Half of all illegals are working off the books. The ones who work on the books earn little and pay even less into the system. They are not entitled to anything for breaking our immigration and work laws.
1
Among all the perverse ironies, there is one that may be usable. Even the biggest hypocrites still feel upset seeing others acting hypocritically.
Those who are supporting and enabling the unconscionable behavior at our borders may be swayed if they were shown contradictions between the marketed images and actual behaviors of their preferred politicians.
5
"Don’t get me wrong; I oppose open borders."
Mind if I ask why? I have never heard a good argument for closed borders. Monitoring, customs inspections, fugitive catching, all that I can understand and see good arguments for. But keeping people out? Why? Certainly not because they will steal jobs, because the kinds of people willing to uproot themselves and move aren't the lazy kind, so will likely be employed, contributing to the economy, and thus creating jobs. It's not because we are afraid of refugee camps, as we are perfectly happy creating high security refugee prisons and there is no difference, from a humanitarian point of view, between a refugee camp in Mexico and one in the United States.
So why do you believe it is okay for us to dictate what rights people have based on the blood in their veins or the soil of their birth? I have yet to hear a humane and non-racist answer.
8
Are they truly asylum seekers? Then they should show up at their asylum hearings instead of disappearing. Thus the need forthright ankle brackets. Don't get me wrong, don't call me bigoted. My parents are refugees from Vietnam. It took them approx 10 years and 3 countries to find asylum. The US treats their asylum seekers very well which is why my naturalized as citizens.
5
trump's America: a rogue nation abroad and a rogue nation at home.
6
I think the ankle bracelet program gives these people a chance to contribute to the economies of receptive communities, rather than be a cost, sequestered at govt. expense in an internment camp. Potato farmers in Idaho can't find good help, or even a decent mechanic. This was never a problem when the border was more porous. Many agricultural workers worked seasonally and were no trouble at all. They ought to be given subsidies to build good housing in areas difficult to farm with mechanized equipment.
16
Emphatically, NO, I do not want this done in America!
Unfortunately, we are in the grip of a new kind of McCarthyism...
We are, indeed, a nation of laws...but the wild-eyed right wing fringe only want to uphold some of them...the ones they hear about (and fear about) on Twitter
13
The Trump administration's policies towards immigrants is outrageous from both legal and moral standpoints.
The cruel, brutal and indecent separation of parents and children is just the most disgusting example.
The Army's reported discharge of enlisted immigrants seeking to gain citizenship is another.
Numerous reports recount abusive tactics used by ICE agents against the defenseless people in their custody.
ICE seems to be the most shamelessly fascist agency of the federal government. Its standard operating procedures need to be completely overhauled - it is unamerican to brutalize immigrants taken into custody.
10
As a corollary, shall we evaluate the composition of the world's despots who are precipitating the urge to of these people to flee in protection of their families. What do they have in common?
5
When Border Patrol and ICE agents act like storm troopers, and the U.S. Government rips children away from their parents, with absolutely no intention of ever reuniting them, it makes you ashamed to be an American. In what way are we any better than drug cartels or the KGB?
28
Legitimate asylum seekers would seek refuge in the country nearest their own not at war. Geographically, linguistically, and culturally that would be Mexico, NOT the United States.
Get real. Let’s not pretend that the invasion of millions of foreign nationals from poor, overpopulated, often violent third world countries illegally crossing our borders...disregarding our immigration laws...doesn’t damage our own country and citizenry...economically, socially, and politically. It does, and they do. Enough already! Reunite and deport!
13
It is 2018's Abu Graib. Shame on us for not storming the barricades.
9
When laws are immoral, cruel, and the result of a small minority of immoral and cruel people, then no, I don't believe in the rule of law. Increasingly, I am faced with laws imposed in major ways like what we've seen with the abuse of asylum seekers, but in more quotidian ways. I've been harrased by cops who acted like gangsta thugs, when doing absolutely nothing wrong and I'm an almost 60 year old educated white lady. If that's how I'm treated, I shudder at how anyone who is different in any way must be treated. But that's the least of it. Laws allowing employers to practically enslave their employees and still steal their wages? Laws that allow Corporations to sully the air, water, and soil? Laws that allow those with disproportionate power and money hand pick candidates then determine what they do once in office, suppress voting, gerrymander any opposition into ghetto districts?
There comes a point when the rule of law is meant to be broken to protect the moral high ground. So, I think this column asks the wrong question, because increasingly I have to say, no. No I don't believe in the rule of law.
10
Liberals are obsessed with consent...unless it's about the consent to enter our country. Then our borders and boundaries are meaningless.
Will the writer make such an impassioned plea to uphold our laws to those who've tried to cross the border illegally? No. Her interest is for her tribe, not the Americans who must bear the cost of illegal immigration and the disproportionate crime and gang violence their children commit.
The author doesn't care that illegal immigration has ruined many of the schools in Los Angeles. The Hispanic culture does not emphasize education like Asian immigrants do. That's fact, not racism. Fewer homes are in good school districts, and there's greater demand for them. The rest of us must pay so much more for homes in good school districts because a small number of people make White Americans feel morally unfit to defend their values.
The author doesn't bother asking why people fleeing violence don't stay in the first country that would accept them--Mexico. My mother was born in Mexico and most of my family lives there. My mother's country isn't good enough for someone fleeing violence? Must they come to the United States? And waving their own flags and demand we let them in?
Liberals must treat our borders the same respect they--justifiably--demand women's bodies be treated. Borders matter.
This speaks to the problem. Both sides are only interested in defending laws that uphold their own tribes.
19
I find your use of the words "her tribe" ironic, as it assumes the writer is an immigrant herself. If you had read her biography, she is an American, born in Wisconsin. It seems you might have based your impression on her name and advocacy alone. This belief ignores the long Hispanic history of our country. The Spanish were here long before the English even thought to come. Much of the Western and some of the Southern states were formerly part of Spain, until we obtained the areas in various wars or purchases.
9
"Opponents of immigration have long had one rallying cry: rule of law!"
I believe in the rule of law and I support immigration.
Unjust laws should be repealed, not ignored or selectively enforced. Unjust laws will be eagerly enforced by sadists. Unjust laws engender disrespect for all laws. The rule of law prevents rule of a despot.
6
Unfortunately, we have a despot, or an authoritarian, running our country. We also have EXTREMELY unjust laws at work. Zero tolerance, which resulted in babies being ripped from their mothers, and children spending so much time away from their fathers that they thought they were DEAD. Citizens United, which allows corporations and PACs to spend unlimited money on campaign financing, and hide where the money comes from. These are two great examples of unjust laws.
So, how are you feeling about the rule of law and despotic leaders now? Still thinking the law will take out a despot? It won't. The will OF THE PEOPLE - that is what destroys a despot. Democracy. Hundreds of thousands of unique individuals fighting and saying, "We will NOT submit to your rule."
8
We should not use the German, Swedish, and Netherlands models of detention facilities for “irregular” immigrants.
We must prevent human trafficking and smuggling into the country with a secure barrier at our border. This is far more humane to all persons and fair and just to our legal immigrants following the rules.
11
It seems our asylum laws effectively allow and abusive husband or neighborhood thug to grant someone US residency and ultimately citizenship. There are tens even hundreds of millions of people around the world who live in fear of violence but geography means only Central Americans qualify. For what we spend on one single poor immigrant abused woman and child, we could provide a safe space for a dozen or more back in Guatemala. We need to determine what our moral obligation is to the world's poor and then spend that as effectively as possible. Our asylum policy makes no sense. It helps a select few at extraordinary cost.
8
To paraphrase scripture, our bread has returned to us on the waters.
The United States, for those who either never studied history or reject its facts as fake news, is largely responsible for the deepest systemic problems confronting Latin America. We have meddled in elections, overthrown elected Presidents, subverted and subjugated economies, and so much more, resulting in a hugely degraded continent.
And when the most savagely afflicted victims of that degradation come knocking, we turn them away.
In the past, the rule of law was suspended, abridged, or abbreviated in our dealings OUTSIDE of this country. Today, that rotten loaf of bread returns - rule of law is being disappeared in the United States itself.
And yet another scripture applies here: we reap what we sow.
17
The only pain and sorrow Donald J Trounce cares about are his, and apparently he is proud of his callousness, since everything he says/does makes that so unmistakably clear. Surely this is not lost on the people working at the borders, no matter their political preferences.
2
To me, your comment, 21st Century White Guy, is the most important one here. Once one begins to dig into the history of U.S. intervention in Central America, under administrations of both parties, the whole focus of the debate shifts from simplistic discussions of the rule of law to forces much more complicated and disturbing. I read of the worst kinds of atrocities--death squads in El Salvador, for example, supported by the U.S. government--and put them together with the other truly ugly things I know about the U.S. government's actions throughout its history from the beginning of this nation to the present, and I ask myself, where ARE we the people, the regular people of this country and of the world, in all of this?
To the rulers of the world, we are nothing, less than nothing.
No one should support what our government is doing and has done to people fleeing the violence in Central America, which the U.S. government has subsidized and facilitated for decades.
Everyone, however, should support those people fleeing the violence, because they are us.
9
No, this is the kind of endless drivel that gets people like Donald Trump and W Bush elected.
The author says that right at the top of this endless article that people are treated cruelly at Adelanto, and then whines on and on and on and on and on and on about the stories of people who are properly required to "invest" in waiting for their asylum hearing or are denied, but never justifying the comment that people are treated cruelly at Adelanto.
And as the author would have it, nobody should EVER be denied asylum, all one should have to do is claim that they are being threatened with gang violence back in their home country. And, of course, the author would never have it occur to the reader that maybe the threats of gang violence may have been provoked by the victims under circumstances that may make them unsuitable as immigrants (maybe they were former gang members or rival gang members?).
Look, either we are going to have open borders and let everybody in with an asylum claim, or we are going to have to come up with ways to allow asylum seekers to claim that their claim is legitimate.
10
In many, if not most countries, women are treated like second class citizens. I would argue that the US is one of them.
In many countries, women are treated as property of the males in their lives, not imbued with the freedoms of human beings.
These iniquities are systemic.
Tell me then, how women do not qualify as an oppressed and persecuted 'social' group?!
All that the law indicates is that it was written by men.
6
It is not up to us to deal with the problems of people. It is up to the people themselves; if some Americans have problems they should work on their problems and not expect those of us who are doing OK to play big brother. Our failure to deliver solutions at home is a choice which has been made and reaffirmed for several electoral cycles. Delivering solutions undercuts personal responsibility and rewards people who have failed to create their own solutions. There are makers and takers, and the makers are sick of supporting the takers.
Of course the takers can be seen as those who benefit from a rigged system, and the makers as those who actually produce goods and services but find that the profit from this production is taken by others.
2
Too bad this article didn't better clarify our laws pertaining to asylum. It's my understanding that asylum applies only in cases of religious or political persecution. There's no verbiage related to domestic abuse or gang violence, and certainly economic hardship is not a valid legal reason either here or in Europe.
Am I saying there shouldn't be? It's certainly something to have robust debates over in the course of revamping our immigration laws. Until these changes are made the rule of law says no asylum allowed except for the above mentioned reasons.
10
"Since the 1990s, victims of sexual persecution (which may include domestic violence, or systematic oppression of a gender or sexual minority) have come to be accepted in some countries as a legitimate category for asylum claims, when claimants can prove that the state is unable or unwilling to provide protection."
In the U. S., however, recently Sessions has stated that the US will no longer accept sexual or gang-related violence as a reason to grant asylum.
