From the International Herald Tribune:
A female teacher and a 13-year-old student planned some sort of life together in Mexico after fleeing Nebraska together, but they were tripped up by a lack of cash, the Baja California policeman who detained the pair said Saturday.
Kelsey Peterson, a 25-year-old sixth-grade math teacher and basketball coach at Lexington Middle School, was detained Friday in the border city of Mexicali.
She was turned over to the FBI early Saturday and remains in custody. The boy, ________, is staying with relatives in Mexicali.
As an undocumented migrant, ________ apparently will not be allowed to return to the United States. But police here have told him to stay in touch in case he is needed to testify in any possible criminal case.
Via ¡Para Justicia y Libertad!, who also points out that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is refusing to say if they’re planning to deport the victim’s parents or not.
So when the next unauthorized migrant gets raped or kidnapped, the parents now have a very powerful reason to try and resolve the situation themselves, rather than report it to police. Lovely.
Tiny Cat Pants, in a post entitled “How Nice For Child Molesters,” gets at why this story is so horrifying:
Great. Let’s just have a whole underclass of people with no legal standing and no legal recourse and let’s just let every corrupt corporation and evil jackass prey on them while we all sit back and wring our hands about whether they don’t deserve it just a tiny bit because they or their parents came here illegally.
That will be good fun and totally moral!
For more discussion of this, see posts by Brownifemipower and Anxious Black Woman.
That whole “underclass” thing isn’t really entirely accurate. Had the crime been reported in the USA, there is almost zero chance that the police or INS would have used the opportunity to deport the child. Reporting a rape or other crime should be (and is) safe. The government is happy to refrain from action when appropriate.
If you COMMIT a crime, you’ll get targeted by INS. But if you are the VICTIM of a crime, you will not by virtue of that alone, be targeted by INS. In other words, INS will refrain from acting on your case.
But refraining from action is quite different from taking positive action, as you know. If someone is already out of the country, then the positive action required to actively permit him to re-enter may not be permitted.
In this case, that leads to a problematic result, because the kid’s a minor. Perhaps he’ll get asylum, or be slipped in under some other clause somehow.
So is there an underclass? Sure, but it’s not the class that TCP implies: it is limited to the (very very small) class of people who are dealing with an illegal removal from the U.S.A.
I simultaneously feel sorry for the kid and also view this as one of the inevitable things that happen in a complex system. Sometimes the law simply doesn’t provide a real solution for the harms that are caused (see, e.g., wrongly convicted people.)
I’m not exactly sure what the U.S. government is supposed to do under the existing laws: Let him back in, with full knowledge that he’s not entitled to be here? That doesn’t make sense. Grant him, and his parents, citizen status? That doesn’t make sense either. Sometimes there’s a problem, and it really is “nobody’s fault.” He probably doesn’t have to go testify, so he could use that as a bargaining chip.
But at heart, he’s lost something that he wasn’t entitled to have in the first place.
Sailorman, i wish that were always the case. I can point towards two cities where this kind of thing is somewhat routine. Both cities have entered into contracts with the HSA, to implement 287(g) programs into their jails. In both cities, people reporting crimes and indeed victims of crimes were arrested for being unable to provide adequate I.D., and ultimately issued NTA’s (Notice to Appear) which in today’s climate is a de facto deportation.
That whole “underclass” thing isn’t really entirely accurate. Had the crime been reported in the USA, there is almost zero chance that the police or INS would have used the opportunity to deport the child. Reporting a rape or other crime should be (and is) safe.
Bullshit. A woman was getting her ass kicked by roomates and after her daughter called the police, SHE was arrested and deported. A woman left her abusive husband who belongs to the police force, he called the ICE on her and she was deported–but her daughter, who was a US citizen was left in the care of her abusive husband. A woman being abused by her husband went to court to get a restraining order against him, and the judge told her if she didn’t get out of his court room before he counted to 20, he would issue papers for her deportation. the state of georgia made it legal this summer to ask any person connected in any way to an interaction with the police can be asked for proof of citizenship. A woman got into a fender bender *and was a U.S citizen* was almost deported because she made the mistake of leaving the house without her purse that morning. Another woman who was pulled over for speeding and had an outstanding ticket on her record was imprisoned and then at the prison, they ran her name, which happened to correspond with the name of a woman in the country without proper documentation. This woman was also almost deported.
