Immigration thread (3 Viewers)

[Zombiewoof]

In keeping with the site's desire to have more conversation based on concepts, ideas and principles, I will be posting a couple of threads in hopes of generating discussion on topics that are relevant no matter who is in office or the news cycle at any point in time.

What are your guiding principles related to immigration? What in your opinion would be the most reasonable plan to reduce illegal immigration? Should legal immigration be limited to those who can assume roles in US society that are in short supply? What steps are necessary for elected representatives to be able to find compromise on these issues?

 

[Optimus Prime]

If this is what happened, this is terrible

There HAS to be a better way to handle people than this
=======================================

McALLEN, Texas — A teen from Nicaragua said he was "terrified" after being separated from his parents for several weeks after the family said border authorities questioned his birth certificate and whether he was under 18.

“I felt terrified of being alone, in another country, without a mother and without a father. When we came here I didn’t think I was going to go through this,” the 16-year-old told Noticias Telemundo Investiga.

The teen's name was withheld since he's afraid the incident may affect his request for asylum.

The teen's family and attorney said he was separated from his parents at the border and processed as an adult, where he was locked up in two Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention centers for several weeks. In one of them, Pine Prairie Processing Center, in Louisiana, the teen said he spent 18 days in a solitary cell, without seeing sunlight and without social interaction.


“I felt like I lost my mom, my dad, siblings, friends, everything. I felt like I was never going to leave the place. I looked at that closed door and entered into a depression, my body was shaking all over and it would not go away," he said. "I couldn’t even cry anymore. I wanted to die at that moment."

The teen and his family arrived at the Texas border in mid-September seeking asylum from police repression in Nicaragua.

By law, Border Patrol processes parents and their children together. If there are unaccompanied minors, they must be sent to a shelter system of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and not to prisons contracted by ICE.

The conflict began at the Border Patrol station in Eagle Pass, Texas, according to the family’s account. One night in mid-September they managed to cross the almost dry river with other Nicaraguans, celebrating their arrival in the United States and surrendering to border authorities at dawn to make a case for asylum.

But when the family gave authorities the teen's birth certificate, they said the border agents doubted that they were a family. The son burst into tears, according to his own account.

“They started telling me, ‘Tell us your real age.’ And about 20 times I repeated the same thing: 16 years, 16 years," he said, "They got angry with me and told me that they were going to take me and my family in prison for 10 years, and that they were going to deport me."

The teenager said that he signed a rudimentary and improvised sheet of paper that the agents gave him, in which they only wrote his name and that he was 18 years old. He claims that he felt intimidated and forced to do so amid screams and threats from two border patrol officers.

Asked for comment by Noticias Telemundo Investiga, Border Patrol did not respond to the teen's specific case, but said that it collects biometric and biographical information and official documents to determine the age and family relationship of migrants. The agency stated: "When assessing the validity of a family relationship, CBP also relies on articulable observations, such as interactions between the adult and child, to assess whether a family relationship exists."

The teen's mother, Luz Zelaya, said that agents tore up the son's birth certificate, a printed document that states that the minor was born in a municipality in eastern Nicaragua in 2005. It was issued by local authorities days before his departure, at the end of August, the family said.

Zelaya said an agent said the document "is of no use," tore it into pieces and threw it in the trash. "‘You’re lying to me. I’m not stupid,' he tells me," said Zelaya, who's 29 and had her child when she was a young teen. She and her son traveled with her husband of over a decade, who is not the teen's biological father.

After the incident, "we didn’t see him again," she said about her son...........

MSN

 

[SamAndreas]

If this is what happened, this is terrible

There HAS to be a better way to handle people than this
=======================================

McALLEN, Texas — A teen from Nicaragua said he was "terrified" after being separated from his parents for several weeks after the family said border authorities questioned his birth certificate and whether he was under 18.

“I felt terrified of being alone, in another country, without a mother and without a father. When we came here I didn’t think I was going to go through this,” the 16-year-old told Noticias Telemundo Investiga.

The teen's name was withheld since he's afraid the incident may affect his request for asylum.

The teen's family and attorney said he was separated from his parents at the border and processed as an adult, where he was locked up in two Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention centers for several weeks. In one of them, Pine Prairie Processing Center, in Louisiana, the teen said he spent 18 days in a solitary cell, without seeing sunlight and without social interaction.


