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Children, ‘Animals,’ and Immigrants
Maybe you’ve seen the video of the hero the French have dubbed “Spiderman.” When he saw a toddler dangling off a fourth story balcony, he scaled the exterior of the Paris building in about 30 seconds to save the child. Turns out Mamoudou Gassama was a newly-arrived illegal immigrant from Mali. A grateful President Emmanuel Macron made him a French citizen a day later.
Or consider the story of Jesus Manuel Cordova. He illegally crossed the border from Mexico into Arizona and came upon a damaged car. Inside was a dead mother and an injured nine-year-old boy. Cordova stayed with the child for hours until help arrived.
So, does that mean all illegal immigrants are heroes? Obviously not, no more than the crimes of MS-13 or the murder of Kate Steinle prove that all immigrants are criminals.
Both parties are resorting to stereotypes and incitement. The Democrats, intent upon portraying the utter depravity of the Trump Administration’s approach to immigration, seized upon a story that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency had “lost” 1,475 illegal immigrant minors who were separated from their parents. A widely-cited story alleged that federal officials could not find these kids. Several pointed to a Frontline account alleging that at least some of the kids had been released to human traffickers.
But within a couple of days, the corrections flowed in. It wasn’t, the New York Times and others advised, that the kids were lost. Rather, these were among the “unaccompanied minors” who crossed the border in 2014. They were placed with adults. The Times quoted Ephrat Livni of Quartz, who explained: “It certainly sounds bad,” but “many of those missing kids may well be with their parents or families, and they may have gone off the grid deliberately to avoid Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) authorities.” As for the Frontline story, it referenced a government report from 2016, i.e., before the current administration could be held accountable.
But here’s the irony: The Trump Administration’s position amounts to saying “We weren’t responsible for separating children from their parents, but going forward, we will be.” Attorney General Jeff Sessions has announced that separating even very young children from their parents will now be policy – as deterrence. “If you are smuggling a child then we will prosecute you, and that child will be separated from you as required by law,” he said. “If you don’t like that, then don’t smuggle children over our border.”
Well, if deterrence of illegal immigration justifies visiting the sins (if that’s what they are) of the parents upon the children, why stop there? Why not confine the children in cages, feed them only bread and water, and confiscate their teddy bears? After all, the current policy is indifferent to the suffering the children will experience in the name of punishing the parents, so why not ramp it up? Surely that would be an even better deterrent.
The president and his advisors routinely recommend harsh immigration measures on the grounds of national security and crime, as if our borders are being overrun by terrorists and rapists. An RNC campaign spot shows Nancy Pelosi criticizing President Trump’s use of the term “animals” regarding gang members. Her comments are juxtaposed against a gruesome story of a Satanic murder committed by a “Guatemalan native,” and other stories of crimes committed by MS-13. The tagline: “Democrats’ midterm message: MS-13 killers . . . they aren’t so bad.” At his Tennessee rally, President Trump, with characteristic judiciousness, told the crowd that Pelosi “loves MS-13.”
But it’s flatly false to say that immigrants are disproportionately represented among offenders. The CATO Institute has published several studies showing that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than the native born, and illegal immigrants are the most law-abiding of all. Overall crime rates in the United States, despite an uptick in murders in certain cities since 2014, have declined by 64 percent since 1990, while immigration rates spiked (immigration rates have declined since 2005). A study by four universities found that the ten regions that had largest increases in immigrants all had lower levels of crime in 2016 than in 1980.
Of course there are awful cases. But the plural of anecdote is not data, and the appeal to fear is contemptible. Secretary of Homeland Security Kirsten Nielson expressed alarm that 300,000 would-be border crossers are apprehended yearly. But this is a stark drop from just 18 years ago, when more than 1.6 million were stopped. At the same time, more people are now leaving the US to return to Mexico than arriving from Mexico.
The dueling anecdote game can be played endlessly. ICE has arrested an illegal alien adult with Down Syndrome, whose three siblings and father live in the US. An armed ICE agent was videotaped using a crowbar to enter a home. When the occupants demanded a warrant, he said “You’ve been watching too many movies.”
Most ICE agents doubtless follow the law and shouldn’t be tarred by the bad acts of a few. The same can be said of immigrants.
