It's inarguable that many people attempt (and a significant percentage succeed) to enter the United States outside of the legal avenues available. The right wing of the electorate focusses on that as the problem, when illegal entry is only a symptom of the problem. Or problems. The right wing would have you believe that the majority of people crossing the border illegally are criminals, when confronted with statistics showing that criminals make up a 1-3% of illegal entries, the goalpost is moved: the mere fact of coming in illegally makes them criminals, so therefore, according to this pretzelinian logic, they're all criminals.
Problem number one is the situation in the home countries of many hopeful immigrants. For a variety of reasons, crime and poverty are virtually inescapable if one remains at home. Desperation motivates people to abandon their homes, trek thousands of miles through strange territory, and finally risking multiple dangers to get across the border undetected. I how desperate would any of us be to make that move? I have heard the argument from some quarters that they should stay in their native countries instead of cowardly abandoning them, but I would wager that the same people who make that argument would do whatever it took if their own families were in danger. The truth is, few of us born in the United States have ever been faced with those kind of choices, and we have no basis upon which to judge those who are facing those very choices. So why aren't the people who are risking death by swimming rivers, climbing walls, crossing deserts, not to mention robbery, rape and other attacks along the way, utilizing the system by applying for asylum? Now we come to problem number two.
Applying for asylum is not a simple process. There has always been a low percentage of applications approved, and the waiting period is long. Many would-be asylum seekers, knowing that their prospects are poor, opt to simply jump the fence and come in illegally. The Trump administration made things more difficult by requiring asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while their applications were being processed. This was to address the so-called issue of applicants being released into the United States and never showing up for court. I say "so-called" because close to 90% of applicants do show up for court. A court system that is dysfunctional and difficult to navigate. Since they are not citizens, they are not provided with a court-appointed attorney, or even translators. The system is such a mess that it makes more sense for many to bypass the system and hope they don't get caught than it does to follow the law. The immigration system itself, due to its inherent failures, encourages illegal entry.
What's the solution? There's isn't one simple solution. That's why The Wall was never an answer. Building a giant, border spanning wall, even if it were impenetrable and unclimbable, only makes it more difficult to get in, it doesn't account for the limitless ingenuity of humans when presented with a problem, a barrier to their goals. It also doesn't address the reasons why people keep trying to come here. Part of the problem lies somewhat outside our ability to influence. The situation in some Central American countries cannot be solved with more dollars, although withholding all foreign aid indisputably makes it worse. Even if our influence was able to achieve stability without fail, it could not do so overnight. So we are left with possible solutions that we can control.
We spend a lot of money patrolling our border and catching people who attempt to cross illegally. We need to start spending money on expanding our services to asylum seekers, and indeed, making it easier for people to seek asylum, or even to immigrate for reasons other than fear of being killed. The processing must be made more humane and more accessible. Allowable ports of entry must be expanded, rather than continuing to create a bottleneck at the available crossings. The whole system must be redesigned to incentivize "doing it right", to change the paradigm where possibly dying in the desert or drowning in the Rio Grande is a better bet than applying for asylum.
The Wall was never a solution. The Wall was an applause line that was mistaken for actual policy and crystalized bigotry and ignorance, rather than achieving anything. Unfortunately, I don't hear anyone, from any party, putting forth any real solutions.
No comments:
Post a Comment