in solidarity with the activists and families standing up to our government’s human rights abuses along the southern border. Government should be in the business of keeping families together, not breaking them apart.” from California Senator Kamala Harris. Wikipedia says “The family lived in Berkeley, California, where both of Harris’ parents attended graduate school. Harris’ parents divorced when she was only 7 and her mother was granted custody of the children by court-ordered settlement. After the divorce, her mother moved with the children to Montreal, Québec, Canada…” (i.e., the government of California was in the business of separating what had been Kamala’s own family; see Promise of divorce ruined by children (Australia parental relocation study) for how this kind of complete separation of children from the loser parent is getting tougher)
- “As a father, as a parent, I can not in good conscience abide this removal of children from their families. It is a cruel and inhumane action.” over “Here’s How You Can Help Fight Family Separation at the Border” (Slate). (Other than posting on Facebook, he is not personally doing anything to help. He lives in New York so if his wife decides that she wants to spend more time having sex with new friends, he will be separated from his own children except for every other weekend.)
- The above Slate article was also linked-to by a divorce, custody, and child support litigator here in Massachusetts. As we are a winner-take-all state when it comes to family law, she will spend nearly every working day separating children from a loser parent.
- direct post from Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse: “Catch-and-release – combined with inefficient deportation and other ineffective policies – created a magnet whereby lots of people came to the border who were not actually asylum-seekers. … Human trafficking organizations are not just evil; they’re also often smart. Many quickly learned the “magic words” they needed to say under catch-and-release to guarantee admission into the U.S. Because of this, some of the folks showing up at the border claiming to be families are not actually families. Some are a trafficker with one or more trafficked children. ” (posted by a passionate Hillary supporter with “One of the only actually informative statements I’ve seen on the family separation debacle.”)
- “13 Facts the Media ‘Pros’ Don’t Want You to Know About ‘Family Border Separation’” (from a Deplorable via private message; he noted “And if you intended to seek refugee status, why break in, why not just go to the border guard and say you want to be a refugee? If you do that, there is no arrest and no child separation. That means that the people who are arrested only lie about being refugee after they are caught.” He added “at least the anti-gun kids are out of the news”)
For the same reason that the sheeple are obsessed with the shepherds’ stories of rape. Maybe cannibalism (with only female victims) will be next?
Don’t forget the million or so American born children who are separated from their parents by the opiod epidemic, especially fentanyl trafficked from Mexico.
Most of my exposure to Facebook is through this blog. I do have an account, but hardly ever log in. I’m going to keep it that way.
I’m going to remember your question at the end. It is one that I’ll be using a lot over the summer. I will be exposed to relatives that for me are the equivalent of your Facebook feed. It will either lead to decent conversations or will shut them up.
Happy Father’s Day!
It’s to tie an issue that we universally agree upon, i.e. the good of the children, to an issue we don’t universally agree on, i.e. how open the borders should be, in attempt to sway public opinion. Every anecdote helps a little.
I don’t understand why there is an issue. When a citizen commits a crime and is incarcerated he is separated from his children. Why should non citizens have more rights than citizens? We threw Bernie Madoff in jail even though that act essentially killed both his children. My general feeling is when the argument finally reaches “save the children” levels the liberals have just lost it!
The reason for the high volume is that before, the root password to the Constitution was “its4thechillren” . But the password has been changed…
> “I am 14 years old”
> “I grew up in a small village, but I don’t know what country we were part of.”
> “My name is Santiago, but I never was told about a last name.”
> “Adults brought me here against my will.”
There is no answer to this question. What I suggest to do is take those children and put them in the new school that the town of Lincoln is building. Maybe you would make this suggestion during the next school meeting so they prepare the project accordingly?
And to your liberal FB friends tell them this: So if an alien family’s life is threatened back home due to gang violent, or a husband is abusing the wife and the children, etc. — it is now our responsibility to accept them as asylum seekers and protect them? That’s wonderful! We should then accept anyone from ANY country for which government cannot protect its citizens no matter what is the abuse.
BTW, next time your liberal FB friends bring up such issues, tell them it is because of them and their liberal policy is why Trump is the office and why he will most likely win a second term.