7
Women seeking asylum for domestic violence fall under the “membership in a particular social group” category of reasons for seeking asylum. By virtue of being female and in an abusive situation they can seek asylum. The same applies to gay men and women seeking asylum as they are also members of a particular social group who may suffer persecution in other countries. It just astounds me that so many people in this country are willing to wash their hands and turn their backs on some many who are suffering from abuse, assault, imprisonment, harassment and myriads of other types of persecution. So much for, “Love thy neighbor,” I guess.
6
The root problem is the lawlessness of the places from which the refugees are fleeing. The governments of these places have policies or lack of policies that are producing problems for us, and we should be pressuring them to do something. We are not being flooded by refugees from Nicaragua, so we should pressure other governments to become more like the government of Nicaragua. Of course, our policy has been to pressure the government of Nicaragua to become more like the governments of its neighbors or even to overthrow this government; the long-term stupidity of this policy now stands revealed.
As far as the refugees are concerned, the least we could do is provide arms and training in self-defense, and help them organize to defend themselves, before we sent them back. Otherwise we are returning them unarmed to a state of war.
2
Care about the rule of law? Are you kidding? Ms. Nazario, your column is very much appreciated by someone who lived in the desert Southwest for decades, and knows that the "Wall" and putting brown infants in cages has nothing to do with the rule of law. And it's never been about the rule of law. It's been about keeping out as many brown people as Trump voters possibly can. This is all Trump wants, and this is all his voters want. That's all they've ever wanted.
So they've repeated the lie that these immigrants are "illegal" over and over, perhaps to convince themselves, because they cannot face the truth. And the only way they may justify their views is with these lies.
But understand this. The wholesale shredding of the rule of law will not stop with these Hispanic immigrants. If anyone, for any reason or no reason, may be incarcerated and given no due process rights, all of us are at risk. Every single American.
Of course some of us who are brown skinned citizens will be this Administration's first targets, but it won't end there. We now have a Supreme Court that will gladly support any authoritarian move Trump makes, including holding citizens without trial.
Those Americans who are white, and are silent at this point had better start thinking long and hard about their silence. At some point in history, future generations will look back on this time and wonder why they didn't speak out when it would have made a difference. Or will they simply be our "good Germans"?
30
You can seek entry at certain ports of entry. Crossing at other local is, well, illegal.
6
What a vile system. Thank you for writing this, though it is enraging. I think what makes us able to tolerate such a monstrous system is our ignorance (most elite media cover immigration poorly) combined with a culture of racism and colonialism.
On a related matter, there needs to be a serious reckoning in this country about the US role in the social and economic destabilization of these nations. Learning about our support for absolutely murderous and often outright fascist regimes in the name of "anti-communism" (read: anything that alleviates poverty or threatens profits) is critical for understanding current immigration issues.
If we can't be bothered to discuss and understand why this is happening, people who have a right to be here under US and international law (and any concept of morality and decency) will continue to suffer.
16
I’m so grossed out by the comments I’m reading in response to this heart wrenching article and the complete and total lack of empathy I’m hearing. I fear something truly horrible is happening in this country and not enough of us think it can actually happen again. I fear for my country because brutal and heartless people are taking over the discourse and tearing away at the rule of law.
22
I was so angry by the end of this piece I had difficulty breathing normally. For some reason I was reminded of the anger on the right because some of Trump's acolytes are being shamed in public. Those acolytes are lucky they haven't been spat on.
What this administration is doing on the border is vile.
My father fought for this country and won a bronze star in the Second World War. He is buried at Arlington. Were he still alive, he would be sick.
18
There is a general chaos in comments these days, no consensus on the details, everyone very upset. I think this is what happens when there is a leadership vacuum in the US. No one has a responsible leadership capacity for solving this crisis, or any crisis, for that matter. Everyone tries to fill the gap. A responsible leader lets people more or less relax and allow the leadership to solve the problem. But confidence that Trump will solve the problem is extremely low. Thus near hysteria ensues.
Has anyone thought that Trumps narcissistic personality may be driving all these problems? If that is the case, and it may very well be the case, there is no remedy except to get Trump out of a leadership position in government. He cannot change. He will never change and he will keep on generating more chaos for the duration.
8
Sonia Nazario admits in her article that
"Of course, it was easier to be righteous when we had fewer people knocking at our door."
Yes, we should grant asylum to many, but there comes a point when the number wanting to immigrate and to apply for asylum is unsustainable. But she will never propose a number, because given the size of the worlds population living in poverty or violence, any reasonable number could easily be exceeded if it is believed that there is good chance of attaining asylum.
Lets recall that the number of refugees and unauthorized immigrants dropped during Obama's term, largely because Obama was deporting so many. And it has only stayed low because of the draconian, cruel policies of Trump. But just as we insist that we treat predictable future threats like climate change as things we must address now, by making difficult choices, we must also deal, humanely but firmly, with the predictable threat of a wave of asylum seekers and economic immigrants if the word got out that there is no actual limit.
In her zeal, she says the following:
"In the first nine months of this fiscal year, 68,560 families and 37,450 unaccompanied children were apprehended at our southern border. That’s not a “flood.” It’s one football stadium of people."
But note that since "families" are at least 2 people, the 9 month total of adults and children is near 165,000. That is 2 football stadiums. Collapsing Venezuela alone (pop 33 mil) could provide this many per month.
10
"It is illegal to bar people seeking asylum from our ports of entry, but we have effectively done just that. "
Now an illegal gets to define their own port of entry?
8
"Don’t get me wrong; I oppose open borders. What we should do is let asylum seekers cross our borders and then release them — under supervision, monitored by case workers or even ankle bracelets — while their claims are being processed. "
These sentences should have led this column not buried toward the end.
The emotion and empathy evoked by the terrible treatment asylum seekers are receiving needs to be reported but in the end all rules of law need to be reckoned with, including US immigration laws.
Most urgent, however, is the elimination or at the very least the mitigation of the horror show that seems to be happening in Central America.
The powers that be in those countries need to be held to to task.
Impose sanctions, freeze assets and insist that the governments of Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador protect their citizens from harm.
7
Since black Africans were legally enslaved and separate and unequal in America, I do not believe in the rule of law.
Since brown Native land and resources ware legally taken in America, I do not believe in the rule of law.
Since Japanese Americans were legally put in concentration camps, I do not believe in the rule of law.
Since women were legally not persons in America , I do not believe in the rule of law.
Law is not fair nor just nor moral nor objective nor humble nor humane nor empathetic. I believe in the rule of law where all human beings are divinely naturally created equal persons with certain unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Treating others as we would want to be treated as our brothers and sisters is the only rule of law that I care about.
15
Care about the rule of law? While Democrats push unfettered illegal immigration and sanctuary cities, LOL.
15
This is a hard read. And it's being done in our name. Object!!
8
I think what bothers people is they view reasons for asylum more for something like the Holocaust than seeking economic opportunity.
If people from Central America are concerned about domestic violence and not economic opportunity, why not apply for asylum in Mexico? It’s closer and probably easier to stay.
Applying for asylum for economic opportunities feels like an abuse of the system, applying in bad faith.
16
This assumes that all these people are applying for asylum for economic reasons. I am sure some do. But it doesn’t seem to be the case for the women in this article.
The problem with painting everyone with a broad brush and in the worst light.
From everything i have seen, refugees and asylum seekers are more than adequately screened using the procedures we have in place and once in are much more of a benefit than detriment to our country. But if you listen to Trump and generally to the rhetoric from the right, we are being over run by criminals and terrorists. It just isn’t the case but the right has become very good at giving people a reason to be afraid, then putting forward draconian solutions to the problems they have told you about.
1
Well, it's obvious it's time to shut off Lady Liberty's torch and close the Statue down. Dismantle it and sell it for scrap to pay for walls on our borders. We should tell the world that we're under new management and outsiders are not welcome. We're the United States, bxtches, and we're not sharing.
6
If the drug cartels in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico are so violent as to have overwhelmed all government efforts to contains them and created failed states, they must be defined as terrorist organizations.
Our military have been given a open license to fight terrorists anywhere in the world.
Why has our government not negotiated or demanded the right to use U.S. military resources to take down these drug terrorists? Who in the U.S wants those drugs to continue being shipped north? Who in the U.S. profits when never ending flows of refugees run to our borders? Who is making money by letting this go on?
Stopping it would take major political fodder from republicans. Well, then. That answers why.
Based on the evidence before our eyes, thousands of destroyed human lives, thousands of addicts injecting suicide into their veins, thousands of dead, mean nothing to republicans except providing out-of-context content for hate radio, faux news and corrupt twitter feeds.
Sometimes war is justified, because the ongoing horrors of not declaring war are so much worse. We have a military-industrial complex. This is the time and place to use it.
3
We don't need people running away from their countries' "nightmares". Eventually they bring those same problems here because that is all that they know.
We need people who know enough to stay home, rise up and fix the problems of their own homelands. I believe in the rule of law, and these asylum law need to be changed.
8
These are truly sad accounts of abhorrent behavior that should not exist in this country or anywhere else. But these stories also follow a tone set by Trump. Yes we have the "rule of law," but that rule only applies to people. Per Trump they are vermin and animals undeserving of the rule of law.
This truly unspeakable behavior harks back to the docks in colonial America where slaves were being unloaded. The slaves were not people either. I do not know who first said that Make America Great Again really means Make America White Again, but that person was very insightful.
For those, like me, who are fearful and also embarrassed about how Trump represents our country and our proud heritage, the temptation to leave is strong. But, we need to stay and fight to take back our country from the embittered minority driving the hate and division and work to undo the damage that has been done since Trump took office. Indeed, at that time, our task will be to Make America Great Again in a true sense.
While we are at it, we need to help the God- fearing, law abiding citizens of Central American countries throw off the yoke of the drug cartels and restore order so these would-be immigrants can have decent and safe lives in their home countries. Oddly, instead of helping those countries be more like us, our government is becoming more like theirs. We need to stand our ground and fight to change that.
7
The fundamental evil of Trump and of his administration is cruelty. He displays it constantly, attracts it, fosters it, and emboldens it in those who would otherwise be restrained if they were overseen by law-abiding and compassionate bosses.
Appeals to morality, compassion or even simply the rule of law will not change this kind of evil. The only solution is to remove it from power, or mitigate it with opposing power. November 2018 offers us that chance. Don't waste it. Vote.
9
A story about the Syrian man 'stranded' in an airport in Kuala Lumpur caught my attention yesterday. I can't decide which makes me sadder - the hopes he had for his life which mirror the hopes we all have or that America will not be the place where his hopes come true.
4
There are one hundred million Latinos who want to move here. No, they can't and shouldn't be allowed to do so.
2
They are supposed to stop in the first country they reach. If the problem is with the gangs or violence from their husbands, they should apply for asylum in Mexico.
Mexico doesn't want them so why should we take them? I have no objection to their skin color, I have objection for paying for housing,food, education,medical care.
School and medical care and supplemental food alone cost more than $30,000 per year per child. Most immigrants make less than $50.000 and pay no, or almost no taxes. Let's use our tax money for keeping our infrastructure up to par
22
The obvious thing to do with all asylum seekers detained at the southern border is to bring them to Puerto Rico for processing. Puerto Rico is not a state, but is still American territory. There, they may be released into the general population with a summons to appear in court, because there is no way for them to leave the island without the proper documentation. Immigration courts could be set up there, as it is still American territory. Plus, they can be asked to work on the rebuilding projects ongoing from the hurricane. Most of all, adjustment would be easy, because both they and the Puerto Rican speak Spanish. I am sure that they will be welcomed by the general population, which would not NIMBY them because Puerto Rico is strongly Democratic in its political orientation. After the dispositions of their cases, they may be given papers that will allow them to be released to the United States proper, or deported back to their nations of origin. This is the most humane and realistic thing to do.
