Now in case you're living under a rock and are unaware of whats going on, or are reading this years later and don't remember what was going on in mid 2018, let me kind of recap what's up right now.
President Trump and Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions the third (Jeff Sessions), put a 'zero tolerance' policy in place at the border. Anybody crossing without the proper paperwork was immediately put into detention. Now this has been done for years and years and years for adults, but it was a different story for people crossing over with children. You see, there's been a court ruling for quite some time (the mid 80s I think) that says we can't hold migrant children in detention centers for more than 20 days. So previous administrations would process families coming across and decide that outside of special circumstances that it's cruel to put the adults in detention and then separate the children from them as we couldn't hold the kids in a detention center. So the families would be processed and either told to call in for their court hearings, given electronic monitors like bracelets or ankle bracelets, and then processed through the immigration/asylum/refugee system but not while in detention.
This system, by the way, had over 98% of those families report for all their court dates. Even when the family knew that it was leading them back to deportation.
President Trump and Attorney General Session's Zero Tolerance system keeps the adults and puts the children into a separate facility. The children are then treated as minors without adult supervision. In other words they're put into a kind of foster care. At this point there are almost 3,000 kids that have been separated from their families. Three Fucking Thousand Kids. Attorney General Sessions has admitted that this is being used as a deterrence to illegal immigration. In other words it's out government saying to parents "Don't you dare cross our border illegally, which is a misdemeanor crime here, or we'll hold you in a detention center and steal your children!"
I know... 'steal' is a very strong words when we're talking about children. But I think it's accurate in this case as story after story is coming to light as to how this administration can't match up the children back to their families. There's been a judge that ordered all children 5 years and older have to be given back to their parents within 2 weeks, and all other children have to be given back to their families within 30 days. The administration's response was to ask for more time. They literally said that they couldn't do it in 2 weeks. How hard should that be? This child at this location belongs with this parent at this location.... put them together. But they didn't keep track of the children and adults they were pulling them from, so they don't KNOW which parents they go with.
They're now DNA testing the kids and will start DNA testing the adults so they can match them up. God forgive us if it's an adopted child as I guess we'll just keep those ones.
I'm sure you can tell I'm quite angry about the whole thing. Lemme take a step back and try to look at this from 'their' point of view.
I can accept that there are people who don't want people immigrating to our country, or want very few people immigrating to our country. I'm going to try and keep overt racism out of this, but lets face it there is a lot of racism here right under the surface. These people want only the brightest and best of the world to immigrate to the United States. Doctors, engineers, scientists, surgeons, military specialists, successful business entrepreneurs, wealthy individuals. They want the 'upper crust' of civilization and only the 'upper crust'.
These people look at our current system that only lets in a small amount of people in as naturalized citizens, and a smaller number of refugees and asylum seekers as working okay. In fact they're only problem is that it has a family bias. That once one of the 'undesirables' get in, they can bring in more of their family and relatives easier. The fact that it takes a long time to gain citizen ship or refugee/asylum status is a good deterrent as the 'upper crust' can willingly go through that red tape without problem while the 'dirty masses' will have trouble getting through it.
So for those people, illegal immigrants crossing the border are a major, huge, big problem. Stopping them at any cost is worth it. Putting up a wall? Fine. Putting the military at said wall to guard it? Good. Locking up anybody that crosses illegally and taking their children away? Super.
So that's "their" viewpoint as I see it. And it's where I have a major problem. We can argue all we want about taking kids, or putting up a wall, or having a zero tolerance policy... but it doesn't get to the core of the problem. Immigration as a whole. Oh, they'll talk a good game about how they want to 'fix' the system, but it's not to fix the system in a way that would reduce the number of people trying to cross the border illegally. In fact, it would probably just increase the number of people trying to cross the border illegally.
You see, I think we should be letting in a whole lot more people. A quick Google search shows that we allow in around one million legal immigrants per year. The best guesses is that there are also about 1.5 million illegal immigrants entering the country each year. One has to wonder, why not allow in 2.5 million immigrants per year? We're a country of 340 million people and around 40 million are immigrants, making us big for immigrants but by percentage we're not the largest for immigrants. Both Canada and Switzerland are far larger than us. So again... why not let more in?
Now, I'm not naive enough to think that letting more in would solve the problem alone. If you're in an ideal situation (i.e. the spouse of an American Citizen) with a clean record it can still take years and years to gain citizenship. That time frame is getting shorter, but years?
Immigrants as a whole pay more in taxes than natural born citizens. I know, that sounds kind of scary an false, but it's a pretty easy number to track. But just consider the basic simple fact that they WANT to come here and experience the American Dream. They have to work for it and strive for it and jump through a bunch of hoops to get to it.... of naturally they work for it once they're here. It's not everybody, but it's more of them than 'us'. I was born here and never had to think about 'working' for the American Dream. It's was here in my lap the entire time.
Immigrants commit less crime than natural citizens. Again, it's an easy enough number to track.
So... why don't we want them here?
I can only think of one reason why and it's time based. During times of economic down turn, we should limit immigration. During the great recession we had trouble employing our own people and therefore supporting our own citizens. Letting in a large amount of immigrants during that time frame would be irresponsible as we'd more or less be letting in people and practically guaranteeing that more people (either them or the people they would push out of jobs) would have to go onto public assistance. But those times are not common. Times like now when we're in an economic boon with very low unemployment, we could actually use the extra labor force.
I saw a protest sign recently that asked for the reasoning for a persons heritage. It listed Native American, Slave, Refugee, and Immigrant. And that's it. And that's true. We're all originally from Native Americans, Slaves, Refugees, or Immigrants. So whey do we have a problem with current immigrants?
So how does fixing immigration by letting in more people and doing it more quickly fix the border problem? Easy, I would be all for being far harsher on people illegally crossing if there was an easy way to cross legally. Right now, a family from some of these poor war/gang torn countries in central america simply want to come here and be citizens of our great country. They can either go through the decade (or more) longer process to try and gain citizenship, go through the years long process of becoming a refugee (that's becoming more difficult and we're letting in less and less of those), or cross illegally. Once they're here they can try to work the system from this side while safe from the harm that is they're home country or seek asylum. If it were me and my family, I think I'd roll the dice and cross the border. If it's that dangerous I probably don't have a decade or more to wait and see if I can get citizenship.
But if the process was easier and faster and it was a viable option.... then we could honestly look at them as they cross the border illegally and just turn them away. Tell them to go to a consulate or embassy and start the process of crossing legally. If they want asylum then sure, let them in as that's a different story, but if they just want citizenship they have a straight and easy path before them. They'd know that they can come here with open arms.
It's not perfect by any means, but it would be trying to fix the problem instead of trying to fix the symptoms. It should help lead to more tax paying citizens for us and less money spent on walls and border patrols and detention centers and most of all, the humiliation that we should all feel knowing that we're taking children away from parents as a way to discourage people from coming here.
Don't come here! We'll steal your fucking children!
That's not us. That's not my America.
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