There is a simple fix for those who feel oppressed by their inability to access the American legal system without facing the consequences for their own illegal acts:Go back to the country where you are a citizen
Where do U.S. citizens go who “feel oppressed”?
Mack, I don’t doubt your reporting, I’ve just got a different experience. In my area, the police deliberately release translations explaining that reporting a crime will not expose you to INS review.
This is a much more sensible position from the government’s perspective because the cost of criminal non-reporting is far greater than the cost of failing to deport a particular immigrant.
However, it’s not uncommon for the cops to at least do a vague check into who the reporter is. And if you’ve got a record–if, say, you’ve been deported already, and ordered not to re-enter, or if the INS has flagged you for deportation–then they may pick up on that.
To me at least, those are two different cases. I compare it to other crimes: if you report to the police, they don’t go digging into your life to find something they can arrest you for. But if you report a crime and you’ve got a warrant out on you, they’re going to pick you up too.
You also speak of “Both cities have entered into contracts with the HSA, to implement 287(g) programs into their jails.” Obviously, this applies only to people who get into jail. If, as you say, they’re jailing people who report crimes, on the trumped-up charge of “no ID,” then they’re idiots. But if they’re jailing them for “normal” reasons it’s less of a problem.
—————–
bfp: I’m not sure who that second quote is from, but it’s not me.
As for your first response:
I am sure that there are obviously examples of people being mistreated by the INS. But the question isn’t whether it ever happens, it’s whether it happens with ___ frequency. So I’m not convinced that anecdotes are really relevant.
However, I was not aware of Georgia’s law, and in that case my statement may be incorrect. I will go and check it out. DO you know to what degree it’s being enforced?
[Brownifemipower’s final paragraph is responding to a comment that I deleted about two minutes after it was put up, and before I saw Brownfemipower’s response to it. –Amp]
From the Miami Herald:
Not exactly the same practice, Sailorman, as what you deny is occurring in the US; but very damn close, and objectionable for many of the same reasons.
As I recall from an AP story, the Mexican government is holding the boy in Mexico, not the US refusing him reentry. I’ll see if I can dig that back up.
What brownfemipower said about ICE and law enforcement agencies targeting victims of crimes to the point where many don’t come forward. It depends too on the LE agencies and policies they have addressing this issue. Orange County cities have passed resolutions for law enforcement to arrest people simply for being undocumented absent of crimes. They are trying to do that in cities in San Bernardino County as well. Other cities, like L.A. have policies like Amendment 40 for example that state that the departments don’t act in the capacity of the ICE because it’s a federal issue.
And there is precedent for undocumented victims of crimes including domestic violence to be given amnesty. That happened to a woman in my city for example and in other cities in part to encourage victims of DV to come forward. So I don’t understand why this teenager and his family should be treated differently as if there was no precedent of amnesty.
Still, undocumented individuals who are victims of domestic violence, rape or assault by racist skinheads for that matter which is common in many parts, still don’t come forward because they do face deportion or strongly believe they will because others have.
There’s a huge push from people like SOS, Minutemen and others to get policies like these ones including Amendment 40 rescinded so that law enforcement agencies on a local level to enforce federal immigration laws. That is going to be a next big focus of attack for these organizations.
If a local law enforcement officer in general finds someone in violation of a federal law, what is the usual procedure? Do they ignore it, or report it?
If the answer is (as I suspect) “Report it”, why should immigration law have a special status? If someone who is raped reports a crime and is found to be on the run from an embezzlement case, should they get a pass too?