23
Except for the part where Puertorriqueños are fleeing Puerto Rico because of closed schools and the lack of electricity, safe housing, foodstuffs, passable roads, and jobs. Although it is not a bad idea to spend money to repair the infrastructure in PR and make it livable again, as long as those jobs go to people who actually live there.
11
No "except" needed.Remember, the asylum seekers are fleeing brutal conditions of gang violence that has made them run for their very lives. Conditions are unlivable in their home countries, which is the only reason they are leaving, right? It has nothing to do with economics, according to their advocates. Therefore, Puerto Rico will be a safe step up for them no matter how poor the infrastructure, they speak the language, and they can help to rebuild. It is the right place for them to await the disposition of their cases.
5
That is a good idea.
5
Reading the comments, my heart aches as some so-called Christians disparage undocumented immigrants. Hatred for immigrants, especially those not considered "white" has been part of America since before California was a state! Mind you, the whole West was colonized by Spaniards! The oldest city in the U.S. IS Santa Fe! Somehow, Anglo-Saxon Europeans believe they are somehow better than the Native people, whom they slaughtered, robbed of their land and placed in reservations which are horrors to live in!
For those who would argue with me, look up the "Chinese Exclusion Act" and read about Japanese Internment Camps! Then tell me, America doesn't have a racism problem!
I want Conservatives to NEVER, EVER claim that America is a "Christian Nation"....it is not! Those who claim to be "pro-life" use stopped claiming you are, because traumatizing children is....pure evil!
VOTE our democracy and indeed, the very soul of America is on the line!
16
Because we have open areas that are not packed with people does not mean we are not over populated. We have 5% of the worlds people using 25% of its resources. By definition we are over populated and at an unsustainable population now. China is about our size and latitude. It has over 3x our population but it also has open space. Does that mean it is not over populated? The artic has open space and few people. Do you think it can take more inhabitants also? Has critical thinking been dropped from all school curriculums?? You make the climate change deniers look like Neil degrasse Tyson.
8
The daily events reported are understandable only though a Kafkaesque prism. Fairness, humaneness, morality, honesty, compassion are disdained and dishonored. Legal standards and court orders are disobeyed on whim. Horrors will increase as animals pretending to be protectors and enforcers continue an onslaught against the weak and powerless. Shame on members of the House and Senate for their moral emptiness in allowing this to continue.
18
It seems to me that all the folks saying these desperate people need to apply to the embassy, wait in line, etc. miss one crucial fact: by the time anything happens for them they are very likely to be dead. We all know these gangs are not kidding--they kill people all the time.
I agree we should be trying to clean up the countries they come from.
In the meantime,the "particular social group" is defined as "those fearing for their lives at the hands of violent men."
12
Hmmmm, they all would be dead? So there is a holocaust going on in S. America? Maybe some are exaggerating the actual conditions?
16
They’d all be dead? Or they’d all be readers of the “book of magic words” that used to guarantee you a court summons you could skip out after a brief detention.
The protest over the end of catch and release and then over the idea of detaining families—together!!—has to be the biggest wake up call as to the true aims of the Democrats.
4
Do you believe that these countries are equivalent of Nazi Germany?
9
The hatred by many Americans of undocumented immigrants, especially from Latin America, had been going on long before Trump launched his presidential campaign. He just capitalized on it.
These immigrants are just trying to make a better life for themselves and their families. Some are merely trying to stay alive.
But Americans, some of them only second or third- generation citizens themselves, have no pity, no sympathy for the new wave of immigrants, even when their children are taken away from them. Simply stated, they are heartless.
14
We hear this constant drum beat of "they just want a better life." Ok. Tell us how many people who "just want a better life" we should take in? 200 million from Africa? All 160 million form Mexico and Central America? 300 million from China? Maybe you run your own life based on nothing but feelings and emotions, but thankfully that is not how you run a country ( or anything else if you want it to run well). There are rational,limits to what this nation can absorb. The population has doubled in 60 years. It is well past sustainable now. Please do not tell us because there is still standing room we aren't full. It takes far more than that to support each person. Global warming is accelerating due to the increase in humans with westerners the worst offenders. How do you justify adding more? If you feel any better it doesn't matter if the blond and blue eyed or Hispanics. The numbers don't change.
7
Great principles on which to run a nation. I’d like to make a better life in Beverly Hills or Malibu. Can I just walk in and say I’m the fresh prince of immigration?
There is not some global, unenumerated human right to enter and live in the United States. I’m sorry, life is very harsh and brutal sometimes but that’s just the fact of the matter.
5
The problem is this is a fake crisis. Trump uses the false claim that we are being invaded by brown criminals. I've lived on the border for nearly 40 years. Illegal Immigration is nowhere near what it was at its height in the mid 90's to mid 2000's. This is a fake crisis made real by the incomptence and inhumane treatment of a people scapegoated for political manipulation.
2
The Trump administration is no doubt using asylum seekers as scapegoats in order to curry favor with xenophobic components of registered Republican voters. What this column misses, however, is that this particularly unsavory immigration policy entree is a variation on an old and pungent theme.
The difficulty with asylum claims goes well beyond disregard for the rule of law by contemporary authorities, especially those brought in by the current administration. The law itself is rubbery, and always has been so far.
What is a "well-founded" "fear" of "prosecution"? The answer in most cases, is going to be largely subjective, whether it is "let most Cubans in and turn most Haitians away" like 30 years ago, or using a kind of organized repression and harshness, like today.
You can hope that those deciding the outcome of asylum applications are motivated more by fairness, consistency and humanity than by racist fearmongering, but a policy whose efficacy fundamentally depends on the right kind of people administering it, is not a policy based on "rule of law," it is a policy based on rule of lawyers, administrators and opportunistic politicians.
It is easy show that Trump's policies are unjust, inhumane, and detrimental to America. It is harder to spell out in detail how a better policy might would, given that asylum decisions overall are rarely truly fair, consistent and transparent. Something vaguely "better than Trump" won't be good enough to win over his supporters.
6
Asylum seekers (mostly) don't show for hearings and, if they lose their case - which most do because they're actually economic migrants - defy deportation and continue to live here illegally.
Permitting this transparent shell game erodes the rule of law while draining social services, and adds to an already aggrieved slave class. It's not moral to create nationality based privilege - no matter how many crying kids there are.
31
Trump should be arrested upon his return from Europe for kidnapping and transporting children across states lines against their wills. This man hasn't a human trait in his being, only dollar bills.
16
What can be done when those who are supposed to enforce the law (Trump administration) are the very same who created this atrocity. This is on the heads of every member of the legislature. What more do they need to see before they remove him from office. Our legislature are truly a bunch of cowards.
12
We, the People can vote! We need to get everyone to vote on November 6th, and send the Republicans into retirement.
3
Where does loyalty to America come from? Often from people fleeing unspeakable abuse or tyranny who are given not handouts but the protections of the Constitution and the rule of law. This, not patrolling the world with armed drones or blocking off thousands of miles of border, is what our peace and security depends on.
We have fought our enemies either by invasion or by containing them until they inevitably collapse under their own corruption. It is fair to ask if the latter is an opportunity our enemies are now exploiting to fight us.
4
I am sickened by the actions re: Immigration being embraced by the Trump Administration. How did we as a country get to this point? We have a spoiled, adolescent child occupying the Oval Office. Where are the Senators and Congressional Leaders who need to represent the American People and Democracy? WHY aren't they speaking out loudly and clearly. WE THE PEOPLE need to show up at the polls and vote many, many people out of office and insure that other monsters do not take their place. The Democracy of our nation is being dangerously threatened. WAKE UP AMERICA!
15
Amen!
1
The most infuriating thing about the gratuitous cruelty of immigration agents and their supporters is their sniveling self-pity when the tables are turned. The most common refrain as to why asylum seekers should not be accepted is “We have to take care of our own people. Look at...” and then insert something along the lines of “hard-working middle-class Americans”. Seriously? You are in favor of using kids to blackmail their parents but you want me to feel sorry for some opioid-addicted, morbidly-obese, high-school dropout who can’t get a job because he is functionally illiterate? Or I cannot feel for a woman escaping an abusibe marriage because she is “illegal” but I should be willing to shell out tax dollars to pay for the illegitimate kids of teenaged mothers in red states? I am not in favor of automatic asylum. There should be laws in place to specify clearly who is, and isn’t, eligible. But this does not preclude treating people with respect and compassion. As for the red-state nativists: if you have no pity for others, others will have no pity for you.
14
The root problem is the lawlessness of the places from which the refugees are fleeing. The governments of these places have policies or lack of policies that are producing problems for us, and we should be pressuring them to do something. We are not being flooded by refugees from Nicaragua, so we should pressure other governments to become more like the government of Nicaragua. Of course, our policy has been to pressure the government of Nicaragua to become more like the governments of its neighbors or even to overthrow this government; the long-term stupidity of this policy now stands revealed.
As far as the refugees are concerned, the least we could do is provide arms and training in self-defense, and help them organize to defend themselves, before we sent them back. Otherwise we are returning them unarmed to a state of war.
2
The reason we aren't being flooded by people of Nicaragua is because Therese are few people in that country who can afford the journey to the US. Haiti is the only country in the western hemisphere with a lower per capita income. 80% of the people live on less than $2 per day. How many of them can afford the $10,000 it costs to get here?
I can (almost) guarantee that NOT ONE SINGLE SENATOR will confront KKKavanaugh about the detention centers OR about separating children from their parents.
These two issues should occupy at least two WEEKS of scrutiny from the Senate.
So many issues are important but these men women and children are ALIVE and are in need of humane treatment.
13
Maybe it's the parents that should be confronted, it is their decisions that are the root cause of the seperations. Yes?
21
@caveman007
LOL. We are a violent and corrupt culture. We just lie better about it.
1
I know many people are moved to action by anecdotes that illustrate the reason a person seeks asylum. I don't care about anecdotes. What I care about are the numbers. Thousands come and seek safety. There is a court process to review the cases fairly. And decisions are made. To suggest that a court system can hear these cases so quickly without gathering evidence pro or con is inhumane. I have said this many times: the Christians in this country should just renounce their religion because many of them don't act Christ-like at all. If they did, they would not support a tyrant and his minions doing EVIL to children of our Lord.
19
It never ceases to amaze me how people use statistics to prove a point when they don't actually prove the point. Of course asylum denials are up because (wait for it) more people without valid claims are presenting themselves at the border. Being a victim of domestic violence means leaving your abuser, not coming to America. Having a gang in your town doesn't mean coming to America, it means improving law enforcement in the country you live in. Genuine asylum seekers running from genocides and other crimes against humanity get asylum here. People having a tough time of it simply should not. That's not why we have asylum laws. Here's the actual basis of granting asylum "persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion". It's about fleeing your government because you are (say) a Sunni Muslim in Iran or a Coptic Christian in Egypt. It's not about the fact that there's a gang in your town.
22
I think the author agrees with you.
If asylum seekers’ claims are rejected, they should be deported. In other words: be openhearted on the front end, giving people a real chance at safety if they need it, and be tougher on the back end.
3
Did you mean "populist?"
Do you realize that Government persecution of Indigenous people in Guatemala is occurring to this very day.
1
I'm for the rule of law. I'm also for having a president who follows it. That should have happened, since Trump lost the election by 3 million votes. We, the people, know better but our government is run by a clown we didn't vote for who is in charge of putting people we don't want on the SCOTUS. He does what he wants, regardless of norms or the law while senate republicans and our gerrymandered congress do and say nothing...THAT is un-American. How they manage to look themselves in the mirror every morning is beyond me. I'm voting in November, as I did last November, but if this country doesn't kick the bums out, I'll soon be knocking on Canada's door.
