Immigration

The Congressional Tinfoil Hat Caucus has found a martyr in Laken Riley, a young woman who was killed recently, allegedly by a man who, the Trump brigade likes to point out, had entered the country illegally.  While it is true that Ms. Riley in particular would still be alive if it were not for the policies that allowed her killer to remain in the country, it is disingenuous to act as if murders do not occur every day by people who were born here and come from a variety of backgrounds. Or to pretend that anything more than a tiny portion of immigrants, no matter how they entered the country, commit any crimes, let alone murder.  The Trumpublicans are using the tragedy to make their own candidate look like a better alternative. 

Is our immigration system "broken"? There's not much argument from any quarter that something needs to change. However, it's often politically advantageous for the out-of-power party for there to be a broken system, which is why bipartisan agreements rarely happen. In our current political climate it's not so much the process that is under attack, but the fact of immigration itself. In other words, Right Wing opposition comes in the form of a fear of "the other" supplanting our culture. In 2016 Candidate Trump characterized immigration from Mexico and Central America as "They're not sending you their best...They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists". This is the point of view of many in the U.S. - that immigrants, no matter how they get here, are the problem. Anti-immigration rhetoric often focusses on how recent immigrants cling to their homeland's culture and language instead of assimilating. But they don't understand that by the second or third generation they do assimilate. A few years ago the company I worked for held a seminar called Spanish for Retailers. The presenter was the son of Mexican immigrants. He told of how his parents spoke very little English, that he was bilingual, but his daughter did not speak Spanish. This mirrored my own experience growing up in a New York neighborhood with a lot of Italian-Americans. The matriarch of the family spoke mainly Italian. Her son, of my parents' generation, spoke both English and Italian, while the grandson spoke no Italian at all. Immigrant families eventually become American. 

Another trope that is common among the anti-immigrant crowd is "my grandparents came here the right way". The problem with that thinking is that, unless you were coming from a country from which immigration was barred, there weren't a lot of hoops that you had to go through to be allowed in. Saying that the qualifications for admittance were being white and free of tuberculosis is not that far off. I've got at least one ancestor who would not have passed a background check if such a thing had been done a century ago. 

President Biden was criticized for referring to non-citizens as "illegals" in his State of the Union speech. He was then criticized by the other side for "apologizing" to Laken Riley's alleged killer for calling him an illegal. (Biden didn't "apologize" - in an interview he corrected himself and said that his use of that term was inaccurate). There is a tendency among anti-immigrants to call anyone who has not completed the long process of applying for a Green Card, or is here on a student or other temporary visa, an "illegal", or an "illegal alien". But are they really here illegally? The first thing to remember is that under current U.S. law, one may claim asylum simply by presenting oneself to a Border Patrol officer or other immigration official, regardless of how they entered. If someone crosses the Rio Grande, or hops a fence, once they have requested asylum their status is no different from an asylum seeker who came in through an official Port of Entry. They are here legally according to U.S. law. But here's where the problem gets worse. If you're claiming asylum, you have to convince a judge that you have a credible claim. Wait times for an asylum hearing can take 3-10 years, depending on whether the claim is made thorough the Justice Department's immigration court or the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. There is currently a backlog of 2 million applicants with only around 650 immigration judges and 800 asylum officers to handle all those cases. 

This backlog results in the asylum seekers putting down roots in American towns and becoming a part of their communities. They have children who were either born here or were toddlers when their parents arrived. If they are denied asylum, they are understandably unwilling to uproots their American lives and return to their home countries - it's then when they truly are here illegally. But who can blame them? Who wouldn't do everything in their power to make a better, safer, life for their family? 

What would motivate someone to uproot their family from the land where their ancestors have lived for generations to go to a country where they would have to learn not only a new language, but a whole new way of doing things? No one does this so they can marginally improve their lot in life. No, the violence and poverty that many of these immigrants have endured make the dangerous trek to the United States the logical option. Isolationists in the this country want us to draw back into our borders and ignore what is happening in the rest of the world. But the truth is that what happens in the rest of the world affects us. Violence and poverty and political upheaval spur migrations. What can we do to alleviate these conditions in other countries? If your neighbors house is on fire, doesn't that constitute a danger to you? Foreign aid is money that ultimately benefits us here in this country.

So what do we do? I'm not opposed to building border barriers. My main objection to Trump's "Wall" was not that I thought our borders should be porous, but that it wasn't a plan, it was a campaign applause line,  and was ultimately based on his characterization of most immigrants as "not their best people". We've also seen that walls, no matter how high, can be breached and that people can be very imaginative and persistent about getting around, over or under them. We can change the asylum laws and refuse to allow more than a trickle of asylum claims - but I imagine all that will do is encourage people to not turn them selves in to Border Patrol, but to keep their heads down and hope they don't get caught. Or do what Texas is doing and refusing to entertain any asylum claims and turn everyone back. Does Governor Abbott really believe that little park on the river is the only crossing point? We definitely need to expand our capacity for processing asylum seekers. How many judges and asylum officers would it take to reduce the wait time to days or weeks, other than months? What about expanding the reasons that we allow immigration? If someone has held down a job and stayed out of trouble for a year, expedite their application and let them continue to be productive members of the community. On the flip side, any criminal activity should result in immediate deportation, or at least detention until the facts are determined. 

Until sane and practical long-term solutions are enacted there will always be a "crisis at the border". For those who pine for the days of Trump's "closed border" - wasn't it he who declared a National Emergency at the southern border so that he could divert funds to pay for a few miles of his "Big, Beautiful, Mexico-Paid-For Wall"? Or was constantly crying about "caravans"? I concede the numbers are larger now, but the problem isn't one that appeared ex nihilo, and isn't exclusively a Democratic problem. And it will continue to be a problem as long as it's used as a political football.