It seems that what we have here is that someone is the victim of a crime, reports it, is found to be a criminal themselves at the time they report it, and is held accountable for that crime. It’s quite true that this leads to a bad situation for an illegal alien who is raped or beaten, etc. But remember that the illegal alien created the potential for this themselves when they crossed the border illegally. They don’t bear responsibility for the attack, but they do bear responsibility for why reporting it is so complicated, and to what can happen to them if they do. It’s one more reason to not be an illegal alien.
It’s a mess, but it’s a mess they’ve had a share in making. The solution is not to stop holding people accountable for their crimes. The solution is to ramp up efforts to prevent the crimes (both the violent one and the immigration one) in the first place.
No, actually, the solution is to recognize that our rights as u.s. citizens are under direct threat when *any* victim of a crime can be arrested for an unrelated prior incident that they have NOT been found guilty of in a U.S. court.
If a Spanish speaking U.S. born woman is imprisoned and threatened with deportation simply because the arresting officer criminalize her accent–that is a direct assault on her civil liberties.
This is happening because U.S. citizens refuse to see any connection between themselves and the people that they advocate arrest and punishment for. If they can do it to “them” they can do it to “us”–a legal precedent has been set.
I think the situation is worse than I may have thought, though I’m still checking out some of bfp’s stuff. In that case I’ll certainly be wrong.
However:
No, not the same practice at ALL, and much less objectionable.
Amp, the cite you gave reflects people who are already in custody for other existing violations (juvenile justice system) which is, as I said, a different issue. It’s perfectly valid to check the status of people who have been arrested and are in custody–indeed, it’d be very strange NOT to do so. Don’t confuse the practice of checking status of victims with the practice of checking status of defendants in custody*; they’re two different things.
People are arrested before they are convicted. The vast majority of arrestees have not yet been convicted (and may never be convicted) for the crime of which they are accused.
*unless it’s trumped up ID charges or the like–in which case it’s more like checking innocents.
People are arrested before they are convicted.
the point being that a *victim* of a crime should not have his or her background checked when they make a call asking for support and help. ETA: at one point there was a law preventing the interaction between agencies for this specific reason and this law was eliminated to ‘catch terrorists’. the elimination of this law *has* and *is* being used against u.s. citizens. David Cole discusses this in his book enemy aliens.
and by the way, almost all of the incidents that I spoke of, I have blogged about, but i don’t have the patience to hunt them down and do all the html code stuff to post them here.
the point being that a *victim* of a crime should not have his or her background checked when they make a call asking for support and help.
Why not?
Whatever crime they allege should, as with any crime report, be taken seriously and the perpetrators dealt with.
But when someone with a warrant out for them reports getting mugged, they get taken in on the warrant. When someone who’s a wanted fugitive reports getting raped, they get remanded to the jurisdiction they’ve fled. And so on.
Why should illegal immigrants be treated any differently?
Why should illegal immigrants be treated any differently?
how do you decide who or what an illegal immigrant is? His speech? His skin color? how many British citizens in the country without proper documentation do you think will have their records run after they’ve been assaulted?
Robert, there are hundreds of different types of VISAS, and no two status situations are alike. There are people here that were brought here as children, yet lack the proper documentation to stay. In the absence of some qualifying crime, no one is served by incarcerating them and ultimately deporting them.
how do you decide who or what an illegal immigrant is?
Why should that matter?
There are people here that were brought here as children, yet lack the proper documentation to stay.
Fine. Then propose a law that will deal with that. I’m actually in favor of putting together legislation that will grant either permanent residency or citizenship for someone brought here as a minor child. But that doesn’t excuse a whole lot of people.
Not applying the law here lends itself to it’s own dangers of abuse. “Are you here illegally? Oh, sure, we’ve got a law that says that I’m not supposed to report that. But how will either the ICE or the Mayor know if I place an anonymous call to them with your name and address I have right here. Unless, of course, you’d like to …”.
Because doing so will give criminals a safe haven as undocumented immigrants do not report crimes for fear of deportation.
I would rather we catch and prosecute criminals (especially violent ones) for the good of society as a whole. That’s far more important to me than someone’s immigration status.
