IMMIGRATION AND RESTRICTION
There was an interesting study done some years ago looking at the issue of “illegal immigration”. One of the conclusions was that it began under Bill Clinton, who for the first time made undocumented migrant immigration illegal, closed the southern border, and enforced deportation. The analysis showed that many people from Mexico, for decades, had migrated to the Southwest during harvest season, to assist in agriculture, would go home during holidays and then return home when the employment opportunities disappeared. That system worked pretty well. It provided farmers with labor that they needed and allowed the migrants to work when needed and return home when not.
When the border was closed, this system no longer worked. Migrant workers were stuck in the U.S. because they could not return home, and could not commute to their work. When stuck here during seasons with no employment, these workers needed to find a way to live here. They would then bring their families to them since they could not go home to their families. This was the beginning of “undocumented workers”.
I tried at the end of my last note to point out that when the Trump administration eliminated traditional rationales for applying for asylum, including gang-related reasons, political persecution, and economic needs, they forced those who needed to escape their home country to attempt to cross the border here illegally. If your escape was existential, and the rules here changed so that you couldn’t enter legally, you were left with no other option than trying to enter illegally.
One answer is to widen the rules upon which an immigrant can apply for asylum. If the majority of potential immigrants see a legal way to achieve U.S. residence and, eventually, citizenship, there would be less need to try to sneak into this country. They would be far more motivated to appear at the ports and apply for asylum. The higher the percentage of people who find legal entry attractive, the less problems we would have with human trafficking.
For me, a family in a central American country which has been threatened by a gang that unless they let their teenage son join the gang, the gang will kill the boy and the entire family, which then packs up the possessions that they can carry and walks over a thousand miles to attempt to establish a family in a country with the streets paved with gold, with liberty and justice for all – that family is one that I want to have in this country.
For me, we need to have our policies set to make immigrants welcome, not restricted to prevent them from coming here, and then threatened that they may be arrested, separated from their families, and deported back to the place from which they were trying to excape death, and sent to prisons in third-party countries.
An important corolary of this is that the more people that apply through legal ports of entry, the easier it will be to screen those entering for the types of crimes that would prohibit entry.
I do not believe that Empathy is weakness and Cruelty is strength
