Separation of illegal-alien children from parents

[pbrower2a]

(06-24-2018, 08:56 AM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(06-20-2018, 03:56 PM)Ragnarök_62 Wrote:

(06-20-2018, 12:18 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: It's always been quite standard for the justice system to separate detained criminal suspects from their children.  Why do we suddenly care when the suspects are illegal aliens, when we've never cared when the suspects are US citizens?

Hmmm.. This mess needs to be fixed.

1.  The pull problem needs has an easy solution.  All employers need to use E-verify.  If anyone is busted, throw the book at them.  Prosecute them on tax charges for non payment of employment taxes along with hiring aliens. If the fines bankrupt them, all the better. Examples make for awesome deterrents.

2. The push problem.  The US needs to stop meddling in Latin America's internal affairs. Stop supporting civil wars to advance corporate America's agendas.

3. Define exactly what constitutes "asylum".  I don't think spouse abuse or stuff US citizens go through should qualify.  After all, man, charity begins at home. Fix those problems here first before going on some global crusade to fix the world's problems.

4. If someone is just looking for "a better life, " too bad. We have legions of homeless already, fix that first as well.
For example, San Francisco, that paragon of kindness won't build homeless shelters, because NIMBY. I despise hypocrisy.  Just look at the huge mess over there.  

Thanks for the discussion on this important topic.

I agree with David's observations and concerns. Illegal immigrants are not felons; their punishment should fit the crime. Prisons for babies is not in accord with values and laws. Allowing immigration does not mean we allow criminals to stay in our country, or drugs to be smuggled. If illegal immigrants commit serious crimes, they can and should be deported. There should be standards set for this; a DUI committed 20 years ago is not a sufficient reason to deport someone off the street and take them away from their families. And Trump and his followers assume that all illegal immigrants must be criminals, rapists and drug dealers. This is not true; immigrants are actually less liable to commit crimes than natives.

1. Illegal immigration exists partly because employers need workers, and such workers are not available from the native population. Certainly laws requiring employers to pay their employment taxes and pay living wages to employees must be enforced. Deporting people just because they crossed the border may not be a workable policy. At least, they can't all be deported, so such a policy is unfair. And it ignores the right of people to live where they want to live. But if employers must all pay living wages to all workers, legal or not, this may decrease the need businesses perceive to hire illegal aliens, because that is caused by their unfair desire to pay cheap and unfair wages.

2. This is a big and important point. What the US did in Central America 20-30 years ago had a big impact on the condition of countries today. The US supported in many cases wealthy landowning oligarchies who employed death squads to maintain their power, because these oligarchs were not communist rebels and were beneficial to US commercial interests. I would say we need to stop supporting these oligarchs. We can't impose what we want on them. But we can pressure them through our influence and trade policies to respect human rights and hold honest elections, not coups and death squads. Our own drug problems and drug wars also contribute to conditions in these countries.

3. That seems right. And, asylum seekers are not criminals. They have a right to seek it, and should not be detained while they seek it.

4. I dunno. Having poverty imposed on you, is as much a tyranny as being imprisoned for your beliefs or your activism or your family member's activism. It is natural for people to want to move to another place if life is intolerable where you are. If it's reasonably good, then people will stay home. Giving aid to poor countries is a responsibility of rich ones, if we are to have a functioning world without as much war, terrorism and mass migrations. The wealthy also primarily need to provide aid to people suffering at home. NIMBY is not a good policy. But our back yard is also the yards beyond our national borders. We cannot separate ourselves from the chaos abroad. People's suffering abroad is often a condition imposed by outside powers, including but not limited to those imposed by the USA. Our policies toward other nations need to be enlightened by the realization that what's good for others is what's good for us. The guy who shared that philosophy and physics video with us, made that point as its ultimate conclusion. It is a valid one.

1. Employers want cheap workers. Maybe employers need to have productivity high enough to allow such, or people must accept paying more for what they get. What the Hard Right (and not only Trump) offers is cheap labor and monopolized business to make the profit margins higher. Illegal aliens do much of the nasty work in American life -- farm labor, kitchen help, and at times construction or landscaping. They keep the costs down for the rest of us, except perhaps in housing. Illegal aliens are also good customers because they are poor and are still 'progressing' through the needs of the industrial era. So they buy stuff that we take for granted. If they get sick or injured they can be cast off.

We need to enforce wage and hour laws strictly.

2. Let's not forget that American addicts are buying the drugs and supplying (indirectly through drug lords) that fund much of the civil mess in some of those very poor Latin-American countries. Whether those oligarchs that you lament are complicit in such through design or neglect may be another story. Even if we have a war on drugs, some countries are on the brink of civil war due to the drug trade and its debasement of civic life.

3. People seeking asylum from civil wars because of American drug use are in the same moral league as people that Americans allowed entry into America because they fled Nazism (there would have been more had we been more generous, especially with the Jews... FDR could have mocked Hitler with a statement much like an Ottoman sultan toward the Spanish king: 'You impoverish your Reich and enrich our Republic.' -- and really generous with people fleeing Commie rule from the time of the Russian Revolution through the Commie takeovers of Laos, Cambodia, and South Vietnam. If I had to choose between being a drug trafficker and being a Communist, I would be a Commie.

4. Yes indeed. Poverty in a country that values little more than economic success is a debasement of life if it is new or an old inequity where it is old. This country needs to do some personal and collective soul-searching to make our country more equitable.

When I see obvious poverty in America I feel poorer. I recognize, having been in the middle class all my life, that our economic elites and their favorite right-wing politicians use poverty as a threat to us all. Maybe poverty is less odious than concentration camps, torture chambers, and execution sites, but let's not use the horrific to defend the awful. Sure, Jim Crow practice might be less objectionable than the Holocaust -- but that is no excuse for Jim Crow practice.