Any parent who knowingly breaks our laws and the result is separation from their child deserves no sympathy or “help”.
I am not a Facebook member. Phil’s post is a fine example of why I’m not a Facebooker.
> “I am 14 years old”
> “I grew up in a small village, but I don’t know what country we were part of.”
> “My name is Santiago, but I never was told about a last name.”
> “Adults brought me here against my will.”
Phil,
The chance of a 14 year-old immigrant answering the second, third and fourth question as you proposed is maybe a million to one. Or were you simply being satirical?
Thought this week’s news cycle was about divorce litigation. Why do all these people want to come to the country with the highest number of child custody battles in the world, if they don’t want to lose their kids? Anyways, today’s overheard millenial parent quote was “You left your drone at dad’s house.”
> When a citizen commits a crime and is incarcerated he is separated from his children.
The issue is these people have committed no crime.
> “I am 14 years old”
Ever read the news report of the “fastest 14 year old in Sweden”? A “14 year old” migrant with a full 5-o’clock shadow moustache+beard and standing a least a foot taller than his classmates won all his school’s athletic competitions. Lol.
If the children are coming over from the Mexican side of the border, arrange to have Mexico deal with it. In general, if non Mexicans are seeking asylum coming in from the Mexican side of the border, have them apply for asylum in Mexico. If Mexico doesn’t want to deal with it they are the ones with the power to shut off the spigot.
Folks: As Baz points out, I don’t think that the child immigrant can be considered to have committed a crime. Suppose that a child is found inside Costco without a membership card. If the child is below driving age, his or her immigration to Costco was presumably due to an adult who is, at least temporarily, no longer present.
Aaron: There is no requirement that Mexico seek to prevent people from leaving, is there? If the U.S. cannot secure its borders I don’t see why Mexico is responsible. Until fairly recently the U.S. did not track people who were leaving the country, only those who were arriving (https://www.nbaa.org/ops/intl/customs-regulatory/apis/history.php says that outbound passengers have been tracked since about 2002). So we circle back to my original question: How is it possible to deport asylum-seekers who are under 18 and who say they don’t know which country they are from? If it is, in fact, impossible to deport such a person, why wouldn’t every asylum-seeker who can credibly claim to be under 18 adopt this strategy?
Here’s a NYT story from today: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/17/us/immigration-deported-parents.html
The 25-year-old mom was deported to Guatemala. Her 8-year-old son is still in the U.S. “Different legal protections are afforded to juveniles and adults in the immigration system, and as a result, reuniting families can take months or longer, several legal experts said.” the article explains.
Is the 8-year-old a reliable source of information? If not, how can we deport him?
@philg – knowing you over the years, I’ve come to think of you as a pretty smart guy, at least on subjects such as coding, photography, and aviation, but this may be the dumbest post of yours that I’ve ever read.
“My Facebook feed is on fire regarding this, but nobody mentions that separating children from parents is a common commercial activity in the U.S. We have boarding schools. We have summer camps.”
There is absolutely no connection between the voluntary short-term separation of parents and children to attend schools and summer camps and what the Trump Administration has made policy in recent months and I cannot fathom how you could possibly draw one.
Imagine if you entered a country seeking asylum – which is completely LEGAL – and the next thing you knew, your children were taken from you and you were not told who had them, where they were and when you might see them again. It has been alleged (though I do not know the exact source and cannot verify or refute) that some parents may have been told that their children were being taken to be bathed.
For a smart guy, your callousness and lack of empathy is pathetic and sad.
I am callous regarding what is happening? As noted in the original posting, I don’t know what is happening. I haven’t read the articles, only the headlines and the outrage. I was asking readers who do follow this carefully to explain.
@baz and Phil, Crossing the border illegally is a crime. So if the parents cross the border with the children they are all criminals. I don’t see much of a gray area here. Typically we do not punish children directly so we throw their parents in Jail, thus the separation.
Phil: https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/05/illegal-immigration-enforcement-separating-kids-at-border/
CNN is milking this “child separation” thing. What do they want – the kid to go to prison with the parent or human trafficker?
