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