Published in General
I’m not sure why people think this analogy is clever or convincing. Letting someone into the country puts in infinitesimal chance that you’ll have an interaction with them. And if you do, you can simply walk away. Your personal private property (like a house) is not being violated. And that’s what we’re usually talking about when we talk about rights violations under normal circumstances.
Numeracy. Deaths are tragic, but they’re rare. Keeping out millions of people to prevent the occasional murder is misguided to say the least.
Those human rights do not include the right to enter this nation (or any other) illegally.
If you think the immigration laws need to be made more lax, then win that argument and change the law. But just because you think immigration laws are too strict does not confer the rights of citizenship on illegal immigrants, regardless how nice and hard-working they are.
And how many Palefaces can there be, anyway?
That is a fairly naive point-of-view. The citizens of south Texas, for example, might scoff at the idea you have an “infinitesimal chance that you’ll have an interaction with them.”
Besides – I would assume that “normal circumstances” would involve obeying the law. Once again, we are talking about illegal immigrants.
Well, let’s use the UK as an example. How about keeping out millions of people to prevent thousands of instances of child rape?
Can you be sure of that? It seems to follow from more fundamental intuitions about human rights. If you said, Person A would like to rent an apartment from Person B at a price both of them liked. Most people wouldn’t then stop and say, “wait a minute, which country is Person A and Person B from?” Because it’s something that most people would say should happen until you shoehorn concepts like national identity into the mix.
See my comment regarding oligarchies/democracies. Democracies are good at certain things, but they by no means get the right answers as a rule. What do you think I’m doing now? I’m arguing with people, few of which I have any chance of convincing. But even if I’m never successful convincing people, that doesn’t mean I’m wrong. Thankfully, we don’t live in a pure democracy, and our rulers have a little leeway to go against the “will of the people,” and the rulers tend to tilt a little more in my direction (some of them for the right reasons, and some for the wrong) than the general population. I don’t think there’s anything terribly wrong with this situation. Yeah, a change in law would be better, but it’s not like the current laws are never enforced. Something like 10% of people held in federal prison are people on immigration charges and deportations still happen all the time.
(By the way, It’s not my priority that immigrants (legal or otherwise) ever become citizens, I just want them to have the option to live and work here. Nor do I have a problem with reasonable screening for criminals and such, it should just take much less time to get a visa and they should be permanently renewable.)
It is truly something to watch as the never Trump faction devolves in to left wing Democrats due to their deep seated need to discredit anything Trump.
The question becomes, are they really transforming, or were they always thus and only now showing their true colors?
So taking your illogical views to their conclusion, there was nothing wrong with those Germans hopping into their tanks and deciding to move to Poland.
I’m sure someone as profound as Mona would agree with this as well.
This is a very nice strawman argument. Who, exactly, is suggesting that the crimes of MS-13 prove all immigrants are criminals?
Yes, of course, if you’re completely uncharitable and purposefully refuse to try to understand my position you might think that, or you know, you could think to yourself, “Maybe he’s distinguishing between people who are peacefully looking for work or a better place to live and tanks rolling over the boarder. Perhaps I should reread what he’s said and try to distinguish why a reasonable fellow member of Ricochet would come to such a radical conclution compared to my own.”
Heh, I’ve never been NeverTrump myself, but I sometimes think similar things about the previous members of the ostensibly classical liberal party who bend over backwards to rationalize whatever the current position of the head of the party is.
Were they always ambivalent to free markets and just paid lip service to them in the name of political tribalism, or did something change?
I would submit that most members of that party believe that the law should be enforced as written or changed. That’s what representative government is about, cynical claims of “rationalization” notwithstanding.
It’s easy to strongly argue for the rule of law when you agree with the law.
So are we bending over backwards to rationalize something or only in favor of laws with which we agree? Both? I hate red lights. I stop for them. I don’t like the Tax Code. I pay my taxes. I don’t live in the realm of the theoretical.
Right, it’s prudent to stop at red lights most of the time because of traffic safety/risk of ticketing. It’s prudent to pay your taxes because the IRS will make your life a living hell if you don’t. If we could get away with not doing these things, I doubt many of us would.
I assume you are referring to tariffs? I object to them, but we are not playing on an even field, are we? I’m not saying I support Trump’s tariffs, just that I support some effort to make the terms fair for both sides. Until then, it’s not a free market.