15
Trump, his administration, and the complicit Republican party are fascist now. They are using the pain, hate, and fear of the religious far right to overturn American democracy for the sake of Russia and the global super-rich. The super-rich are getting an America free from all taxation and regulation to whose people they bear no responsibility. The Russians are getting an end to the postwar world order, a Europe which then can eventually dominate, and America dancing on their on strings. All true Americans, be they Democrats, Independents, or loyal Republicans, must put our bodies on the line in massive public protests, and vote the traitors out at every opportunity. We no longer have the luxury of idle ideological disputes of no real consequence. The wolf is at the door. The fox is in the henhouse. Defend democracy or see the nation go up in flames.
19
I completely agree, as this "American Tragedy" as coined by the New Yorker's David Remnick the week after the 2016 election, is the gravest threat to our republic since the Civil War ended, and it could be the most existentially threatening moment in world history -- due to the mere fact that a sociopath like Trump has the nuclear arsenal at his fingertips, and is absolutely intent on destroying the world order.
Massive protests like this nation has never seen -- a "General Strike" that shuts down the nation -- are needed, and more. This is for our very lives folks!
9
If there is no accountability, people like Trump will do exactly as they please.
Congress has proven itself to be full of impotent cowards. And since Congress is supposed to be one of those oft-touted checks and balances of government, there is, therefore, no accountability for Trump - and as we've seen, he's running rampant with lies and insults born from utter ignorance.
Trump and his ilk do not care about the law. They don't even care about America.
Every discussion about Trump is a nonsense because he simply doesn't care. Not until someone steps up to give him a really bad day will he stop giving others a bad day. Simple fact of life with these people.
Stop giving Trump respect for being president. He doesn't respect the Office himself. He's only using it as a battering ram to get across his bigoted views, thus insulting all the efforts of those truly great men who have gone before.
Politicians needs to start walking out of his photo-op meetings and leave him sitting alone. Foreign leaders need to do the same. Foreign leaders taking the 'high ground' with his lunacy just puts them right in Trump's lap. Ignore him. Ostracize him. Shove him aside just like he shoves others aside. Being a pathological bully, and unable to discuss anything, it's the only thing that will get his attention. Because it's very evident that taking the high ground and trying to placate this fool is not working here.
Two more years. Politicians: Do something!
9
I'm an Immigration Lawyer for a pro bono organization. None of our clients can afford lawyers. Without us, they would literally be lost. I do a lot of Asylum.
Every word of this article rings true. It is painful to see our country actively trying to disobey its own laws.
The biggest irony is the phrase, "Rule of Law." Guess what one of the questions is during a US Citizenship Interview: "What is the Rule of Law?"
All my clients know the answer. Shame on us that the country they are trying to join does not.
23
If I understand this article, one effect of the administration's current way of managing the border, turning away asylum seekers/deporting them, sets them up to be fodder for the criminal gangs they are trying to escape. Question: who smiles when mobsters are assisted? Why, another mobster, of course; our very own mobster who flouts law, disdains vulnerable human beings, enjoys "performance cruelty." Could it be that like is drawn to like; that there are those south of the border who mirror his tastes? Why would he not be gleeful; there is probably money involved in protecting/not protecting people, depending on who he intends to be working with.
12
Thank you Sonia. Your evocative writing will only fail to resonate with those devoid of empathy - an unfortunately large percent of our population.
I'm impressed that your passion for justice has not dimmed in the 40 years since I first encountered it at NW.
9
America, what has become of you? What has become of my generous, open-hearted, compassionate America? Are we still the "first responders" of the world, rushing to natural disasters with help and provisions? Or is Puerto Rico the better measure of our New Order: all for us and we for nobody? To aid the refugee hearings problem, a proposal is made to send more judges to the border. Instead, our AG sends 3,500 additional prosecutors, and our president observes that other countries "don't have judges". America, where are you, and wither bound?
16
There is an important difference. There is no Holocaust happening in the countries these people are fleeing from, nor are they being persecuted for their ethnicity or religion. So the comparison doesn't really work.
24
Actually, the comparison works perfectly.
7
Might want to read up on the Guatamalan Government's atrocities against its Indigenous people.
2
borderss are the problem. it is somewhat hypocritical to make a heartfelt case for recognizing our shared humanity only to say that we still need a border to protect ourselves from each other. it is amazing how afraid we are in america anymore. how did we let one person destroy the last true ideas america fought for in two world wars?
5
Perhaps people in the continental U.S. are overly confident that they could never find themselves with refugee status.
The way we treat others can be seen as a global social contract.
26
My own conclusion is that the rule of law has nothing to do with it. The vision that drives the policies we are seeing is a reversion to the old one of an ethnically white, religiously Protestant, and philosophically conservative America. One that is free of regulations and in which women know their place. I really think it's fear that people of color are "different" and are taking the country over that account for the cruelty and heartlessness we see in our treatment of asylum seekers. Me, I'm an aging white guy who thinks we need immigrants and that we ought to be acting like the beacon of freedom we once claimed to be.
28
I think it has less to do with "skin color" and more to do with people's fear of overpopulation and a reduced standard of living.
Also, illegal immigration is a form of racism against America's non-white citizens and legal residents as it is this cohort, which is disproportionately comprised of non-whites, that bears the brunt of the country's millions of undocumented workers.
Both major political parties refuse to establish the e-verify program which effectively gives employers to the green light to turn a blind eye and hire illegal workers. This provides employers access to a large unskilled labor pool for workers willing to work for lower wages and few benefits.
Establish the e-verify program and charge employers who hire illegal workers. Wages and benefits will rise and more Americans will take those jobs. And if that translates to higher consumer prices, so be it.
10
Yes, asylum seekers should be processed according to the law. Humanely. 68,560 families are only 0.05% of the 126.2 million households here in America, according to U.S. Census Bureau for 2017.
In addition America needs immigrants, good immigrants, of course. If you have long term vision, you will find the following facts of life: The number of births is declining here. Who is going to pay for the pensions of Americans in the future? The immigrants of course, we are grateful with this country, and willingly will do that in addition to taking care of elders and sick white, brown or black Americans. And also many other things that the American white people don't like to do, for example household cleaning, 126.8 million households are a lot of units to clean. Valet parking in the Wall Street area? Yes. Collecting and transporting garbage? Of course yes too. Creating new companies like Tesla, to increase number of jobs? Yes Sir. Inventions like the Bell phone system? Yes again. Launching the IPhone? Yes Sir. Or, many other industries and inventions? Yes.
However we have to understand that the anti-immigrant movement could succeed, but in such a case, in about 1 to 2 centuries from now, their descendants should leave this beautiful country and go to México? Here is a couple trying to find what happened: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJqpr6BS6JU
6
We let in 1M immigrants a year already.
13
Border guards and ICE agents seem to sneer a lot and do lots of gratuitously cruel things. I guess it’s like everything else. Give a small person a little power and he’ll immediately abuse it. It appears that we need to be more selective about the people we hire for these positions and that they need lots more training.
22
The Trump Republicans don't care about the rule of law. That is just something they say, another example of their bottomless bad faith. When it comes to immigration, the law is just a fig leaf for their racism, a club they use to clobber immigrants, i.e., brown people.
Should they decide to stay home, Central American will face a harrowing decision. Their daughters will choose between death and becoming sex slaves for criminal gangs. Their sons will choose between death and being compelled to join the same gangs.
Who in their right mind would say those families don't have a valid asylum claim? Who in their right mind would say that Sonia Nazario is not a valid applicant?--who was horribly abused by her husband yet was given no protection by local law enforcement.
I'll tell you who. The people who went down that same dark hole and turned away Anne Frank's refugee request. The same people who incarcerated American citizens at Manzanar. Go see it for yourself. The dark hole looks like Manzanar.
It is a violation of our own laws to penalize asylum applicants, that is, do what the Trump Republicans are doing: imprison asylum applicants, rip the children from their families, make them wear prison uniforms, give them rotten food, etc.
24
Republicans, in their defense of this administration, have abdicated their claim to 'the rule of law' party. They are more like a mob following a torch-wielding fanatic, destroying the countryside in the pursuit of a mythical monster borne in their collective paranoid nightmare.
21
Has anyone looked at the actual cost of this policy to tax payers vs previous release policies? It has to be enormous and, to be sure, some people are making a lot of money off it. I haven't check the stock price of private prisons recently but I'm sure it's reflective. Since the moral and emotional arguments against this policy don't appeal to everybody, maybe cost will.
There has also been no mention made of the United States' horrific role in Central America in the 80s which has a lot to do with the current conditions in that region.
20
George Soros' vision of open borders will destroy the USA's institutional and social fabric by flooding the USA with the world's poor and suffering. Our country of 350 million can not handle creating new, good lives for 500 million poor, uneducated and rapidly reproducing people. Good intentions without a reality check are going to turn our country into a second world refugee camp.
23
It's certainly convenient to refer to "them." It's far more difficult to understand the moral and ethical reality that "they" are really "us."
9
Maybe it's because America and its ideals are to welcome immigrants. To help people rise from the ashes and live in a free country, without fear of being falsely imprisoned, have their kids kidnapped, be killed. Talk about cynical!
3
Is George Soros in the United State’s government? What is this “open borders” that conservatives always fret over but are nowhere to be found in any liberal policy maker’s recommendations? And 500 million people seeking refugee status? Really?
This is the problem. There is no difference between fact and fiction for too many people in our country.
10
They ran quite a distance from the Central American nightmare, didn't they? It's understandable that they didn't run south to Venezuela, but they didn't run to Costa Rica or Panama, either, did they? They might have run to Peru or Bolivia, as far as Argentina or to giant Brazil if they really wanted to learn a language that was still far closer to their own than English.
They didn't stop for more than meals and sleep in Mexico, did they?
No, they didn't do any of that. They came all the way to the U.S. Asylum? There were lots of places they could have run towards in order to escape gang violence. But they came here.
Wonder why.
This op-ed is a cynical argument for open-borders.
30
Maybe because it was our country who caused the problems? Maybe it’s because they already have family here and if you are going to start over you want to have some ties to the place. I’ve been reading your responses for a long while. The things that you cannot see or conceive are legion.
I’m just looking forward to all the people who voted for these destructive policies to realize that we are cutting off our own noses to spite our own faces. Wisconsin voted to destroy their relationship with the largest import market for their dairy products. Whenever I go to Mexico I’m always so excited to encounter so many people who have been going back and forth across the border for GENERATIONS. Adding to both their and our economy.
Too much focus on what asylum seekers are taking and not nearly enough what they bring to our country. Not the least of which is that right now we don’t have enough people to take care of the healthcare needs of the aging baby boomer generation who voted against their own pensions and retirement to harm “those people.”
12
Maybe they came to the US because of our ideals, that whole "give me your tired, your poor..." thing? Maybe they hoped to live the American Dream like so many immigrants have? Maybe because they thought could come here and not fear being illegally detained, have their children kidnapped, or of being killed by thugs. Talk about cynical,
7
Europeans are closing their borders in violation of laws and full awareness that thousands will drown in the Mediterranean. Americans are acting similarly on the Mexican border. Both did the same when Jews were desperately seeking refuge from Nazi persecution in the 1930s. As Ghandi said when he was asked what he thought of Western civilization: "I think it would be a good idea."
The barbarians aren't at the gates. They are us.
18
The situation is a bit more complex than this simplistic article suggests:
1 -High crime and domestic abuse are not, and have never been, grounds for asylum. While it is tragic that people who were sent back are harmed by cartels or abusive husbands, and more needs to be done to help them, it is the local government's responsibility to do this. The crime rate in the United states is not that much better, there are abusive spouses here too, and there are parts of Mexico that are quite safer than others, so moving cities or regions within Mexico is an option also.