You cannot put a kid in prison. So, you have to give them to a relative when the parent or human trafficker is detained. This is as true if the parent is in jail for DUI or illegal entry.
Also, it is not “at the border.” This is after they broke into the country.
Trump did not make this policy, and the only change is that he directed ICE to not instantly release anyone who is with a child.
Why not instantly release anyone suspected or convicted of any crime if they are a parent?
The problem with the new family separation policy is that it is gratuitous cruelty whose only apparent purpose is to make people who don’t like immigrants feel good. If the purpose was really deterrence then the administration would have first obtained from congress the tens of billions of dollars necessary to fully implement the policy. As it is, the only real impact (beyond making people who don’t like immigrants feel good) will be to cause suffering among some children and their parents and a (probably modest) reduction in border security as resources which should be used to pursue higher risk threats are diverted to locking up families.
Neal: If we say “Nobody who shows up with an under-18 companion can be separated from the companion” AND “Nobody who claims to be under 18 can be detained in a jail-style environment” aren’t we saying that our borders are now completely open to anyone who can get hold of young-looking person? And wouldn’t this place young-looking people at risk of being kidnapped and used as shields? Why would we want to have a policy that encourages kidnapping of young (or young-looking) people?
Also, what would “the tens of billions of dollars necessary to fully implement the policy” be used for? (if Congress did in fact appropriate this money)
“aren’t we saying that our borders are now completely open to anyone who can get hold of young-looking person”
No, it just takes us back to the same completely screwed up border enforcement system we had a few weeks ago minus this one new gratuitous cruelty.
“Also, what would “the tens of billions of dollars necessary to fully implement the policy” be used for?”
People, equipment, and facilities.
Neal: People, equipment, and facilities? https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/U.S.%20Customs%20and%20Border%20Protection.pdf says that we are already spending $17 billion per year on CBP (plus additional tens of billions on DHS, which deals with immigrants such as the Tsarnaev brothers after they commit what we consider to be crimes).
philg: I still don’t know why all these Facebook friends of yours, who are all in the top 10%, get so emotional about this. They are the ones that benefit the most from a cruel society, if they had to share, their standard of living would be greatly reduced.
It is also very interesting that in high income area public schools they teach all about fairness, being nice and etc. They should be teaching cruelty, extortion, money laundering, greed is good and etc, how else are their children going to survive in a world where survival of the fittest wins?
The kids are not separated forever, only enough time for the parents to be put through the process. It sounds like this is only for a couple of weeks in most cases. From the videos on CNN, the kids are given clean accommodation, good food and care that is much better than other places in this world, were kids have much less. The US better stop showing videos of these detention centers, or else they will get more people running to the US.
If I was a starving parent with kids and no food, I would be happy if I could give my kids to a place where they get food, shelter and safety while I go through the legal process.
> … but nobody mentions that separating children from parents is a common commercial activity in the U.S. We have boarding schools. We have summer camps.
If you’re needing to use this in your position then you must have a pretty weak argument. The difference between people fleeing their country and having their kids forcefully removed from them and people sending their kids to boarding school/summer camps are such different situations I almost feel like you’re gaslighting me by trying to compare them.
Whenever I’ve found myself grasping so desperately at straws like this, I’ve looked back and seen that I’m on the wrong side of the argument.
philg: Yes, we are already spending plenty on border enforcement. Spending even more to implement this family separation procedure would be bad policy.
The three decades since Saint Reagan’s amnesty have demonstrated that it is simply not feasible to control illegal immigration through border controls alone. My preferred alternative to the status quo is to embrace the openness and dynamism that is America’s economic strength by creating a system that makes it possible for people to legally migrate between the U.S. and Mexico relatively easily. Yes, there are potential pitfalls to doing that, but they can be avoided with properly designed policies. Alternatively, we can accept substantial costs and increased government intrusion in the economy and implement an effective work authorization system (which we also know would work from our experience of the last three decades; the only periods of reduced or reversed illegal immigration have been periods low U.S. labor demand). However, this business of separating children from their parents so that some politicians can pander to the relatively small minority of Americans who are happy we are doing it is, well, pretty despicable (even if in the scheme of things it isn’t high on the list of awful things our government is doing).