“I felt like I lost my mom, my dad, siblings, friends, everything. I felt like I was never going to leave the place. I looked at that closed door and entered into a depression, my body was shaking all over and it would not go away," he said. "I couldn’t even cry anymore. I wanted to die at that moment."

The teen and his family arrived at the Texas border in mid-September seeking asylum from police repression in Nicaragua.

By law, Border Patrol processes parents and their children together. If there are unaccompanied minors, they must be sent to a shelter system of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and not to prisons contracted by ICE.

The conflict began at the Border Patrol station in Eagle Pass, Texas, according to the family’s account. One night in mid-September they managed to cross the almost dry river with other Nicaraguans, celebrating their arrival in the United States and surrendering to border authorities at dawn to make a case for asylum.

But when the family gave authorities the teen's birth certificate, they said the border agents doubted that they were a family. The son burst into tears, according to his own account.

“They started telling me, ‘Tell us your real age.’ And about 20 times I repeated the same thing: 16 years, 16 years," he said, "They got angry with me and told me that they were going to take me and my family in prison for 10 years, and that they were going to deport me."

The teenager said that he signed a rudimentary and improvised sheet of paper that the agents gave him, in which they only wrote his name and that he was 18 years old. He claims that he felt intimidated and forced to do so amid screams and threats from two border patrol officers.

Asked for comment by Noticias Telemundo Investiga, Border Patrol did not respond to the teen's specific case, but said that it collects biometric and biographical information and official documents to determine the age and family relationship of migrants. The agency stated: "When assessing the validity of a family relationship, CBP also relies on articulable observations, such as interactions between the adult and child, to assess whether a family relationship exists."

The teen's mother, Luz Zelaya, said that agents tore up the son's birth certificate, a printed document that states that the minor was born in a municipality in eastern Nicaragua in 2005. It was issued by local authorities days before his departure, at the end of August, the family said.

Zelaya said an agent said the document "is of no use," tore it into pieces and threw it in the trash. "‘You’re lying to me. I’m not stupid,' he tells me," said Zelaya, who's 29 and had her child when she was a young teen. She and her son traveled with her husband of over a decade, who is not the teen's biological father.

After the incident, "we didn’t see him again," she said about her son...........

MSN

I read the article at the link. There are story elements there which seem real, and elements which seemed overly dramatic. It didn't strike me as straight news story following a real time line.

I got the impression that the author was creating a narrative and was trying to avoid giving firm dates, instead they were creating the illusion of there being time line by inserting time like sounding elements like elapsed days in solitary confinement, mentioning the month when they got the birth certificate, but not giving the the firm dates, or even the year.

After reading the article I find that I don't know the date when they were picked up, when they were separated, when the boy was moved here or there. I don't even know who the President of the US was at the time this happened.

The part about the birth certificate being torn up and the pieces being thrown on the floor in anger seem far fetched. Even if they thought a document was forged I think they would have kept it as evidence that they had been presented with a forged document. That part seemed way over the top, yet it was inserted into the article's title.

So I'm troubled by the article, but I'm not sure if it's the real events that trouble me, or the troubling aspect is the article's added on narrative which seems to have been perhaps written to influence my emotions.


This Noticias Telemundo Investiga news source has troubled me in the past over glossed over details like this, and as such I do not lend it very much credibility for this latest article they have produced.

 

[SystemShock]

If this is what happened, this is terrible

There HAS to be a better way to handle people than this

Yes. They could stay in their country, and not "suffer" the "indignation" the lawyers are telling them they suffered.

 

[SystemShock]

... meanwhile in Chiapas, 2nd day of confrontations between the MX national guard and immigrants who tried to storm the INM building (Mexican immigration services) demanding they be given permits to walk through MX to get to the U.S. border.

 

[insidejob]

... meanwhile in Chiapas, 2nd day of confrontations between the MX national guard and immigrants who tried to storm the INM building (Mexican immigration services) demanding they be given permits to walk through MX to get to the U.S. border.

Sure looks like the MX National Guard needs a little extra training with the smoke grenades. They went and threw a couple out in front of themselves to create cover as they advanced, but the wind had its own plans and blew the smoke into their faces and (it looked like) making them actually retreat.