Valid grounds for asylum are:
"You are unable or unwilling to return to your home country because you have been persecuted there in the past or have a well-founded fear that you will be persecuted if you go back.
The reason you have been (or will be) persecuted is connected to one of five things: your race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or your political opinion."
2 -The violence in Mexico is so bad partly because of failed US drug policies and the so-called "war on drugs", which Mr. Sessions supports. The US government should help by assisting Mexico to better fight the cartels and arrange safe houses in Mexico for people in danger that are deported.
3 -The principle of asylum seekers applying in the first country they visit is also the law in Europe (although it is often flouted), and very sensible, as otherwise only wealthier countries are saddled with the refugees.
12
Once more, if you want a change in the law, you have to get Congress to pass it if you want to make it permanent. Allowing asylum for domestic or gang violence was a change in regulations that was never passed by statute, just as DACA was an Executive Order.
Elections count.
9
As has been repeatedly demonstrated, the overwhelming majority of people seeking "asylum" fail to qualify. Asylum is generally available for being a target of their governments. Being a target of their boyfriends is hardly ground to schlep 1500 miles and come HERE. If you've experienced DV, go to the next town. Maybe the next county. At worst, the next country. But not HERE.
Coming to the US for asylum based upon DV is akin to someone from NJ seeking asylum in Norway because of an abusive marriage. It's beyond silly.
In short, well coached illegals are mouthing the shibboleths to get by the initial screening. It's long past time to change those magic words to one simple question: what evidence do you have that the government in your homeland has it out for you?
Mayra should go back to Guatemala today. If not the same town, it's a BIG country. If her husband can find her there, what makes her think he can't find her here, with our porous border? And if she was that frightened, what was wrong with Mexico. Or Costa Rica. Or Argentina. Why is it ALWAYS here?
We are FOR the rule of law: asylum should be restricted to those who fear their governments. And it should NEVER be available to people who could easily has stopped in Mexico and sought it. (Like what the Europeans do; the first country you come to is the one to which you must apply.)
We should obey our own laws.
So should those who want to come here. 60-80% of asylum cases produce a denial; we're being scammed.
22
1. Is it OK to lie if you are doing so for the benefit of your family? How do we know who is telling the truth?
2. Do we really want a large influx of people, mostly women and children, who are fleeing a violent and corrupt culture? Will we become a culture that is as violent and corrupt?
3. Do all of those immigrant businesses actually pay taxes? I have heard from immigrants that they do not. "It's the beauty of having your own business." Who will pay for America?
These issues are tearing America apart. It is no wonder that the "chaos presidency" has such credibility.
15
Maybe these "migrants" escaping violence in S. America should be enlisted in an effort to restore order in their countries of origin. If folk are going to place blame on the US for the problems, then perhaps they should advocate that the US intercede and restore order. The illegal immigrants are essentially an invading force and are a national security issue.
8
As with any system that has suffered abuse (in this case 12 million people who have disregarded our immigration laws) there is a tendency to react as if legitimate efforts are just another attempt to circumvent our laws. The fact that some cities and states are complicit in this effort to undermine our laws makes the distrust even greater of people coming through Mexico to try to enter illegally.
The real answer is not just securing our borders, enforcing our laws, applying resources to review requests for asylum. The real answer is eliminating the corrupt governments and criminal elements that make certain Central American countries... and Mexico... places from which their citizens flee.
Oh, we can't do that. Well, we've done that half a planet away several times. So why can't we clean up our own back yard? Wouldn't be progressive or enlightened. So, we'll just continue to treat the symptoms, not the causes.
"Bandaids for bullet holes" is our motto.
6
America is larger than some liars in Washington D.C. would like us to believe. They get paid, but, they simply lie and pretend they do jobs. We shall catch many of them, eventually. Crime pays well, for the interim. While our Media decides weather and forest fires are the only important thing, a few things get overlooked. Not forgotten by all. Only the advertisers. Who else matters? And, to whom?
1
Re:
Americans swore: never again. We would not stand by as people died, when we and other countries could help them.
The racist/nativist xenophobes that dominated much of the society's immigrant policy before WW2 broke out was never part of the oath "Never Again". It only went along because it had to since its political allies were distracted by desegregation and cold war paranoia, or no longer powerful, or its ranks were diminished by changes in the post war society. Opposition to refugees was less easy to promote in light of the post war situation. But it still lurked below the radar within a cold war delusional paranoia.
The obscenities being conducted in our name as recounted by Nazario are fully condoned by a hardcore element that is both
utterly resistant to moral persuasion, no matter how organized
and widespread its constituent organizations, and, what is much worst, now has free access to government power thanks
to the catastrophe in November 2016.
It would probably help if, somehow, a tv series was done which centered around the types of daily stories summarized in the article inside this country. But who would fund that?
It would probably help a bit if a more systematic and broad based religious protest took hold. But again, the nativists
in charge smirk at such people.
It would help a lot more were the trumpicans to lose power
in November. Hearings would then spotlight
all this horror more easily. That would lessen the evil
done in our name.
1
While the Trump administration and Trump himself have supplied much rhetorical ammunition to roast him morally I am disturbed that this has turned into such a partisan issue. Immigration is inherently complex and there are no easy solutions. Do Americans expect to be able to walk into any other country and claim a visa just based on their word? That's silly. But in many cases that's all we have. So we have to investigate thousands of applicants, many of which cannot document their claims for understandable reasons. But if we just take them on their word then we set precedent that basically invites anyone to cross over. This is basic social control. So we need to investigate, but the numbers are overwhelming. Would it not be more prudent to work closely with Mexican and Central American governments to bolster their amnesty programs? Indeed, the logical solution is to help those states function properly and robustly so that emigration does not increase. When all we do is fret about border crossings we are arguing about band aids while wounds go untreated. How many news stories have we seen lately about how we can help these countries prosper? Sadly, this is beyond the capabilities of the American mind to contemplate. So instead, we are stuck in this treadmill of partisan carping about a problem that is non-partisan.
6
This is a very misleading article. I'm tripping over the wishful presumptions throughout the body of the piece.
Take one claim as an example. Ms. Nazario bemoans "asylum denials" in which 45% of applicants were denied asylum and sent back to their countries of origin. Notwithstanding the fact that a majority of applicants are approved for asylum, her comments presume that all applications for asylum are, without exception, in good faith and are not methods of entry for at least a portion of disingenuous applicants trying to gain entry to the US by exploiting our laws. These denials are of course subject to legal analysis, which her own link makes clear.
Secondly, this article raises several important questions: firstly, how is the US to verify applications for asylum when asylum seekers come without any corroborating evidence or documentation of their claims? How does the US establish that applicants are not violent criminals, in the absence of documentation? How is the US to verify claims of guardianship of parentage of minors w/o documentation? It's common knowledge that the southern border is a transit point for sex trafficking. How is the government to undertake all these analyses while under attack from a liberal press and liberal lawyers?
The Immigration and Naturalization Act specifies that the burden of proof rests on the applicant, and furthermore the burden of determining the veracity of each claim rests with the Attorney General and his inferior assistants.
10
This is ironic considering that many of the people that Mr. Nazario writes about came to the US illegally. So much for rule of law.
8
Rule of law is appropriate. But perhaps the law is ridiculous? Someone can walk across several (safe) countries and seek shelter here from domestic violence and we must take them? They are coming here because we give better benefits, plain and simple, and cannot afford to.
Would everyone screaming to let everyone in please volunteer to raise your taxes by 10% to cover these costs?
I did not think so.
13
I hope that Sonia Nazario and Moisés Valentín know that we had protests across the country ten days ago in support of the asylum seekers. I wish every refugee in every camp could see those protests. It's one reason I have a photo essay on line.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/8703833@N08/albums/72157698316196334
2
My understanding is, that under international law, asylum seekers must ask in the first country they come to. They do not get to pick their favored destination. I also wonder where the Catholic Church is in all this? Are they not capable of providing sanctuary to thousands of people in their home countries? And what about Costa Rica? Why the United States?
12
If they need asylum, they can head south or stop in Mexico. If they are instead choosing to come north and going all the way through Mexico, they are pretty clearly looking for something beyond asylum. They are looking for a better life. So is most of the world. Understandable, but we don't have an obligation to take them in. Fleeing domestic violence hardly makes someone a desirable immigrant.
15
One thing that never gets discussed enough is the attitude and actions of Border Patrol and ICE agents. While most do their best to do a difficult job, the hiring surges of the past 15 years has meant hiring people who weren't qualified and have their own personal agendas.
Just like bad cops, these people need to be weeded out and fired. That's not happening under this administration. They are being encouraged and rewarded for breaking the law. The rule of law is just that, not what the president and AG make up on a nearly daily basis now.
Kavanaugh should be questioned closely about these illegal actions by the administration during his hearings.
3
The tragedies are becoming mere procedures. Thank you, Sonia Nazario for this reminder that we have to become more American than we are now.
6
What's happening is appalling & needs to change. The sad thing about Trump & Co's attitude is that the USA needs immigrants. We need folks who have children; we need young people because we have an ageing population. Our birth rate is also low. What Trump and his fans want will end up with a thoroughly walled-in, sewn-up nation of ageing, shriveling white folks wondering what happened and why their nation is no longer relevant on the world stage.
7
And no Happy Chef restaurants for them to have their "early bird specials" since there won't be anyone working in the kitchen.
3
Sorry, but with respect, a nation of 325 million with millions of malnourished children and thousands of homeless veterans living under bridges does not "need" millions of uneducated and unskilled immigrants.
13
Anne-Marie,
The US needs immigrants who can be self supporting that goes on to have families they can support. Many of the asylum seekers and illegal "immigrants" are terribly educated, will never earn very much money, and will be a drag on the taxpayer, not a benefit. Even the DACA enrollees are not very well educated.
This country hasn't needed warm bodies with strong backs for a long time.
4
Asylum should not be granted to victims of domestic abuse or crime.
Allowing people to claim asylum on those grounds makes a mockery of our system and it erodes support for true asylum cases.
16
This response is unrelated to the article which discusses trump’s violations of law. You instead gas on about what you think the law should be. I therefore conclude you concede the main point: trump violates the law.
3
Why should a victim of domestic abuse not be granted asylum if their government is allowing it to happen? and why not victims of crime? What is a "true asylum case?"
3
The President has been very clear. He wants the police to adjudicate what the rule of law is on the spot. There is no rule of law. The law is whatever the cop on the beat, in this case the ICE officer says it is.
9
Every American citizen who supports illegal immigration should be required to pay an additional U.S. surtax on their annual IRS tax returns.
The monies garnered from the surtax will be distributed to lower income citizens and legal residents who face reduced employment opportunities, lower wages and benefits on account of the country's millions of undocumented workers.
And since both political parties refuse to mandate the e-verify program, why not double the amount of seats in both the Senate and Congress and reduce the wages and benefits for each member by 50 percent? Then this privileged cohort could experience first-hand the obstacles that America's poorest must face.
26
I could not make it all the way through this argument; the reasoning was too poor. It begins by asserting that America is violating its own laws, regarding people who complied with the law by presenting themselves at points of entry and asking for asylum. As support it points to:
--Sessions telling judges they must rule on 700 cases a year. How does that violate our laws? The author does not say.
--Sessions' policy that domestic and gang violence does not qualify one for asylum. How does this violate the law? It seems to agree with the law, since asylum is designed for people fleeing political, religious, or ethnic oppression, not mere criminality.
--It asserts that we have effectively barred people from seeking asylum at ports of entry, but provides no support for the assertion.
--It then shifts to talking about prosecuting people for illegal entry and separating them from their children. However wrong this might be, it has nothing to do with people who complied with the law by presenting themselves at ports of entry.