Philip: “If we say ‘Nobody who shows up with an under-18 companion can be separated from the companion’ AND ‘Nobody who claims to be under 18 can be detained in a jail-style environment’ aren’t we saying that our borders are now completely open to anyone who can get hold of a young-looking person?”
I would suggest that the first assertion is more important than the second. It’s been observed that although the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II was unconstitutional, at least families were interned together.
From an ethical point of view, I’d suggest keeping the principle of proportionality in mind: the harm done by a policy should not be disproportionate to the concrete and direct benefit of the policy.
I agree with Neal: If the concern is illegal immigration, a better system for checking authorization to work would be both far more effective and far more humane.
I’d suggest that the child-detention policy has struck a nerve because there’s children involved, and it’s so cruel that it could only be justified by someone who has no regard for the humanity of those affected – that is, someone who’s willing to dehumanize them. Obviously we haven’t reached the Trumpenfuhrer stage yet (we’re talking about concentration camps, not death camps!), but the level of cruelty is still disturbing, to the point where Trump is trying to escape responsibility for his own policy through gaslighting, falsely blaming the Democrats.
It’s no longer difficult for my kids to understand how the Holocaust happened. Once you can get people to blindly follow a strong leader and dehumanize others, they’ll close their eyes, or even actively participate, as the cruelty escalates.
Details: Washington Post, Texas Monthly. The Texas Monthly interview has a good explanation of some of the issues, like the process for deporting children.
Philip: you asked how the US could deport minors. From a psychological point of view, infants are completely dependent on their parents for survival. Thus small children have an intense fear of parental abandonment (this is how time-outs work, e.g. in the parenting book 1-2-3 Magic). I would expect that they would try extremely hard to be reunited with their parents – being with their parents in their home country would be infinitely better than being alone in the United States.
This may fade somewhat in an older child, of course, as they gain some confidence that they could survive without their parents if they had to. But even a teenager would be very vulnerable on their own in a foreign country.
I agree that what they are doing is cruel. But how do we solve the problem? And not just now but in the long term? There will always be people fleeing somewhere for some reason, and needing asylum or just a better living situation. One solution is just to let them all in, feed them and house them, and teach them. I mean, maybe it is time I start believing in the economy fairy that liberals believe in and just suspend my doubts and concerns. Everything will be OK, the US economy has unlimited capacity and innovativeness to handle any situation thrown at it. Let’s give it try – I’m waiting for someone to explain to me how it all will work out.
Blame it on the liberal advocate who found a loophole in the asylum policy and are now encouraging anyone to use it by bringing their children with them and claiming they are being abused by their husband or a gang group.
Asylum isn’t for those who are abused by their spouse or some gang. Protection from such issues is the job of the government of the nation of the asylum seekers, not some other country. Beside, what protects such a victim from her abuser husband or gang from sneaks into the USA to find his wife and continue the abuse? Or the gang group ordering some gang member in the USA to abuse the asylum-er who is now in the USA?
GermanL: An excellent question. The United States, Canada, and Australia are traditional destinations for both immigrants and refugees, as we have the space – our population density is relatively low compared to other countries, and we’ve been quite successful in absorbing newcomers. But even so, we can’t absorb an unlimited number of refugees.
If we aren’t able to deal with large numbers of refugees on our borders, then we have an interest in doing what we can to prevent, deal with, and resolve the crises that are causing people to flee, whether that’s the civil war in Syria, or drug-related violence in Central America.
Second, there’s also neighboring countries (like Lebanon and Jordan) which are hosting far larger numbers of refugees, putting a huge strain on them (both economic and social), and we can probably help there as well. Along these lines, the United States should be working with Mexico to control refugee flows.
Third, we probably want to be more proactive about going to refugee-generating countries and selecting those refugees who we think will be successful in integrating, rather than just waiting for whoever happens to show up at our borders.
A separate issue is illegal immigration for primarily economic reasons. Here a common answer is to make it harder to work illegally, by making it easier for employers to check whether someone is authorized to work, and cracking down on employers who fail to do so.