But there is obviously some merit to what you say. There are those who will support the president in anything he does, even when it flies in the face of what they previously supported.
Some of that is just loyalty. If you are on a team and the coach calls a play you disagree with, if you respect the coach, you run his play. You even hope it works.
Some of it is blind love, that happens to every public figure.
But it is not fair to portray all support as blind abandonment of principles. Sometimes, people see that what he is doing is working, so they have confidence in his ability, even if it might not match what they previously believed.
For example, when Reagan ran the first time, I believed that he would start a nuke war with USSR. I wasted my vote on the libertarian. He went against my principles at the time, and got in the face of the USSR. He started an ‘arms race’ and he funded ‘star wars’.
By the second term, my principles had adjusted to match the truth I was experiencing. It worked, he knew what he was doing, and the world was better off for it. So, was I ambivalent to my previous commitment to non confrontation with the commies? Or did I just re adjust my principles based on new understandings? And was my new willingness to believe in Reagan’s judgement on future issues an abandonment of my past beliefs? Not necessarily, just an understanding that sometimes, there are those who are wiser than I.
I still, to this day, don’t agree with everything Reagan did. But if he were president today, and suggested something I didn’t agree with, I would give him the benefit of the doubt. Because he was usually right, and usually effective.
So far, so is Trump.
On illegals, I have no idea how the average person decides how this nets out economically. If you listen to Victor Davis Hansen, it doesn’t.
How do you know this?
IMO, this is the heart of the problem. If we had a more libertarian economy with a more disbursed prosperity we could be less discriminent about immigration. i.e. Kevin Williamson on Texas
I have to agree with Mike H. I work with many professional non citizen immigrants, fine law abiding people who work hard and contribute to our society. We are better off for having them with us.
But what they have to go through to get their work visa, to remain in the country, is obscene. Some can’t even visit their families for fear they won’t be allowed back in the country to go to work. And I don’t mean their visa has expired or anything like that. I don’t fully understand it, but it is a fact, if they visit their families at home for a week, sometimes they can’t get back to work for a month or more due to red tape. It happens, and has happened to my colleagues more than once.
Meanwhile, illegals are everywhere, getting drivers licenses and driving with no insurance, working for under the table pay, living in public housing, getting free healthcare, education, some committing further crimes, you name it.
I object to illegal immigrants, but the process for legal immigration is a disgrace. Not just anybody should be let in, but there are plenty who we should welcome in, and those are the ones getting the worst treatment.
Mona associates with the Niskanen center and quotes CATO now.
I am not going to ride the Justice Department about separating children from their parents because I have no idea how to stop this stuff or slow it down. Maybe they do. The aggregate suffering isn’t going to be anything worse and with the government already creates.
I forget where I heard it, but there is this long list of stuff that HHS has to do with managing children that don’t get a sponsor (read: don’t find a friend that will give them shelter when they avoid their illegal immigration court appearance.) It’s like Soviet parenting. Crazy resources.
I quit listening to the CATO immigration guy because from what I could tell, he’s just another inflationist. CATO. He also thinks identity politics is good for the country. He’s against that Kevin Williamson article I just posted; that may be another way to say it.
Outside of actual skill shortages, I’m not very fired up about this right now. My mind could be changed.
I can tell you in Minnesota we need to slow down on immigrants from a certain country we are notorious for.
I’m guessing it’s not the Scandinavians you have in mind? ;)
If you’re willing to include the benefits to the migrant, it’s a ridiculously large benefit overall.
Most American’s aren’t willing to include benefits to current non-citizens though.
Californians? ;)
Your position has nothing – absolutely nothing – to do with reality. The reality is the poor from south of the border come here, are on the dole and are bankrupting hospitals. They don’t have the education, fewer uneducated workers are needed. They are a huge drain on the economy and you want to let more in. They may not be coming in tanks (yet), but they are coming in buses.
I have told this before. We have 100,000 from country A. They are notorious. We have 25,000 from country B. Model citizens. Never in the news. All of these guys look the same. You can’t tell them apart. The countries are right next to each other. One has a crappy civic tradition or heritage or whatever, and the other one doesn’t.
Supposedly, it’s illegal to just slow down on country A.
Hey, Mona, join the conversation.™
C’mon in; the water’s fine.
I don’t think more than one out of ten southern Californians would last one winter in Minnesota.