Everything that does further the author's point is an unsupported assertion; every assertion that is supported doesn't further her point. How did this make it past an editor and see print?
21
No newspaper article is all inclusive: the goal of assiduous independent verification is a worthy one... and it's achievable, to an extent, if one is genuinely interested in more than poking holes.
Support was provided in the form of links to the language of the law itself, as well as by assertions of what the law says (which one can readily confirm at the noted links). It's not clear what would qualify as "support" in your view, if the language of the law itself is not sufficient.
Sessions requiring 700 rulings was an example of an underfunded mandate, and thus something that can't possibly happen in the manner required by law.
Fleeing gang violence may or may not qualify one for asylum; the law provides a procedure for determining as much, including a requirement for a pro bono counsel. Failure to provide either is clearly against the law. The law allows that threat of forced abortion is to be construed as a political oppression worthy of asylum; this may be credibly presented at such a hearing, and it's what was described in one of the author's anecdotes.
The author provides examples of large numbers of people waiting at ports of entry, and gives anecdotes of children being separated from parents; in your view, what would constitute "support" for these anecdotes, in this context? Like 99% of reporting, there are no links to video footage... we are left to trust the reporter with the imprimatur of the paper behind it. But this is true of almost everything one reads.
2
"Requirement for pro bono counsel" makes no sense and your use of it casts doubt on the credibility of your whole argument. An attorney acts pro bono when he or she takes on a case at no fee, as a public service. It seems you might mean a requirement to provide counsel at public expense, similar to a public defender in a criminal case. As far as I know, no right to such counsel exists in immigration law--contrary to your assertion.
"Support was provided in the form of links to the language of the law itself...." That supports the idea that the U.S. cannot turn asylum seekers away at ports of entry; it does not support the claim that the U.S. is doing so. Yes, she says that people are waiting "weeks" at ports of entry. Given that tens of thousands of people are applying for asylum, that hardly seems like a violation of either their rights or our laws. They could always make their asylum claims at our embassy in Mexico.
So your claims boil down to: Sessions is asking judges to work too fast; asylum seekers are being made to wait for "weeks;" Sessions has put forward a legal position--that gang violence is not grounds for asylum--that you disagree with; and children are sometimes separated from their parents, which unfortunately often happens in legal proceedings for various reasons, e.g., when parents are arrested for crimes. None of this even if true would show that we are violating our own laws.
"If these don't qualify a person for asylum, what does? We need a list."
Sure. Here you go:
"A person can qualify for asylum if he or she has:
A reasonable fear
Of future persecution
On account of
Race, religion, national origin, political opinion, or membership in a social group."
https://www.politicalasylumusa.com/application-for-asylum/
"My husband/the gang in my neighborhood is out to get me" does not qualify. As Sessions said (roughly), asylum in the U.S. is not intended to be a remedy for everything bad that happens to everyone anywhere in the world.
Important article, and would love input on how to take action. Awareness is a start, but where does one donate money or join volunteer organizations to help? Calling our reps who already agree with us is not enough. Perhaps, Ms. Nazario can include her email so that readers can contact her with questions such as these.
4
Trump has been tearing down the rule of law from the first day he took office. He recently questioned the need for immigration trials, basically saying that his administration is above the law, as is he personally, if called to testify in front of the special counsel.
5
The rule of law is an inconvenience to Trump and therefore it becomes a burden and is ignored. The immigrant problem is almost intractable. We need to either take in the asylum seekers or refuse them as the author contends. The middle position just adds to the unmanageability of the problem.
3
The US could choose to refuse to allow people to seek asylum, period. However, to do so openly and honestly would require amending or repealing a statute, and withdrawing from one or more international treaties.
The US could also choose not to provide any due process to noncitizens lacking legal residency status. "Catch and release" would become "catch, immediately drive back across the border, and release, no hearings needed." However, to do so openly and honestly would require amending the Constitution.
The administration knows that as supine as Congress is in letting ICE and CBP run amuck, that McConnell and Ryan could not generate a majority to publicly repeal the relevant statutes and withdraw from the international treaties regarding asylum. They know that they could not get Congress and the states to ratify an amendment explicitly stating that undocumented persons are not entitled to due process.
So instead, we leave the laws on the books, so that we look good, and just do everything we can to avoid following them, and everything we can to make it hard for people to claim their rights. We create a veneer of plausible deniability that allows our leaders and lawmakers to sleep at night and look at themselves in the mirror in the morning.
We are really good at this. We ratified the 14th and 15th Amendments in the 1860's and then did not meaningfully enforce them, or honor the rights they granted, for nearly a century. How long is it going to take this time?
17
No one is prosecuting for applying for asylum, However, asylum seekers are prosecuted for crossing the border illegally like others who cross illegally . They are suppose to apply for asylum at legal ports of entry. They game the system by crossing illegally because they expect to be released with notifications to appear at court hearing set years in the future. Asylum seekers can also prosecuted for other crimes they may commit.
If your grandparents had enter the country illegally, they would have been prosecuted if they had been caught.
26
Say what?
"If your grandparents had enter(ed) the country illegally, they would have been prosecuted if they had been caught."
That depends on when your grandparents or great-grandparents would have entered the US. The passport was a 20th century invention. From 1900 through 1924, immigrants at Ellis Island passed through "The Registry Room", as many as 5,000 per day. Presumably, all of them arrived without passports or visas, since prior to passports visas would not have been necessary.
Confusion around the whole issue of "illegal entry" is one of the reasons people get so angry about this issue. In earlier times, people just came to America and they were accepted. Then, there were waves of anti-immigrant sentiment when people from other nations than those here previously joined in and limits where placed.
My great-grandparents, by the way, needed no passports when they moved from Georgia (US) to Texas. The same on my father's side, when they traveled from Tennessee to Oklahoma.
2
Actually, as the article points out, asylum applicants who followed every law properly are being improperly detained. As the article points out, that includes asylum seekers who cross the border legally and present themselves at legal ports of entry. Also as the article points out, the government is barring people from legal points of entry to *force* them to present themselves elsewhere. And in addition to all of that, our asylum laws allow people who have crossed the border in any manner at all to later make a perfectly legal claim for asylum.
13
If not fear of death, what would be grounds, then? Asylum is generally granted to people who have no other choice but to seek it because they are desperate to survive.
9
fearing for your life is not grounds for asylum
14
We need to think on ways to address two root causes: abysmal governance in Central American countries, and intense economic inequality. I know of few easy answers.
We like to forget that the U.S. has done a lot of destructive meddling in Central America over the last century or so, which to a degree makes the U.S. responsible for the chaos in that region. Responsibility aside, given geography, their problems are our problems. Let’s act that way.
Meanwhile, we need balance in our immigration policies. We need to do our best to enforce the laws we have - and we need to improve those laws. And we should do our best to avoid violating people's rights.
Laws do not prevent us from devoting more resources to increase the capacity of courts to speed up the asylum process. We also should be finding ways to fund a small army of lawyers who can assist asylum seekers, so that our rules can be fairly applied as often as possible.
Globalization creates opportunities for poorer countries to provide better jobs and incomes for their people. Yes, that means some people in countries like ours will lose jobs and wealth as people in poorer countries gain. Can we help Americans whose jobs move to other countries without damping the economic gains in developing countries? Our current move towards protectionism is undermining the positive aspects of globalization. That that will drive even more immigrants to our doors.
As will climate change…
13
"You are either for the rule of law, or you’re against it." Guess who is certainly NOT for the rule of law and perjured himself during his swearing in as POTUS last year - to protect and defend the Constitution of the U.S.?
"...and be tougher on the back end." If we won't provide asylum, there is no need to be cruel and send suffering immigrants back to the hell they came from. They should be assisted in getting asylum in another country. THAT would be "a lot more humane."
In the end, may trump and his ilk never obtain asylum or sanctuary from American rule of law. Especially Mr. Alex Azar of HHS, calling immigrant parents rapists and murderers to excuse for his incompetence and cruel treatment and practice of separating abducted children.
13
"In the first nine months of this fiscal year, 68,560 families and 37,450 unaccompanied children were apprehended at our southern border."
Those are only the ones who were caught. In 2014 there were 70,000 unaccompanied children caught at the border.
The author apparently has little experience with scammers trying to get over on a good deal. Who exactly is supposed to pay for all of this? The mighty USA has deep pockets, they can afford it, you say. They have plenty of money, you rationalize. And when they get here, set loose in dreamland America, "undocumented" and unable to work, unable to pay for their expenses, they get a job that doesn't require proof of legal residence, and what do they do with the money they earn here in America? They send it back to their home country. They're undocumented so they don't pay American taxes. The national economies of those countries south of our border benefit greatly from the influx of money, in the billions, sent by expatriots living and working in the USA, sponging off of our social welfare programs. The population is much greater today than it was in 1945 or in 1967. It's a bigger problem. We can no longer afford it.
30
If they’re living and working in the US, as you say, they are not sponging of our welfare system and they are paying taxes to pay for Americans on welfare.
3
"Pay for all this..."? Your government pays $7,000. per week, per child when a child is sent to a "shelter" on short notice. That amounts to more than $360,000. per year to carry out an inhumane act, kidnapping children and, we know now, with in many cases no records on how to reunite them with their parents. 100 children would, over a year's time, add up to more than 36 million dollars. (The year long figure is valid because children are being houses constantly, if not the same children.)
Can't afford it? How is it that the govt. could afford to pay at least 4 thousand a week per child (for those not taken in "at the last moment") and fly them all over the country? The money that was, and is, wasted on this effort could have been put to resolve matters decently without separating families.
There is so much misinformation about this problem. People believe what they want to believe and disregard anything that makes them uncomfortable.
3
Well, the Republicans just gave a trillion dollars a year to the wealthy in this country. They now claim that they cannot afford Social Security or Medicare, benefits we have paid for out of our own pockets from our own earnings during our working lives. The point here is they now claim we cannot afford to apply our own laws, although they are making their buddies rich by paying them exorbitant amounts to indefinitely imprison innocent people. And by the way, immigrants pay billions of dollars in taxes. This is not a money issue, it is just racism. Otherwise why would Melania's parents be allowed to immigrate? Her father was a Communist, they have no jobs and pay no taxes. And our unemployment is so low companies cannot hire enough workers. Again, this is not about money.
4
The author alleges “a measly three families are processed a day” at the Nogales port of entry. According to the U.S. Custom and Border Patrol, the number of families seeking asylum at legal ports of entry peaked in May, when CBP processed 5,445 family members. In June, the number of processed family members decreased to 2,743 a month, but this clearly indicates that the author either cherry-picked her data or is simply repeating what she heard from some migrant advocate.
Some attribute the decrease to an intentional slowdown while other say that it is attributable to the administration announcement that fear of gang violence doesn’t qualify a person for asylum. But the fact is applying for asylum at legal ports of entry is far easier than crossing the border illegally.
https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/immigration/2018/07/11/cus...
14
Mr. Case...How wrong you are.
You are approaching this with reason and logic and recognizing that the law is the law.
You well know that that will never be the answer and to ask the liberal or progressive to give up their belief in emotional blackmail is far worse than asking them to give up their kids.
As long as the left is focusing on the symptoms, we will never achieve consensus as to how to solve the problems...and there are quite a few "problems" is this whole mess, and all of those "problems are inextricably connected. They fail to recognized that eliminating one system may actually cause even worse damage because of the interrelationship.
Please, my friends on the left, come up with comprehensive solutions to the problems you see and think them through to see where they might cause more problems than they are worth...
Murphy's Law has yet to be repealed, and the road to disaster is often paved with good intentions...
Where is Sessions?
Enforcing the laws that Congress passed and the Presidents of the past and present have signed into law.
That's where he's supposed to be and supposed to be doing.