GermanL: The long term solution is for Mexico to develop to near economic parity with the United States which would eliminate the gradient which is driving the cross border activity we see today. It’s worth keeping that long term in mind as we fashion policies (looking at your trade policies Mr. President), but it is pretty long term.
Neal: Since you say that anyone who is physically in Mexico should have the right to come to the U.S. (whereupon, if he or she doesn’t work, he or she then has the right to taxpayer-funded housing, health care, food, and smartphone), wouldn’t the best way for Mexico to achieve economic parity be to sell passage to would-be Americans? Consider someone who currently lives in one of the countries where people pay smugglers to take them to the comparatively stingy welfare states of Germany and Sweden. They could instead pay the Mexican government for the right to transition through Mexico. https://psmag.com/social-justice/asylum-seekers-are-turning-to-latin-american-smugglers is about “Migrants from Ghana, Cameroon, Senegal, Syria, and Afghanistan” who pay “$10,000 to $20,000 to travel from Ecuador to the U.S. by land.” If you were running Mexico, why not establish a 14-day transit visa program with a $25,000 per-person fee? Instead of the money going to smugglers, the Mexican treasury gets the cash and the U.S. gets the immigrants that (at least Democratic) politicians say we need.
Russil: How is the “internment of Japanese-Americans” relevant? Although what Roosevelt did to those folks was legal (as defined by the U.S. Supreme Court), they were U.S. citizens who generally hadn’t violated any laws regarding immigration or otherwise (minor exception: see http://scholarship.law.unc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4110&context=nclr for three Japanese women who were prosecuted for helping German prisoners-of-war escape (the motivation was that they were tired of having sex with their husbands, apparently, not a desire to see the U.S. lose World War II)).
Here is a truly humanist idea:
The US should enter bilateral agreements with some of the sparsest populated nations, such as Namibia, Mongolia, or Botswana, and airlift all prospective refugees who entered the US illegally there. Those people shall wait for their application hearings out there, they don’t have to be confined and can spend time with their families. It will be so much cheaper to pay those countries for the service: after all Australia, the 7th sparsest populated nation, does just that.
And while we are at it, we need to sequester liberals for allocation to the GULAG labor camps: wasn’t that why we colluded with Russia? and they call us Nazis anyway. I’ve seen those camps with my own eyes and I must say: they are idling… and slowly decaying. Make Russian uranium mines great again!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olovskoye_mine
If you were running Mexico, why not establish a 14-day transit visa program with a $25,000 per-person fee?
Doesn’t Mexico do roughly this, indirectly? Politicians give free passage to cartels and human traffickers, and in return receive kickbacks? They are just skipping the middle man of the tax collector.
Neal proposes bringing the US standard of living down to parity with Mexico, and then bringing the Mexican standard of living down to parity with Guatemala. It’s an absolutely terrible idea.
A much better solution would be to restore colonialism. Make Mexico and Central American down to Panama into American protectorates. Then aggressively stamp out cartels, organized crime, and corrupt politicians, while putting the US legal system to good use enforcing private property rights. Let Trump build giant casinos in Honduras and Costa Rica Further, we can send all the academic snowflakes south of the border to educate the women on the environmental horrors of children, and the virtues of destroying the patriarchy.
Philip: the Japanese-American internment (which happened in Canada as well) is relevant because it demonstrates that you can imprison families without the inhumane policy of separating parents and children.
Russil: Thanks for the explanation. I thought that the U.S. had decided against any kind of prison-like environment for undocumented immigrants who appear to be under 18. So young(-looking) folks have to be released to an ordinary community and therefore the only way that they can be with an adult claiming to be a parent is if the adult is also released.
I don’t see how your proposed interment camp makes sense. The undocumented immigrant who claims to be 14 or 17 or whatever has committed no crime and violated no law (he/she is considered to have been dragged into the U.S. by an adult, right?). What is the justification for imprisoning this teenager even if you say that the prison will be comfy and that a person claiming to be the teenager’s parent will be present as well?