If investigating and deporting victims means more rapists, muggers, etc., walking our streets, as I think it does, then I think it’s a pretty bad idea.
—Myca
Are you serious? gee, and rape victims shouldn’t wear tight skirts and too much makeup and go out at night and on and on and on….
The undocumented immigrant’s status makes this person more vulnerable to beatings and rapes because of the power differential between them as victims and those who commit the crimes. There status makes them vulnerable because they have to live in the shadows and take extraordinary risks to report crimes, let alone swear out statements and testify in court. Their assailants including those working in law enforcement know this. The guy being discussed at Reappropriate sure the hell knows this.
Their status makes them more vulnerable because they live in the shadows and many who are from Central American countries for example are coming from places where police corruption and violence including murder is a given. One reason why the LAPD Rampart scandal got so bad was because most of that precinct is comprised of undocumented El Salvadorean and Guatamalan immigrants who feared the police because back home, they had relatives who were tortured, disappeared, raped, beaten and their bodies by the hundreds of thousands were later discovered as bones in mass graves. Done by “police” or “national guard” working under U.S.-supported dictatorships.
Gee, who’d had thought this thread would so quickly turn from a travesty involving a 13-year-old boy who like brownfemipower said was raped, into a discussion about bad undocumented immigrants like “loose” women deserving what they get and a pity party about “what about the citizens, at least those who don’t have to worry about similar problems in our own system here?
Didn’t the U.S. recently deport a disabled Latino man who was a citizen and it took months and all his family’s money to find him?
bfp: you don’t need to repost them, I’ll find them on your blog (though it may take me a while to read them all, depending on how many there are.)
I agree with you that people who otherwise are not on the police’s radar should be left alone. IOW, reporting a crime should never be the initial cause of an investigation.
I am not clear whether we disagree about the other scenarios, because I’m not sure I get your position.
What do you think is the appropriate action to:
1) reporting a crime when the police already have you on their radar (IOW, when they’ve already been tracking you for something or other.)
2) reporting a crime when you already have a record/judgment/warrant for your arrest.
3) reporting a crime in a manner that makes it extremely obvious that you are probably in violation of a law. IOW, showing up to report a beating while covered in blue bank-teller-anti-theft dye.
I think #2 is OK for the police to pursue you.
I think #1 and #3 are more susceptible to abuse and therefore more problematic.
#3 is a difficult w/r/t illegality, and is the main problem. I think that in the interests of reporting, it’s OK to ignore a suspicion (even a good one) that someone has entered illegally. But it’s not OK to ignore a good suspicion that someone has re-entered illegally, because that’s a more serious charge.
Robert, remember that in general, for an illegal immigrant who wants to report a crime, the cost to society of (not reporting) exceeds the cost of (not deporting).
We want to encourage reporting by people whose “only” crime is being an illegal immigrant.
Sailorman said:
Bingo.
Myca, I mixed those up when I first posted–check my edit and revise your quote!
;)
I agreed with you SO MUCH, I knew what you meant.
Here’s the problem with some of the reports from both sides. Take this article: http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?articleID=071101_1__AUSci58616
On the one hand, you have a preacher saying
OTOH, you have this, from the same article:
It’s almost a classic media war. I don’t trust either side’s “information;” I wish I knew who was right.
I feel sorry for that poor kid and his family…it makes youwonder how many of these sorts of crimes against immigrants go unreported.
I agree with you that people who otherwise are not on the police’s radar should be left alone. IOW, reporting a crime should never be the initial cause of an investigation.
If a crime has been committed, then the justice system needs to know the identity of the victim. This is elementary. In the process of establishing that identity, it will become reasonable to query the victim as to their current residence, citizenship, means of support, etc.
If in that process it becomes apparent that the victim has committed any serious crime, is it not standard procedure to book them for that? I don’t understand why there should be an exception for particular categories of individual lawbreakers. Individual exceptions subject to judicial review (“the girl broke into a private home in the course of escaping her rapist, but we are forgetting about the B&E charge”), I can see – categorical exceptions are a problem.