If you have a problem with the laws as passed and signed, then get Congress to change them...
It's as simple a process as that.
That you can't get Congressional support for the changes is a different conversation all together.
Don't whine if you can't win at the ballot box...It is unbecoming of someone living in a democratically governed society.
'The lifeboat is full'
So now we are seeing the beginning of a replay of the all b ut universal refusal by all nations to give aid and succour to South and Central Americans in precisely the same manner as the world did in the years before WWII, to Jews and others avoiding the German advance.
Everyone said "Never again!" after 1945, but, it seems all the media wriiters and even all the children and relatives of the Jewish refugees, whose relatives have established a state in the middle east, claiming every Jew in the world as their citizens, are also forgetting and refusing even temporary aid to refugees.
The world is a bigger place now, but it will only keep having the same problems if we refuse to deal with them and allow nations to make promises they have no intention of keeping.
A first step in halting the constant flow of illegals is to stop "charging" for entry and making a multi billion dollar business out of moving wealthy Orientals and Islamic peoples from nations they have finished consuming, into Northern Europe and the Americas -where many have no intention of doing more then abusing the kindness of their hosts and then returning to Arab or Chinese lands.
3
The world is a smaller place now. In WWII, when Roosevelt forbid Jews from entering the US as refugees from Germany, the US population was under 135 million. Today it's almost three times that. The world population was under 2 billion, today it's closing on 7 billion. One thing we don't need is more people. South America and Central America are quite prolific.
8
Then vote in November as if your life depended upon it...because it does....
12
The bottom line here is that we can't be a refuge for every person living in a corrupt, dictatorial country. At some point, these people have to cause change in their countries. I have no problem helping in that effort, but I can't support all of them coming here. We don't have the resources or the desire to undertake that.
32
The problem with ankle bracelets is they remove them , don't show up for their hearings and disappear in the U.S. Ideally if they followed the mandates , it would be easier . " I'd rather be locked up , than dead in my country" will garner no sympathy with the present administration as they will only see these people as freeloaders . Women in this country are physically abused too , how many really meet the asylum criteria other than gang violence or spousal abuse ? There are many people ahead of them , legally and thru the official system , and they have waited for a long time . Cutting the line ahead of these others is not right either .
26
So in 2012 under the Obama administration when 45% of asylum requests were denied, was that illegal too?
The rule of law is being carried out.
21
The Trump Administration cares nothing for the rule of law--period.
11
What in the world does this mean or have to do with false asylum claims?
5
Jeff Sessions is our chief law enforcement officer. Where is he in all this?
Obama weaponized DOJ and IRS to seemingly go after enemies; where was the outcry from human rights advocates and those who care abour Rule of Law?
8
Your own comment contains the word “seemingly”. Perhaps they DOJ and IRS were weaponized only in Fox News fever dreams.
2
This article is disingenuous...
If the US followed the letter of the asylum law...
100% of applicants would tell ANY story of duress to stay in the US...
Or
100% might be actually eligible for asylum...Which is absurd...
The US must make US states out of those dubious Central American nations...or something like that...I bet it happens...
5
"Rule of law" doesn't mean a thing when the system is gamed. In California we have elected an official (Kevin de Leon) bragging how they have helped relatives here illegally. Another Leland Yee convicted of supplying weapons to organized gangs. Inexorably, the threads of corruption south of the border are taking root here with tacit approval from liberal politicians seeking to expand their base. Businesses that hire (under the table) prosper,honest business people can't compete driving down wages for all..
We are being gamed. This is all about open borders.
Liberals have interpreted the law in such a way that a billion people could be eligible for asylum here...just practice saying the right words and you're in, show up at a hearing in 5 years which most don't anyway. Rule of law indeed.
20
The history of much of South and Central America and Mexico have been written by US policy. If we took any responsibility for our military and covert actions throughout the last 200 years, we might have reason to care for the people of these countries. There are reasons people are coming to America and much of it has to do with our past, and the Soviet Union's past, with both of us arming whomever we backed at the moment. We flooded these countries with weapons. We built militias . Instead of cursing the people who are trying to come here, we should be helping them and their countries. This WH is filled with hatred for the very people trump is trying to hire to work at his luxury resorts. The hypocrisy is astounding. Our response to human suffering is reprehensible.
4
A question: (answers welcome)
I don't understand this. If it is legal to ask for asylum (that is a person follows legal procedures for doing so, and does not attempt to cross the border illegally), how can it possibly be grounds for incarceration simply to ask for asylum? I was under the impression that these were people who entered the country illegally, and then asked asylum, but if this is not the case, then this is illegal arrest and incarceration yes?
If they are denied asylum (again with due process) that's one thing, but this?
I think of my grandparents, and great grandparents of so many if not most us--they were not treated this way. Many if not most of us would not be here, or would not be alive if that had been so.
Unconscionable. Where is the historical memory?
9
The answer is that if they are incarcerated, then they crossed the border illegally and subsequently requested asylum. It is their way of jumping the line. They did it with full awareness of the consequences, knowing that this would result in separation from their children.
8
Going through Ellis Island, the potential asylum seekers would remain there until a decision was made - and not be released to disappear into the interior.
There is no convenient island for the southern border.
11
No one is prosecuted for applying for asylum, Some asylum seekers are prosecuted for crossing the border illegally. They are supposed to apply for asylum at legal ports of entry. They can also be prosecuted for other crimes they many commit.
11
Problem solving skills of the Trump administration are interesting to watch. They do seem responsive to public pressure.
Arguments by asylum seekers are so tedious, no wonder they barge in illegally.
Children do complicate matters, but that gives families the best chances of being heard, particularly in catch and release status. It is unknown how many of these people fabricate stories vs. real asylum cases that fall on deaf ears, and those people probably die. It sounds like a system that will continue to be a charade. Have read numerous accounts by reporters who claim many "asylum seekers" are actually sponsored by Christian churches in Guatemala to arrive in the U.S. to populate sagging attendance rolls here. The only certain direction for immigration reform, is for Dems to use it in 2018, offering a new view on treatment of immigrants, since this story will not change one bit over the next five years.
2
Mr. Trump and the Republican Party leadership consistently show disdain for the rule of law, unless adhering to it is beneficial and convenient to the GOP and its wealthy political patrons.
12
Agree but also shows a heartless soul, and is not what America stands for. The GOP doesn't even bother to create a better strategy or plan to better what we have. It is always okay to disagree but one must have a smarter and competent solution to better what we have They don't even get this and shows how they are an ignorant administration.
1
Ray Clark, it's unfortunate that it is necessary, but even Obama saw it. They come and claim asylum with no evidence only to be let into the US for a year or more awaiting their hearing. The vast majority don't qualify and they are overwhelming the system making a mockery of it and preventing people with valid claims from having their cases handled expeditiously. What we need to do is toughen the standard for getting an asylum hearing thus weeding out the frivolous claims as is done in civil courts by simply dismissing cases without merit.
29
It would seem difficult, to say the least, to provide evidence. A truthful person with a strong story should qualify. A good liar with the same story will also qualify.
That said, people have been moving around the planet for thousands of years to seek a better life. Obviously no country can accommodate every person seeking entry, or sneaking in. What to do? Beyond me.
1
No one says these people are coming on a whim; you are inventing this. The issue is, as correctly pointed out elsewhere, that notwithstanding the stories told in the article, the vast majority of these are telling false stories to seek a better life for themselves and their family.
11
You left out the fact that most of these asylum seekers disappear, never to show up to their hearings and become part of the millions of illegals or undocumented or whatever you want to call them.
18
The United States did not send a ship of 900 Jewish refugees back to Europe, where more than 250 died in the Holocaust, as Sonia Nazario alleges. It sent the ship back to Havana because the ships passengers had Cuban—not U.S. visas.
After Cuba refused to honor the visas, Great Britain took 288 passengers; the Netherlands admitted 181 passengers, Belgium took in 214 passengers; and 224 passengers ended up France. This was before World War II. The United States has no way of knowing Belgium and France would be occupied by German forces.
11
Oh, Havana, not Europe. That makes it much better.
They were seeking asylum.
The Nazis began persecuting Jews long before WWII began. The persecution was not hidden. It was not people telling stories that could not be verified. It was a nation deliberately, consciously abusing a part of its population.
Havana, not Europe. "No way of knowing". Your comment made me quake with outrage. My relatives might have been on that ship. Instead, they died.
I think about my relatives when I think about those we are now abandoning in the name of making America great again. We are doing many things, but making America great is not one of them.
12
The fact is the United States did not send the refugees back to Europe. Cuba has approved their visa and should have accepted them. The United States did accept some of the refugees that had U.S. visas. At the time, Great Britain, France and Belgium seemed safe.
You should pay so much attention to campaign slogan; they appear to cloud your thinking.
“People are being sent back to danger, even to their deaths.”
No, people are being denied entry because they do not qualify. Moreover, those claiming asylum are screened at the border, and only those with a credible claim make it to an immigration court (very few). Of those few making it that far, 75% are found by the court to be ineligible. In other words, we are being swamped with false claims for asylum. Those same people can apply for asylum in Mexico, Belize, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Panama . . . you get the idea.
27
Yes. The Times reports that tourism in Guatemala is doing well. A good place to find a new home with different neighbors...
3
The lack of empathy the comments here is typical of Trump voters and supporters.
Letting these people in will have no effect on your lives whatsoever.
And don't you want people to pick fruits and vegetables and clean your hotel rooms?
And, as one commenter said, "Contrary to what we've been told, no one undertakes a journey as dangerous as crossing a desert alone or with help without the correct documents on a whim."
19
Joe, here in Maryland’s Easter Shore, the number of guest worker visas have been cut in half for Mexicans who pick the crab meat out of the shell. Now, restaurants have to import crab meat as there is no one here who wants to do that work. What the...? Right?
4
Hey. Those workers, menial as they are, should be covered by Social Security when they age out of the workforce, they should get workers comp, they should be protected by OSHA. And that means they must be here legally.
What kind of conscience do you have to advocate NOT providing ALL workers in the US the same protection? For shame!
4
I'm struck by some of the callous comments and disregard for the spirit of the law that was written when governments were threatening people more so than gangs today, financed largely through U.S. drug consumption.
Would any of these people commenting be ok if they and their families were treated the same way in an event where they had to flee for their safety?
14
Asylum used to be persecution by government.
Now people are making claims about domestic violence or gang activity.
If it's our responsibility to ensure everyone in the world is safe, then it's time to bring back Manifest Destiny and help pick leaders for Latin America that can maintain order. For every one person that makes it to the US border a hundred are suffering silently in their home country. No one should have to leave their home to be safe.
We, along with the UN, should be working with and guiding those countries to provide a safe environment for all their citizens.
22
Our asylum laws are really generous because they weren't intended for illegal immigrants. They were intended for people that had been vetted by the legal immigration system or at least processed as visitors and granted entrance into the US.
They are currently being abused by illegal immigrants who should be applying for refugee status from outside the country and awaiting the decision just like everyone else seeking entrance to the US (or any other sovereign nation).
Furthermore, the position that local violence is a reason for asylum is simply ludicrous. Illegal immigrant activists should use their energy to push reforms in the countries these people are fleeing instead of trying to get ever more of them into the US.
35
As for "overwhelming the system", what system? The U.S. government is spending up to $30,000. PER MONTH! per child to hold the children of asylum seekers. That's $360,000. per child, 3.6 million for ten children over a year's time. We can build a better system without wasting that kind of cash.
As for "no evidence" should they wait until Central American gangs kill them so they can present photos? Evidence could be hard to come by when someone threatens your life and you have no copying machine, video camera, etc.