And then we circle back to my original question…. if the teenager does not answer questions regarding what country he or she is from, how can our government then deport the teenager? I hope nobody would suggest that the teenager be coerced or pressured into answering questions under interrogation.
[Basically I’m wondering if we have passed laws that contradict each other. On the one hand, a 17-year-old from a foreign country is supposedly not entitled to live in the U.S. On the other hand, the 17-year-old is not an adult and therefore cannot be held responsible for his or her location. And we require that all 17-year-olds be offered a taxpayer-funded education, food, housing, health care, etc. When the 17-year-old turns 18 we cannot deport this person because we don’t know which country is his or her legal home. When the 17-year-old turns 18 we cannot imprison the new adult because it shouldn’t be a crime to have been brought to the U.S. by a criminal adult. As long as the 17-year-old can remember to keep quiet regarding his or her country of origin, therefore, the U.S. essentially has no borders?]
“Since you say that anyone who is physically in Mexico should have the right to come to the U.S. (whereupon, if he or she doesn’t work, he or she then has the right to taxpayer-funded housing, health care, food, and smartphone”
“Neal proposes bringing the US standard of living down to parity with Mexico, and then bringing the Mexican standard of living down to parity with Guatemala. It’s an absolutely terrible idea.”
I made no such suggestions, and explicitly stated that care would be required to avoid these pitfalls. This kind of argument by mischaracterization is tiresome.
Neal: Didn’t you write “My preferred alternative to the status quo is to embrace the openness and dynamism that is America’s economic strength by creating a system that makes it possible for people to legally migrate between the U.S. and Mexico relatively easily.”?
If citizens of Cameroon, for example, are in Mexico on a transit visa I hope that you’ll agree with me that these are “people”. At that point, under your above “preferred alternative,” why can’t they “legally migrate” to the U.S.? I also hope that you wouldn’t suggest cutting back the U.S. Welfare State such that the vulnerable, such as recent arrivals from Cameroon, wouldn’t be entitled to the basics of food, shelter, clothing, and smartphones.
20% of Mexico’s population already lives in the United States including about 12? milliion illegally. The world hasn’t ended, and in fact our economy currently depends on massive migration over the US/Mexico border (which is positively correlated with periods of high growth). I’m merely suggesting we normalize the status quo. My motivation isn’t that I’m so enamored with immigration, this option just seems more realistic and consistent with American values than creating a costly and intrusive government bureaucracy to manage work authorization and it would allow us to shave billions off of our border security budget. Instead of fighting the gradient, just declare victory and move on. Yes, as I said before, there are pitfalls to be avoided, but the issue of Cameroon citizens with transit visas is so trivial it doesn’t warrant discussion at this level of detail.
No need to accept ‘asylum seekers’ who arrive via a safe country like Mexico. Just as in Europe, the idiocy of streaming in economic migrants, as long as they can lie mechanically at the border, has ruined the concept of asylum.
My motivation isn’t that I’m so enamored with immigration, this option just seems more realistic and consistent with American values than creating a costly and intrusive government bureaucracy to manage work authorization and it would allow us to shave billions off of our border security budget. Instead of fighting the gradient, just declare victory and move on.
Neal, I applaud you and your very American values, dislike for government bureaucracy, and prudence in spending. May your life be stuffed full with wonderful Latinos and migrants from exotic locales.
Martha’s Vineyard would make an excellent destination for these refugees, young and old. Much of the housing is only occupied on a seasonal basis.
Some of you seem to be under the misapprehension that the hundreds of billions of dollars we’ve spent on border controls in my lifetime have produced more than difficulty and uncertainty for illegals and salaries and pensions for a few Americans. If this were the case we would expect to see a drip drip drip of illegal immigration (as we see with legal immigration). Instead, we see massive waves through both Republican and Democratic administrations which ebb and flow only with demand for labor. Anecdotally, Mexicans seem to go home and return when they need to, and fewer people seem to be using cayotes now than in the past. The big barrier has always been, and will always be, the desert not the border patrol. Massive increases on border control spending by Saint Reagan did not work. Increasing border control spending by 6X (per capita, inflation adjusted) since then did not work. Building massive border walls and fences did not work. Raising or extending our existing border walls and fences will not work. Stuffing the channel by separating parents and children without increasing capacity will not work. Further increasing already massive capacity will not work. The only thing which this experience demonstrates will work to block illegal immigration is cutting off demand for labor with an effective work authorization system. However, the price for that is significantly more government intrusion in the U.S. economy.