 

[SystemShock]

Sure looks like the MX National Guard needs a little extra training with the smoke grenades. They went and threw a couple out in front of themselves to create cover as they advanced, but the wind had its own plans and blew the smoke into their faces and (it looked like) making them actually retreat.

Don't get me started on the NG... The NG was created because the Mexican president wanted to have a national guard like the petty dictator he dreams of being. To form the NG, he summarily amalgamated a number of law enforcement departments and a few military zones, but the NG is very light on military types and officers used to handle protests/riots; but he insists on the NG being the ones dealing with the border... they are useless.

And they do stupid shirt. In various cities around the country, they parade around in hummers with mounted weapons - although you won't see them much in the States when the bullets actually fly - and they usually drive through the good neighborhoods only... just 2 days ago, I saw one such humvee with what looked to be an AMR-2 mounted on its roof. Who the heck mounts a large caliber sniper rifle to the roof of a humvee?

 

[MT15]

This is what immigrants do for America. We get far more benefit from them than we ever give them.

 

[SystemShock]

This is what immigrants do for America. We get far more benefit from them than we ever give them.

Sure, it is great that this person found a job as a doorman in a Manhattan hotel (know anyone is Harlem, Steve?), and that he's living the so-called American dream (as if no one else in the world wants to have a job, house, car, spouse, and 2.5 children), but the truth is that you cannot let everyone in.

Just in the month of March, there were 210,000+ arrests made at the U.S.-MX border alone, and while the U.S. is a rich country (never mind that just about in any major city in the U.S. you can't walk downtown without tripping over homeless people) you can't allow such an influx of people into the country because, eventually, the U.S. will become the places all these people are coming from.

It is a harsh truth, but a truth nonetheless.

 

[DaveXA]

Sure, it is great that this person found a job as a doorman in a Manhattan hotel (know anyone is Harlem, Steve?), and that he's living the so-called American dream (as if no one else in the world wants to have a job, house, car, spouse, and 2.5 children), but the truth is that you cannot let everyone in.

Just in the month of March, there were 210,000+ arrests made at the U.S.-MX border alone, and while the U.S. is a rich country (never mind that just about in any major city in the U.S. you can't walk downtown without tripping over homeless people) you can't allow such an influx of people into the country because, eventually, the U.S. will become the places all these people are coming from.

It is a harsh truth, but a truth nonetheless.

Yeah, the immigration offices are already overwhelmed enough as it is. There is room for legal immigration, but there's a process and there have to be some limits, at least to a level that the system can process applications in a reasonable time frame. The numbers can be debated, but ultimately, there has to be guardrails because while we're capable of absorbing a lot of immigrants, our resources and opportunities for those looking for them aren't unlimited.

 

[MT15]

So, nowhere did I say we should welcome everyone, nor did I say we should not regulate immigration. However, there is a large portion of the R party who wants to stop immigration, and it has become a Republican trope that immigrants are rapists, drug dealers and all around dirty people. If we completely close the borders, we would have an economic crisis in no time. Immigrants make up some of the best of us.

 

[DaveXA]

So, nowhere did I say we should welcome everyone, nor did I say we should not regulate immigration. However, there is a large portion of the R party who wants to stop immigration, and it has become a Republican trope that immigrants are rapists, drug dealers and all around dirty people. If we completely close the borders, we would have an economic crisis in no time. Immigrants make up some of the best of us.

I don't think anyone is saying completely close borders. I don't really see many, if not most are saying that. Most would say let's allow those who apply through legal channels and have a reasonable cap on that number. Where a lot of Republicans disagree is on what to do with the millions of immigrants who already are here and whether they should have a path to citizenship. I'm in favor of finding a way to allow those currently in the country a legal way to remain here without deportation hanging over their heads.

If that means making our borders more secure as a compromise, I'd be all for that. I can't stand the demonization of immigrants though. It's one of the main reasons I hate the Trumpers.

 

[SaulGoodmanEsq]

Although fixing things is complex, getting a start on them is not. This is just another example of the Biden administration dropping the ball where it could show some progress working on something that has relatively politically neutral solutions. Stuff like Lindsey Graham has talked about like raising the standard of giving people asylum to preponderance of the evidence versus credible fear, etc.