And note that in the case of the girl who broke into the private home, we catch and prosecute her rapist (or ought to) and we see that she gets back to her proper home, and we ignore whatever petty crimes she had to do to get away – but we don’t let her move into the house she broke into. She goes home.
Someone asked me off-line whether I was blaming the victim in my heart. Having searched my heart this afternoon, no – I have every compassion for the victim, who has suffered some terrible injustice. Their violator should be caught and punished.
But at the same time, I believe that those who have immigrated here illegally should, in fact, leave. I would welcome most of them back – as legal immigrants, who respect the law of the country they want to make their home. I support a vigorous legal immigration program for the United States, with large quotas for our southern neighbors who want to be become American citizens.
Sailorman makes the reasonable point that there is great social harm done when illegal immigrants fear and avoid the police. I agree that this is true, on a categorical basis – when any group fears the police, that group is harmed somewhat by their diminished access to law and order. It seems to me that in the case of populations whose reason for fearing the police is that they are currently breaking the law, the way to minimize the social harm is to minimize the size of the population group that is affected.
People who grow pot or cook meth in their basements are reluctant to call the cops if they get burglarized. This is in fact regrettable and I don’t “blame the victim” here, either. But the answer isn’t to instruct the cops to ignore meth labs they find in the course of investigating burglaries.
The United States of America is built on immigration, and it will always be a destination of hope for millions the world over. God bless it and them.
But there is a “legal” now, and that’s the way that immigration to this country has to be. Legal, in accordance with our rules, where we know who is coming here, from where, and why. Friends of legal immigrants – I am one – can argue those rules and fight for their liberalization; that’s what politics are for.
I personally fear that illegal immigration is going to choke off support for legal immigration. And that would be disastrous, for the USA, for the other nations of the world, and for all of the people affected. We need immigration – but on our terms. No country on earth should settle for less control over their destiny than that.
Amp, my apologies for the thread tangent. Having said my piece, I’ll bide my tongue and not derail any further.
If a crime has been committed, then the justice system needs to know the identity of the victim. This is elementary. In the process of establishing that identity, it will become reasonable to query the victim as to their current residence, citizenship, means of support, etc.
Never have I been asked about my citizenship when reporting a crime. Never. And I have reported multiple crimes and been involved, as a witness or victim, in more than one prosecution.
Nor have I been asked about my means of support when reporting a crime. Not once. I have, however, been asked my occupation when appearing as a witness at a trial.
I don’t think that what you’re saying is the way that things really work.
Not in my view. Or more accurately: Not unless you need to.
On what basis do you judge that reasonable? If I accuse you of beating me, what relevance does my “residence, citizenship, means of support, etc.” have to the question “Did Robert beat Sailorman?”
Absent such relevance, it’s really a gatekeeping mechanism to deny people access. Which might make sense if it made sense… (yes that was intentilnally circular).
So let’s look at whether it makes sense.
What are the benefits of such rules?
The primary effect is to “reduce access to assistance through reductions in reporting” In theory, it would reduce illegal immigration. This would be a secondary effect which would result from making illegal immigration less pleasurable.
We can test that theory to some extent. We might ask “how much of a perceived cost is this?” and also ask “how do other similarly perceived costs affect illegal immigration?”
We would probably find the cost to be fairly difficult to quantify. It would only be in effect if 1) you are illegal; 2) are accused of a crime; 3) which you cannot report anonymously.
That cost is real, to be sure. But it is likely to be perceived as quite minimal, especially in comparison to the other costs of illegal immigration. E.g. many illegal immigrants are willing to risk a lot of money and a chance of physical injury to run across the desert–the money being a near certainty and the injury being far more likely than the chances of needing and not being able to use the cops.
The deterrence of te cops is so distant as to be minimal. In fact, to achieve truly effective deterrence of this type, we’d have to make it “worse” to be here than not to be here. i don’t think that’s realy possible (or a good idea)
OTOH, the COST is very easy to quantify. the people who are being reported are, one supposes, just as likely to be criminal as everyone else who gets reported. We desperately try to enhance reporting across the board, because we realize that the government’s ability to create safety for its citizens is based on its ability to KNOW about things.
lack of reporting is a pretty serious harm. And we’re balancing it against a comparatively non serious deterrence effect. It just doesn’t make sense.
