What we have right now vis a vis the immigration problem in the United States is a cluster f**k. There is no other way to describe it. They say that a person with an addiction problem doesn't usually decide to get help until they have reached rock bottom. I am hoping that this is rock bottom for the way our nation in dealing with immigration and now there will be motivation to get into recovery.
Before I go any further, let me be very clear about one thing. What is being done to these children being brought across the border is unconscionable, unconstitutional and un-American. I was going to say that it is wrong to put children in any kind of detention for any reason, but having served on a grand jury and seen the kind of crimes committed by some juveniles, I cannot make that blanket a statement. However, even those relatively rare cases are only done after a judicial process. My FB feed has been inundated with comparisons to Nazi Germany. I was also struck by a post from George Takei in which he commented that when he was sent to an internment camp during World War II at least he was with his parents. These historical precedents are troubling, but essentially irrelevant. Even if such a thing had never happened before, we should still know that it is wrong. Quick measures need to be taken to rectify the great wrong done to the children separated from their parents recently, but that does not answer the long term problem nor should it be an excuse to ignore the real problems involved in illegal immigration.
That being said, nothing else is black and white. We cannot and should not stop immigration. As has been said so many times that is is becoming a little trite, we are a nation of immigrants. I myself am a second generation American. My grandparents left Eastern Europe to escape pogroms at the turn of the 20th Century. Yes, they came legally. However others were not so lucky. In 1939, shortly after the war began, a German ocean liner called the St. Louis that was full of Jewish refugees seeking asylum was turned away from the port of Miami. Many of those aboard died in German concentration camps upon their return. In 1942, a ship called the SS Drottingholm was bringing Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany to New York seeking asylum. One passenger (ONE!!!) turned out to be a German spy. This became the excuse to refuse thousands of visas to Jews trying legally to come here. With hindsight, we look back in horror at what was done in our name and how many people lost their lives because of it.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/us-government-turned-away-thousands-jewish-refugees-fearing-they-were-nazi-spies-180957324/
This is not a rationale for just opening the borders and letting anyone who wants to walk in. Are there people trying to enter the U.S. who have or will commit crimes? Yes. Are there terrorists, drug dealers, gang members and so on hidden among the refugees? Of course. Just as I'm sure there was more than one German spy trying to sneak in as a refugee and that there were a few Japanese-Americans who were trying to help the enemy. But again, using another trite truism, exceptions do not make the rule. Isn't also true that many of those coming across are not refugees at all but "just" wanting to come to the States for economic reasons. Yes, and what's wrong with that? America is the Land of Opportunity. We should be proud that people want to be a part of it. There is a reason why the Statue of Liberty is one of our most beloved symbols.
But wait, does that mean that everyone who wants to gets a free pass into the United States? Of course not. We are a nation of laws. For our society to function, those laws need to be respected. There are legal ways to enter this country. That system is broken and needs to be fixed. We also have a system (imperfect, I know) to deal with those who break the law. This is where we come back to the cluster f**k. We don't have a coherent immigration policy. What we have is a bunch of people screaming half-truths at each other and hiding being canards and false facts. There is a nugget of truth in the claims made by both (many) sides in this debate. But there is also a lot of fear, hatred and ignorance fueling irrational statements and actions. And our representatives are either too afraid of the consequences of taking anything but an absolutist stance for fear of losing support from their base or so confused by the conflicting feedback they are getting from their constituents to take any useful action.
In the short term, this disaster created by the Trump Administration's ill thought out and badly implemented Zero Tolerance policy must be fixed. I think Texas Senator Ted Cruz's Protect Kids and Parents Act would be a good start. Essentially it would double the number of immigration judges, provide funding for more shelters that would keep families together and provide for an expedited process of 14 days for the review of asylum requests. This is not an immigration policy. It is and emergency treatment for an acute symptom, not a cure for the disease.I do not have a cure for the disease. I have some ideas, just like the rest of you. We wouldn't all agree with each others ideas. But until we have a reasoned, rational conversation nothing will improve. I suspect nothing much can be expected from our elected representatives until after the mid-term elections. Recent events have turned up the heat. Each party will be throwing red meat to it's base to motivate people to go to the polls. For the near future, scoring points will be more important than finding solutions. It will not be pretty.
We have been struggling with this for a long time. And mostly failing. Legal or illegal, immigration has been both a strength and a curse. Practically every group that has made it to this country and had some success has wanted to close the door behind them. We are a nation built on an idea, not a race, religion, or ethnicity. America is not white, black, brown; European, Asian, African or South American. It does not just belong to one group of people. Despite this, there has always been a fear of the other. Groups of people who are now solidly considered "one of us" like the Irish were once routinely rejected. Asian Americans today are facing a problem experienced last century by the Jews - they are too successful. Universities are again establishing a ceiling on the number of admissions of these high achievers because it would create and "imbalance." Hispanics and Muslims are just the latest groups to be caught in this quagmire.
Maybe I am naive, but I still hold out hope that reasonable people can have reasonable conversations and come up with reasonable solutions. Compromise and bipartisanship are now considered dirty words, but there is no other way forward. There is no simple answer. Unilateral, rigid and ideologically pure proposals will not suffice. It is time for the hard work to be done.
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