 

[SystemShock]

So, nowhere did I say we should welcome everyone, nor did I say we should not regulate immigration.

No one is claiming you said anything of the sort.

I was responding to the tweet.

However, there is a large portion of the R party who wants to stop immigration, and it has become a Republican trope that immigrants are rapists, drug dealers and all around dirty people. If we completely close the borders, we would have an economic crisis in no time. Immigrants make up some of the best of us.

It's not that a large portion of the R party wants to stop immigration, they want to stop the immigration of the poor into the U.S.

It surely has become a Republican trope that poor immigrants are rapists, drug dealers and all around dirty people. While that is not true for all poor immigrants, like it or not, it is true for a portion of them. That's a nice story in the tweet about the man from Ghana, but let tell you a story, about stopping at a McDonalds in Florida on our way back from Disneyworld. We are sitting there eating, all of the sudden my wife turns to me and says "Let's get out of here. Don't look but those Africans there just talked about going to the parking lot to see who they could rob". I asked her how did she know they were African, she said the way they spoke French (my wife speaks 4 languages and spent a lot of time in Africa because of her dad's job).

Certainly, not every African will assault people in the parking lot of a McDonalds off I-95 in the greater Jacksonville area, but surely not every African will find a job as a doorman at a hotel in Manhattan. And, goes without saying, that applies to every nationality and ethnic group.

And surely, it is possible that my views have a certain bias because of what is happening in MX, like in Chiapas, where every day there are clashes between police/NG and immigrants demanding they be let march from Chiapas to the U.S. border, that MX don't feed them "pig food" (tortillas and beans, staples of MX food) and demanding they get the expensive soap; or even in my hometown, where a gang of Cubans and a gang of Venezuelans were just arrested for armed robbery, which is extremely rare in my hometown.

 

[SaulGoodmanEsq]

I'd eat tortillas and beans.

 

[DaveXA]

I'd eat tortillas and beans.

Indeed. I'm hungry.

 

[MT15]

SS: the tweet didn’t say anything about not regulating immigration either, so I am still confused why you took it there.

Statistics show (and pretty consistently) that immigrants are far less likely to commit crimes than the general citizenry of the US. So, anecdotal evidence is just that, although I’m sure your experience was harrowing.

Painting immigrants as criminals like the Rs do is just fear mongering. They do it on purpose because they use fear as a way to rile up people to vote for them. They’re doing the same with democrats- calling them evil and satanic; gay and trans people are called pedophiles and anyone who doesn’t go along with their name calling are called groomers.

And this type of rhetoric - against all immigrants - is actually pretty common in the modern R party. It takes the form of strictly restricting immigration, especially from Trump’s so-called “shirt hole” countries, but really also from everywhere. Part of “America First” would be severely restricting immigration, and only allowing immigrants who come with advanced degrees and so forth.

My argument is that it’s the poor immigrants who have fueled a lot of America’s economy over the last 100 years or so. They are the ones who will do any job cheerfully, will send their kids to college and make sure they better themselves. Their kids end up in service positions, like the military, law enforcement, fire departments, or in medicine. Or they start their own companies. Immigrants have always given more to this country than they take, over all. It’s a mistake to demonize them and restrict them to those who are wealthy and well-educated in their home countries, IMO.

 

[coldseat]

Immigration policy in the US is one thing, that certainly needs to be addressed and fixed.

But how do you stop the flow of immigrants coming? Nobody has had an answer to that! There were 210,000+ arrest at the border with a lot of those being repeat offenders from immigrants thrown out under Title 42. They just keep trying until they eventually get in. So border enforcement, catching them, and just saying "NO" and throwing's them out isn't the answer.

So who has a better answer for how we can stop the flow of immigrants coming to the southern border?

 

[samiam5211]

Immigration policy in the US is one thing, that certainly needs to be addressed and fixed.

But how do you stop the flow of immigrants coming? Nobody has had an answer to that! There were 210,000+ arrest at the border with a lot of those being repeat offenders from immigrants thrown out under Title 42. They just keep trying until they eventually get in. So border enforcement, catching them, and just saying "NO" and throwing's them out isn't the answer.

So who has a better answer for how we can stop the flow of immigrants coming to the southern border?

There isn't any way to fix it that doesn't involve our military in central america.