Is it like pot dealers who are afraid to report a burglary?
Well, that’s an interesting example. Are pot dealers afraid to report being raped? probably not: being raped isn’t related to being a pot dealer, and there’s no particular reason the police would decide to investigate you for dealing just because you get raped. Which is a good thing.
Pot dealers are loath to call the cops into their pot farm. And illegal immigrants are probably loath to call INS. But that’s as far as the comparison goes. Pot dealers are also causing MUCH more harm per person than your average illegal immigrant. Hopefuly I don’t need to provide evidence for that.
Incidentally, I also would prefer to strongly limit illegal immigration. I just think that limiting access to the criminal reporting system is a horrendously bad method of doing so.
Historically and present, the United States of American though built on immigration(and slavery) hasn’t been as rosy when it comes to immigrants documented or not coming into the country who are not White.
I’m working with some folks on a situation involving a disabled Latino man who was threatened by some sheriff deputies with deportation even though he’s not an undocumented immigrant. What’s his crime? He walked home after drinking some beers and a police officer came upon him and beat him. Then took him to jail. The judge took one look at him several days later and let him go. Over a week later, still badly bruised.
So the sheriff deputies here like their counterparts in L.A. County see a male disabled Latino and decide he’s not a citizen based on looks. If he’s Latino, he’s undocumented. If he’s Latino and disabled and has problems with communication, he’s not an English speaker when many Latinos speak Spanish and many don’t.
Perhaps they were just doing it as a form of harassment to intimidate him into silence over the beating.
And to anyone who would compare undocumented immigrants to those who cook meth or have meth labs, don’t know what to say about that.
[argh – forgot I said I’d shut up. shutting up.]
I’m working with some folks on a situation involving a disabled Latino man who was threatened by some sheriff deputies with deportation even though he’s not an undocumented immigrant.
O.K. So, fix the problem, then. But the fix is to make sure that you have some reasonable basis for looking into someone’s citizenship status and to make sure that the information you get is accurate, not to ignore the whole thing altogether. The fix is to deal with cops who beat people up.
So, fix the problem, then.
One of the ways we are supposed to fix the problem is the U Visa (which was *finally* implemented), allowing crime victims to gain legal residency if they agree to participate in prosecuting the evildoer.
This is especially important given that the victim here is a child.
A couple of points:
1) Entering the country illegally is not a crime; it’s a misdemeanor. Furthermore, merely being an unauthorized resident is not a crime or a misdemeanor.
I find the comparisons to bank robbery and rape to be ridiculous and prejudicial. A more reasonable comparison would be to smoking a joint of pot.
Suppose underage drinking is illegal. (Hey, it is!) Would it be a good idea for the cops to prosecute anyone under the age of 18 who reports that they got raped while drinking? Or might that actually not do a thing to reduce underage drinking, while making some rape victims feel that they couldn’t go to police?
Unless you hate underage drinkers more than you hape rapists, it makes sense to not prosecute underage rape victims for being drunk while raped.
What makes the issue especially acute for unauthorized migrants is that for many, their status will never change within this country. The underaged drinker will some day be over age 21. If I’m mugged while I’m stoned, maybe I’ll hesitate to go to the cops, but there will at least be some occasional moments in my life when I’m not stoned.
An unauthorized migrant who is mugged or raped or whatevered in the US cannot go to the police, ever, without fear of being arrested and deported, except in a few cities where legal protections for such situations exist.
This near-complete exclusion from normal legal protections against being a crime victim creates a degree of punishment which is entirely inappropriate for having committed the misdemeanor of unauthorized migration. That’s unjust.
(This is one reason con artists often target migrants in paticular for scams; they know that migrants, especially unauthorized migrants, will hesitate to go to the cops.)
