The grain of truth in the Trump-Sessions border control policy

[hudebnik]

The way Jeff Sessions has presented the family-separation policy in recent weeks is "we're just following the law. Bringing a child with you across the border does not protect you from the consequences of your actions."

Which actually makes a certain amount of sense. We wouldn't want a situation in which illegal immigrants use their own children as human shields to protect them from the consequences of their actions. If you imagine someone in Central America planning to go to the U.S. and deciding whether or not to bring hir children, you could see such a person thinking "if I have a small child with me, the border patrol will treat me better than if I don't." Which would indeed be fairly reprehensible behavior on the part of a parent, and to the extent that the border patrol does treat people with children better than people without, it's not good for the rule of law. Treating immigrants with children the same as immigrants without children avoids incentivizing that reprehensible behavior.

The question is, how common is that scenario in real life? My impression is that the vast majority of people fleeing Central America and heading for the U.S. are (or at least claim to be) fleeing gang violence, government oppression, or domestic abuse. For someone in that situation, whether to take your children is not a question: of course you're going to take your children rather than leaving them to suffer the same violence that you're fleeing. The decision that Sessions wants to avoid incentivizing is not a decision at all for most asylum-seekers. Like the voter-fraud commission, this policy is a solution to a nearly nonexistent problem.

Any immigration-screening policy will have false positives (people excluded from the country who should be allowed in) and false negatives (people admitted to the country who should be kept out), and like any decision procedure, it takes careful tuning to balance the two. If you approach immigration policy from the assumption that brown people are fundamentally shiftless, lazy, and dishonest, as Jeff Sessions and Donald Trump have both evidently believed for many decades, you'll inevitably see the "human shield" scenario (not to mention the "terrorists and gang-bangers trying to expand into the U.S." scenario) as very plausible, and thus be very concerned about false negatives. If you also basically don't care about the welfare or value of people who don't look like you, you'll also inevitably undercount the problem of false positives, and thus reach a much more restrictive immigration policy than would actually be optimal. Like the voter-fraud commission, this policy is all about avoiding false negatives and totally discounting false positives, because that looks strong and macho.

Of course, that's all about the purported reasons for the policy. I suspect that the real reasons are (a) to scare poor brown people out of trying to come to our country, even legally; (b) to stick it to poor brown people because we can; and (c) to make liberals wet their pants in outrage, distracting them from the more lasting damage the Trump administration is doing behind the scenes.

Comments

[matrixmann]

Basically, as I've caught it, all new debates in that point, whatever the cause that brought on the table again, actually rest on the foundation that US immigration policy had certain written laws, but for a long time they more laxly executed them. Even though the US had its immigration policy of "X number of green cards per year, no more people get in" for quite a while and things actually had a clear setting for that (if that was wrong, why not attempted to change it?).
That was being pushed from one term of reign to another and the only thing that happened was constant quarrel about it whether it was right or not. So it went over years and even decades...

Basically, if someone emphasizes on human rights and the US having destroyed and fostering criminal gangs in South America, I'd be with them that they needed to take responsibility for that and not get away with murder out of the issue by just locking all those results out that show the profitable (for them), but for people not positive side of this acting over the last 50 years at least.
But, this atoning for their sins committed can't just be "we all take the hurt people to the US". US citizens, especially those not born during in that time, they aren't responsible for it. It's the chess games of the wealthy class that made that. Especially those horribly afraid of communism and seing themselves stripped off their person profits. So that's who have got to atone for that.
Not even to mention: Are all American people already well off in their country? No, even they aren't. So what's gonna happen if you pour thousands of some other bad-off people into that? Even more misery. Even more fighting for the remaining few seats at the sunny side of life.
Not to forget too: Do all people from those violence-ridden places in South America want to move to another country? Enough of them also want to stay at home because it simply is their HOME.
They only wish for a better life, for them and their families and for their children in the future. And this must happen where they are, not in some far away place, long way from home.
On top of this: This is all assuming the people who you're talking about come with the best motivations in mind for their current behavior.
As drug cartels and what not have taken over some countries too, there are also a lot of people around just working for them, wo are also being sent to other countries to increase their business.
It is a bit naive to just pretend this doesn't exist. Does anybody want to have these kind of individuals in his country? Sure not.
Also, the influence of these groups doesn't end if you leave those countries they have conquered completely to themselves and all people who want to get away, they just leave the country when they want. How many times is this process going to repeat itself?
Things aren't just as overenthusiastic American pro-immigration "progressives" try to pretend to themselves.
But, one can say too, they aren't as simple as those imperialists, who behave blind about their own actions of the past and present, pretend either.
Some kind of way in between must be found that will be practically executed then.

[cellio]

Looking at it purely at the systems level, and not for a moment believing that that's the real motivation: the case to examine isn't asylum-seekers bringing their own kids (which of course they'll do anyway); the case a "treat people with kids better" policy invites is people bringing *any* kid. Doesn't need to be your own; they're not doing DNA tests at the border. Such a policy incentivizes kidnapping or child trafficking. Want to enter the US illegally but don't think you can get past the border guards? Buy or steal a kid and get a free pass.

[hudebnik]

Yes, that occurred to me. It doesn't seem to be a widespread phenomenon so far -- I read in the Times yesterday that about 0.6% of the children apprehended at the border with adults turned out to be not close relatives of those adults -- but it is certainly something to watch out for.

So a better answer is to NOT "treat people with kids better," but rather treat everybody decently. Make a quick judgment of whether this particular border-crosser is likely to be dangerous to the public (and frankly, people with kids are less likely to be dangerous because, in the common case that the kids actually are theirs, they don't want to endanger them), and if not, put a tracking bracelet on them and release them until their asylum hearing.