“May your life be stuffed full with wonderful Latinos and migrants from exotic locales.”
And finally we get to the heart of the matter: They are, gasp, **Latinos**.
Philip: “And then we circle back to my original question…. if the teenager does not answer questions regarding what country he or she is from, how can our government then deport the teenager?”
That doesn’t seem too difficult – if they can’t or won’t provide information directly, get the information in other ways. What language do they speak? What group were they travelling with, and where did it originate? As the Texas Monthly interview describes, minors are routinely deported.
“I don’t see how your proposed internment camp makes sense. The undocumented immigrant who claims to be 14 or 17 or whatever has committed no crime and violated no law (he/she is considered to have been dragged into the U.S. by an adult, right?). What is the justification for imprisoning this teenager even if you say that the prison will be comfy and that a person claiming to be the teenager’s parent will be present as well?”
The justification is simple: The adult is being imprisoned pending assessment of their asylum claim and potential deportation, and it’d be inhumane to separate their child from them.
We’re approaching the 50-comment limit, so I’ll stop here. I’ll just say that I’m unsurprised at your dismissive reaction to Trump’s separating children from their parents and putting them in concentration camps. I expect that if there’s news about abuses happening at these camps, your response will be similarly dismissive. You might want to think about what where you would draw the line – what action on Trump’s part would cause you to switch to the side of your overly-agitated Facebook friends.
@Neal #45
> And finally we get to the heart of the matter: They are, gasp, **Latinos**.
Why stop with Latinos? Why not accept anyone from China, India, Africa, the Middle East, or Europe into the USA? What’s the fault of an African women who cannot feed her children due to famine? Let us bring them ALL to the USA and open our doors to all. After all, any immigrant is a hard-worker just like any Latinos and we must not discriminate by just allowing Latinos in from the south.
I have family members and friends in Syria who have gone through far worse than any kind of family abuse or gang threads. In fact, I know some (not family member) who have been prostituted by the government — who are prefect candidate for asylum. Furthermore, I have 2 family members, for whom I filed brother / sister immigration application 12 years ago, and yet they are on the waiting list which will take another 5 years at least — TO HAVE THEIR CASE HEARD. And if they are approved, it will take another 2 years to complete their application (background check and all). Are Latinos or illegal immigrant from ANY where any better than my family members to move to the US?
PS: Sorry to hammer on “Latinos” — I am not a racist — but you started it.
“Why stop with Latinos?”
The relationship between the U.S. and Mexico is deep and unique. Again, I’m merely suggesting we normalize the status quo.
philpg: Back to your original question “And we require that all 17-year-olds be offered a taxpayer-funded education, food, housing, health care, etc.” does this apply to US citizens and legal residents only?
Here is an article
“Undocumented immigrants have many constitutional rights such as freedom of speech and religion. But they don’t share all the constitutional rights of citizens.”
http://www.politifact.com/florida/statements/2017/mar/29/florida-immigrant-coalition/do-undocumented-immigrants-have-constitutional-rig/
Not much on juveniles, searching more, it looks like they do not have the right to an attorney unless they can pay
https://www.aclu.org/blog/immigrants-rights/deportation-and-due-process/immigrant-children-do-not-have-right-attorney
So the answer to you question is that any juvenile entering the US illegally can be put in front of a judge and thrown out of the US.
@Neal #48
> The relationship between the U.S. and Mexico is deep and unique. Again, I’m merely suggesting we normalize the status quo.
Deeper and more unique than with China? India? And is that enough of a reason to qualify Latinos from the south of our boarders to grant them open-doors policy? If that’s your reasoning, then you should be up-in-arms making your case for not helping and settling US Citizens of Puerto Rico [1] in the USA after what they have gone though with Hurricane Maria [2]. After all, we are not helping our owns, first!
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puerto_Rican_citizenship
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Maria