Amp Said: “1) Entering the country illegally is not a crime; it’s a misdemeanor. Furthermore, merely being an unauthorized resident is not a crime or a misdemeanor.”
I think you meant entering the country illegally is a crime and overstaying your visa is not a crime. I am sure you know that a misdemeanor is a crime – Title 18 of the U.S. Code does not have a distinction between misdemeanor and felony. Everything listed in the criminal code or anything that has authorized criminal penalties is a crime.
If I am a victim of a crime in Canada, just like anyone else in the world, I can contact the Canadian Mounted Police and report the crime – from my home in California. Likewise, if someone is mugged in the United States they can report the crime from anywhere in the world. If they are asked for a contact number and address they can give their permanant address. Just like I would if I were mugged in Victoria.
On another note – if people think that the outcry is a latino thing they should take a trip to San Francisco or New York where the complaints are regarding Chinese and Haitians. Or to Chicago where there is an outcry about Russians and Balkans who are over running the city. The only difference is that it is much more difficult to get here from China, Haiti and the Baltic states. Because of this difficulty the desire to pillage our natural and manmade resources is less and than the desire to actually be a part of the American dream. The good thing is that it is not really pillageing if the populace freely gives it away as we are to Mexico, China and the American Billionaire class.
Point well taken, regarding crimes and misdemeanors. Thanks for the correction. But my point stands: suggesting through example that being an unauthorized migrant is like rape or bank robbery is ridiculous.
And I agree that xenophobia applies to more people than just Latina/os. That doesn’t mean that anti-Latina bigotry is never a factor, however. I disagree with your take on what folks object to in New York (which I’ve both lived in and visited many times).
Amp:
I find the comparisons to bank robbery and rape to be ridiculous and prejudicial.
I find the comparison Radfem made between illegally crossing the border to wearing tight skirts and too much makeup to be ridiculous and prejudicial. At least bank robbery, rape and illegal border crossing are all crimes.
Robert says:
I personally fear that illegal immigration is going to choke off support for legal immigration.
Me too. But if it does, the proponents of amnesty and other such things for illegal aliens will have only themselves to blame, since they are the ones who have advanced the rhetoric conflating the two. My guess is that the intent was to envelop the sympathy for legal immigrants over illegal aliens. But the attitudes may instead flow the other way. They may reap a crop they didn’t intend to plant. At least, I hope they didn’t intend to plant it.
On another note – if people think that the outcry is a latino thing they should take a trip to San Francisco or New York where the complaints are regarding Chinese and Haitians.
Can’t speak for New York, but as to San Francisco, your post is utter, xenophobic bullshit. (“Pillaging our natural resources”? Yes, all those awful Mexicans stealth-mining platinum.)
The SF area has plenty of tension about illegal immigrants from Central America, and it’s not difficult at all for people to immigrate here from China.
Mythago and Amp,
I have not been to either city in – wow – seven years. I remember there being a vast amount of animosity between the american black community and Haitians and Jamacians in New York. In addition, there was strong animosity outside of San Francisco proper against illegal Chinese immigrants. And if you think it is easy for an illegal Chinese immigrant to get into this county you should go to the garment district in New York. At least when you cross the Mexican or Canadian border you can run away. When you are shackled and shuffled from container to fenced in room, then sold into slavery it is a little more difficult to run. I do not know what the issue is regarding Central American immigrants who came illegally.
I think things would be fixed if we declare Mexico and other Central American Countries oppressive states that inflict human rights abuses on their citizens so great that they see no better alternative than to flee the country. As such, all of them should be given Assylum until their countries come into line. That would be embarrassing for the countries, but may wake them up to the horrid conditions they have allowed their countries become.
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I think things would be fixed if we declare Mexico and other Central American Countries oppressive states that inflict human rights abuses on their citizens so great that they see no better alternative than to flee the country.
Hm. You may have a point there. But again, people who come to the U.S. seeking asylum have to make themselves known to the authorities and be willing to comply with our laws, including our immigration laws. That doesn’t seem to be the hallmark of your average illegal alien. The question would be, then, which among the illegal aliens flooding across our border would actually qualify for asylum under our laws.