Another better answer is to encourage people to come in through official ports of entry by treating them decently (see above) at official ports of entry, so they have less incentive to sneak across the border in the middle of the desert. If they come in through an official port of entry and don't substantially lie about their reasons, they're not breaking the law and don't need to be locked up at all.

Now, I don't know how to "make a quick judgment of whether this particular border-crosser is likely to be dangerous to the public." If the person is coming from a country whose government has a halfway-decent human-rights record and a functioning law-enforcement system, make arrangements with those countries to send fingerprints and find out whether the person has a bad record. If not, figure the person likely does have a plausible case for asylum (the way the U.S. used to grant asylum almost automatically to anybody coming from Cuba or Nicaragua).

The point is to NOT treat border-crossers automatically as hardened criminals or subhuman animals; assume, absent evidence to the contrary, that they're probably human beings pretty much like you or me, and that they're probably telling the truth about their reasons for coming. I've crossed national borders dozens of times in my life, and that assumption has always been made of me (presumably because I'm white). When you have evidence that this individual is a dangerous criminal, THEN lock hir up.

[cellio]

So a better answer is to NOT "treat people with kids better," but rather treat everybody decently.

Amein!

I prefer default-open borders. Yes, we have to figure out the screening, but tracking bracelets so you can handle the ones who skip the hearing is a big improvement over jails and camps on the one hand and "catch and release" on the other.

There are basically two cases when somebody shows up at the border to immigrate. If you're seeking asylum, then as decent human beings we need to help you -- not just let you in, but help you take care of basic needs. We *do* have decent human beings in this country, I think a majority, despite the dearth in government. The other case is voluntary immigrants, who chose to leave and come here, and we need a better, faster path for that and in the meantime to not "punish" the people who did it legally by letting illegals jump the line. But the real answer there is to fix our broken immigration system so there's no reason not to use it, not dicker around with line-placement. Make it easier to come in legally and *then* we can justify real punishments for illegals.

With voluntary immigrants I do think it's reasonable to restrict draws from limited public resources. Want to come here and build a life? Great, please come in! We want you! But that doesn't create entitlements like public schools teaching your kids in Spanish or Mandarin or Arabic instead of English, or immediate qualification for welfare programs or (thinking ahead) universal health care or universal basic income, or exemptions from any laws that apply to everybody else. Come here and build a life, but you have to do most of the work -- it was your choice to come, after all. The legal immigrants I've met have all been hard-working people who wanted to become part of our society; it's a small sample, of course, and I don't know any illegals, but I think most people who either live here or want to come here are decent people just trying to get along. It certainly should be the default starting point. The demonization in public discourse is *way* out of control.

[hudebnik]

Re "letting illegals jump the line": according to this Wiki article and newspaper articles I've read in the past month, there are exactly three ways to immigrate to the U.S. legally:

1) be sponsored by a close relative already living legally in the U.S.;
2) be sponsored by an employer already established in the U.S.; or
3) request asylum as a refugee.

So is it any wonder that so many people coming across the border claim refugee status? If you don't have a job lined up, and don't already have a close relative here legally, that is literally the only way to get into the country legally without a pre-set exit date.

Is it any wonder that so many people come on tourist or temporary-worker visas and don't leave? (Which actually doesn't make them guilty of a crime; if you entered the country legally but are now here illegally, you're only subject to civil penalties, not criminal.)

Note that the Trump administration is trying very hard to eliminate #1, which it calls "chain migration", and has already sharply reduced the numbers allowed for #3, as well as making the criteria much stricter (e.g. domestic and gang violence don't count). The numbers for #2 have always been sharply limited: I'm told that each year when the program opens, the year's allotment of employee visas is usually exhausted in a week. In other words, the administration's policy is to prevent anyone immigrating to the U.S, for any reason, with possible exceptions for highly skilled workers.

[cellio]

Yeah, as I said, our immigration system is broken. It's been broken for decades, and the current administration is making it even worse. "Default open" means no quotas and no strict rules on sponsorship. Most of my coworkers are international and I see some of what they have to go through to stay here, let alone getting in in the first place.

They did that, though, so until we fix our horribly broken immigration system, I don't think somebody who came in illegally should get to take a shortcut. That sends the wrong message to people who did it the hard way, and does nothing to fix the core problem, which is that our immigration rules are crap and need to be fixed.

[hudebnik]

For example, maybe there should actually be a legal path for what you call "voluntary immigrants" that doesn't depend on having either family already legally in the U.S. or a specific job lined up in advance with a specific U.S. employer who managed to nab one of the few immigrant-worker visas. Under current law, people who "want to come here and build a life" have two choices: sneak in and hope nobody catches you, or claim asylum as a refugee. Under the current administration, both of those choices get you locked up and eventually deported, and the administration would very much like to replace the word "eventually" with "immediately".

Of course, the current crisis is a made-up problem of Trump's own manufacture. There is *not* a "flood" of illegal immigrants streaming across the border, and they are *not* causing a crime problem in the U.S., because they are *not* more likely to commit crimes than citizens or green-card holders. He made up all of that because it sounded like it *could* be true, and it drew applause at campaign rallies.

OTOH, there is a real, longer-term problem: 11 million people living in the U.S. who are afraid of being deported, so they avoid any interaction with police or any government official. They don't report crimes they witness or suffer, including gang violence. They don't report unsafe working conditions, sub-minimum wages, or wage theft. They don't report abuse and harassment from employers or landlords. All of which makes it harder for citizens and legal immigrants to do the same: "if I complain, my job might go to an illegal immigrant who can't complain." All of these problems stem not from the fact that they're immigrants, nor from the fact that they speak foreign languages, but from the fact that they're "illegal"; you could make these problems go away instantly by making them all legal, or by sharply reducing the emphasis on deportation -- the exact opposite of what Trump wants to do.