Remember that our asylum laws don’t recognize economic refugees. “I can’t get a job in my home country” is not an acceptable justification for the granting of asylum in the U.S. I don’t know the exact wording, but IIRC the people involved have to show that they would be subject to persecution or in danger if they returned to their homeland on the basis of their race, religion, etc. The correct response to “My government is corrupt, taxes the crap out of us and depresses the economy for anyone who’s not someone’s friend” (besides saying “Shit, so do the State of Illinois, Cook County and the City of Chicago.”) is “Go back home, then, and do what you have to do to fix it.”
Now, if there are classes of people in Mexico who are persecuted because they are of a particular race or ethnic background or religion to the point that they are beaten, killed, etc., then I’d like to hear it.
I must say that I do agree with the spirit of your comment. Mexico could, in fact, be a great country if it wasn’t for the outrageous corruption there, a corruption that’s enforced with brutality.
You may have a point there. But again, people who come to the U.S. seeking asylum have to make themselves known to the authorities and be willing to comply with our laws, including our immigration laws. That doesn’t seem to be the hallmark of your average illegal alien. The question would be, then, which among the illegal aliens flooding across our border would actually qualify for asylum under our laws.
actually, the majority of immigrants come here legally and then let their papers expire. I am very good friends with people (who i don’t want to identify in any way), who have kept their papers legal, but have been almost completely bankrupted, and have been pretty much in one court or another for almost seven years. And these people haven’t been targeted by the government or even challenged by the government in any way. That’s just how difficult this system is to negotiate. you have to be *at least* middle class to be able to afford that kind of legal process, and even then, if you miss one appointment (which can be changed at any time for any reason by the government), you’re *very* lucky that in and of itself isn’t used as a reason to deny or end your whole bid for citizenship.
Now, if there are classes of people in Mexico who are persecuted because they are of a particular race or ethnic background or religion to the point that they are beaten, killed, etc., then I’d like to hear it.
I must say that I do agree with the spirit of your comment. Mexico could, in fact, be a great country if it wasn’t for the outrageous corruption there, a corruption that’s enforced with brutality.
more to the point, Mexico would be a great country if the U.S. would get it’s nose out of Mexico’s business. NAFTA has devastated Mexico in a way that’s hard to even describe and the “war on drugs” has been used by both the Mexican and U.S. government as a way to control popular indigenous and union resistance against the government and NAFTA.
It’s really the ultimate irony that U.S. citizens are lecturing Mexicans about “staying home” or “protesting” their government, when it’s U.S. citizens that have continuously allowed their government to meddle and intervene into Mexican politics (take a look at what role the Bush administration had in implementing the latest president into office–similarly, take a look at the millions of protesters that came out to protest the elections) and legislate violence against the millions of people that *regularly* protest and organize against the violence.
Did you know that the house just voted to pass the Peru Free Trade Agreement? Given the devastation NAFTA and CAFTA have had on poor U.S. citizens (and the effect it has had on pushing Latin Americans into the U.S.) I have to wonder, where are all the protests here in the U.S.? Where are the millions out marching and protesting and shutting down the government? What excuse do any of us have? Is 50% of our population below the poverty line/living in rural areas (ala Peru, Mexico, Colombia, etc)? Do most of our population live in mountainous areas and not have access to radio/the internet/newspapers etc? What’s our excuse?
Democrats voted for the Peru free trade agreement without very little protest from progressives. And no one protests like Mexicans, the Zapatistas and Latin Americans.
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Given the devastation NAFTA and CAFTA have had on poor U.S. citizens (and the effect it has had on pushing Latin Americans into the U.S.) I have to wonder, where are all the protests here in the U.S.?
Probably because, like me, they have no idea that NAFTA and CAFTA have actually caused any particular devastation among poor U.S. citizens and have pushed Latin Americans into the U.S.
I’m not saying that to defend either act – I’m saying that I actually know very little about either and can’t relate them to any effects on any of the economies in the Americas.