In the past, the testimony of the asylum seeker was judged for credibility. Does the story hang together? Do they seem to be lying? Is there any visible evidence, like scars? It's not a murder case, the testimony just has to be convincing.
6
What does this mean: "... the position that local violence is a reason for asylum is simply ludicrous."?
No, it is opinions based on opinions that are ludicrous. You undermine your entire argument. Furthermore, someone seeking asylum is not an "illegal immigrant" as long as they are processed properly.
5
The joke is that the GOP does not care about the well being, or the physical or mental health of white, Christians, or conservatives. They don't care about anyone beyond what they have to say to pander to, and win, the votes of those white, Christian conservatives.
Think of all the white, Christian conservatives who do not have healthcare. Think of all the white, Christian conservatives who would benefit from medicaid expansion that the GOP opposed. Think of all the white, Christian conservatives on Obamacare. Think of all the white, Christian conservatives losing medicaid in Kentucky right now. Think of all the white, Christian conservatives who cannot afford college tuition. Think of all the white, Christian conservatives who are hooked on opioids. Think of all the white, Christian conservatives who breath air and drink water that the GOP's EPA is making dirty and dangerous again. Think of all the white, Christian conservatives who are committing suicide in higher and higher numbers. Think of all the white, Christian conservatives who are elderly and destitute.
The GOP is not serving those folks. The GOP is using those folks. Because those folks still respond to racial dog whistles. Because those folks fear The Other. Because these folks believe that anyone who peppers their speeches with the word "Jesus" is godly.
2
The tone of the responses to this article suggests that compassion is no longer an option for republicans. You can split hairs all you like. Coming to this country for asylum, even if your reasons are not political, etc., doesn't mean you are seeking asylum illegally. It doesn't make these people criminals, which is the way we are treating them. We don't have a border crisis. We have a manufactured campaign issue crisis. We have an administration that is willing to kidnap children, split families and build a new prison infrastructure and spend the money to support it, just so they can whip up resentment in Americans by lying and persecuting people that need help. This is a disgusting chapter in American history, and those that support it are wrong.
26
By the "logic" of this article we should be flying 747s full of domestic violence victims from everywhere on earth to the u.s. 24x7. There are 100s of millions of people around the world with several kids, no prospects, and bad domestic situations. Are the nyts and the author seriously saying we (the u.s.) should be on the hook to take them all in? There are several cities in the u.s. with higher murder rates than say, Guatemala. Do the residents of these cities have the right to apply for asylum in Europe because they are in danger? Asylum laws were not developed to give everyone a happy life who doesn't have one. I'm sorry but we can't take all the unhappy people on earth in. We can help them solve there problems at home to make the trip to the u.s. unnecessary, but we can't absorb the endless supply of poor, u happy people the planet produces each year. It's physically, financially,environmentally and socially impossible.
23
I agree that Americans should want legitimate asylum claims processed quickly and we should want immigrants on our soil (detailed or otherwise) in humane and safe facilities.
However, Ms. Nazario's headline suggests that recent asylum restrictions fall outside the law, but does little to support that point. Under the law, the Attorney General is fully entitled to instruct the DOJ's asylum judges on what qualifies as a legitimate claim. He also has a good deal of leeway in setting the pace of hearings. Despite Ms. Nazario's preferences, this is is not an area where the DOJ has stepped outside the law.
Further, Ms. Nazario's hand-wave regarding Mexico is far from persuasive. She bears more burden to explain why Mexico is not a legitimate destination for asylum, apart from a high murder rate in some pockets of the country. Is she truly arguing that Mexico is an unacceptable point of termination for any individual seeking asylum, no matter their purpose? To quote the author, this is a joke on multiple levels.
As in Germany, the idea that asylum seekers continue until they reach an optimal destination belies their claim and leaves many voters of good faith rightfully suspicious of the entire process.
38
This person speaks about following the rule of law...maybe she should read the asylum laws more carefully...our asylum laws grant asylum for those persecuted on the basis of " race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or particular social group"...the words "domestic violence and gang violence" do not appear any where in the statues...if we say that anyone who is a victim of domestic violence or crime from a gang, has a legal right to enter this country and acquire legal residency, that is open borders...
34
I wonder how we became big brother to the world especially those in need and those that no one wants? Why does everyone think we can solve the problems in Central America and in the rest of the world for that matter, when we can't even help ourselves. We have problems, too and they should be dealt with first. When we have a working system we can reach out to the rest of the world and share our prosperity. We profess to have the answers but fail on every count to deliver at home. We are a crippled country trying to teach the world to run. Charity begins at home. Let's fix America first. We don't even have a working healthcare system. We have starving children and homeless people. We treat our veterans like criminals. We can't even report the correct numbers for unemployment. We still suffer from racism, sexism, inequality for anyone that is not part of the 1% club. Our prisons are full of people that did find justice in our system. Let's fix America first.
25
Given the fact that our illegal drug market is what creates many of the problems in Central America, I think we are incredible hypocrites - not to mention inhumane - to turn our backs on those running from gang violence.
170
Please show me one Democratic Representative or Senator who is "obsessed with open borders." Please provide a reliable source.
12
Maybe the US should stay out of Latin America. Our policies are causing economic turmoil and ensuing violence.
12
According to the Washington Post, the United States and Mexico are working on a “safe third country agreement” that would slash illegal immigration to the United States. According to the Post, it would “require asylum seekers transiting through Mexico to apply for protection in that nation rather than in the United States. It would allow U.S. border guards to turn back such asylum seekers at border crossings and quickly return to Mexico anyone who has already entered illegally seeking refuge, regardless of their nationality.”
The agreement would address many of Sonia Nazario's complaints. It would quickly end the family separation crisis since the United States would no longer hold illegal border crossers in custody while waiting for their asylum requests to be processed. It would simply return them to Mexico. It would also end the long lines of asylum seekers at U.S. legal ports of entry. The United States already has a similar agreement with Canada.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/us-and-mexico-discussi...
I
29
I am stuck to read some of the comments which seem to point to South/Latin American countries as the sources of all their own ills, and thus should take responsibilities for it. Yes, there should be responsibility assigned to these countries, but we are also need to take responsibility for our substantial role in creating the mess some of the countries south of the border. The US created, in the most un-decomcratic fashion, several banana republics so we can benefit econmically from they subrogation. In addition, long history of European colonialism contributed to many of today's ills. Further, the US appetite for drugs created an entire sub-economy that continue to impact the future of these countries. So, there is something that we need to understand beyond today's short-term history and the demagoguery that continue to be spewed from the occupant of the WH and his GOP/Republicans gang!
31
We get it "professor" all the world's ills are our fault. Those in countries south of the border are unable to take care of themselves thus that burden falls to us.
24
That's such a joke. The governments of many of these countries have had many, many years and many, many opportunities to get their act together. Time and time again, they don't and instead fall prey to corruption and dysfunction. That is not the U.S.'s fault. It is theirs.
As they say in the financial world, Brazil is an emerging market, the country of the future--and always will be. With abundant natural resources they take their largest nationally-owned oil company and turn it into a corrupt pinata for politicians. Argentina? Forget about it. Their political leaders time and again go borrow money from the international community and then just--Don't. Pay. It. Back.--with no indication that they have learned any lessons from so badly mis-managing their country.
Quit turning any non-U.S. person/country into this helpless, innocent victim and portraying the U.S. as nothing but an evil empire. It is so far from the truth--and annoying.
Furthermore, this blame the U.S. for everything, hate America attitude among liberals is precisely what drives many people to the right and into the hands of a demagogue like Trump. Liberals and Democrats really need to develop a more pro-America stance if they ever want to regain control of the government.
7
If our Congress won't do anything, perhaps the UN should look into these allegations.
7
Who in their right mind thinks outsiders should have any say in US policy ????
11
Interesting. Police who fear for their lives are always believed.
12
It is a matter of statistics. The vast majority of time Police are telling the truth. The vast majority of immigrants wanting asylum are lying.
9
So, one more time, why don’t these refugees from Central America migrate to Mexico? And who can tell horrific true from horrific false? Shouldn’t a few journalists question why so many asylum seekers tell stories that might have been designed by New York immigration lawyers?
Folks, if we’re concerned about the genuinely desperate, let’s just take in the entire population of South Sudan - and Yemen - and Syria - and .... I’m sorry; the world’s grown too small and too populous.
28
If you are not a white christian conservative then you have no president. Our current white house occupant has no interest in your well being, in your physical or mental health, prosperity or security. You are basically unrepresented now. If we do not turn this around in November it will get worse. The bulwark of our democracy now falls on the shoulders of an 86 year old supreme court justice. As she goes, so do we. You should be scared, very scared.
15
The piece is written on the assumption that most asylum claims are valid, but in fact most asylum claims are rejected. It makes sense to hold people whose claims are statistically unlikely to succeed while the claims are processed. Sonia Nazario incorrectly thinks the rule of law means "Everybody gets in because I find them sympathetic."
39
Trump is voicing the feelings of many Americans when it comes to undocumented immigrants whether they request asylum or not. The same feelings were in evidence when the Nazis were busy exterminating Jews in Europe. Based upon history and what has been going on more recently in the world, I'd say that it doesn't matter how many barriers countries erect to keep out undocumented immigrants, those seeking asylum, or trying to reunite with their families; people will leave a place that is unsafe for them. Contrary to what we've been told, no one undertakes a journey as dangerous as crossing a desert alone or with help without the correct documents on a whim. You don't uproot a family for a trip that can kill them if your home country is safe. That's true whether it's domestic abuse that the police refuse to deal with or death threats because of your sexual preferences, religion, politics, etc.
At the very least we could treat these people with dignity and give them a chance. We have millions to give in tax breaks to corporations and rich families/individuals who don't need more money. Surely we have something left for people who have risked everything to live in a safe country. (And also for those who live in America who aren't fortunate enough to be rich but that's a different story.)
19
@hen3ry:
Whether "we have something left for people who have risked everything to live in a safe country (and also for those who live in America who aren't fortunate enough to be rich...)" are not different stories, but the same story. The oligarchy that increasingly controls this country wants to take as much as it can for itself while it convinces everyone else that there is not enough to go around, leading everyone else - immigrants or native born - to fight among themselves for the scraps.
4
Trump is making a mockery of our asylum laws?
How about phony "refugees" who are about nothing more than coming to the United States to plug into SNAP, our schools our emergency rooms, our WIC and take advantage of our economy -- then they fabricate a story that they are running from some 'violent gang' and claim refugee status.
Those people are making a mockery of our asylum laws, our national sovereignty, and our immigration laws. 13 million illegal immigrants have made a mockery of our attempts to have an orderly system of deciding who should be treated as a REAL refugee.
49
Here's what's phony - the phony propaganda that pushes the phony narrative about "phony refugees" to keep the phony "populist" in power on the phony outrage of supporters made indifferent to the real plight of refugees escaping real horrors only to suffer real persecution by Trump's really cruel policies while real plans to reform the immigration system so that it is efficient, fair, and humanely enforced languish in Congress for years due to phony memes touting phony pretensions to upholding law and order in order to block a pathway to citizenship for even the most innocent of children who have known and loved no other country but the U.S.
It's ime to get real, folks- the real purveyors of phony are making America lose its mind *and* its heart.
Evidence, please. Fox "news" pieces and trump tweets don't count.
Besides, deflecting is a schoolyard tactic. Just because someone else breaks a rule does not make the accused any less guilty.
Do you have sources for this?
The problem is not the people seeking asylum who are following the rules, and Trump's harsh interpretation of those cases. The problem is the 20 million illegal immigrants in this country who are not respecting the rule of law. This is a strange article, ignoring the real issue.
47
It's an article about a different issue.
1
But it is the rule following asylum seekers who have had their children stolen from them.
Sad stories, yes, But asylum is granted in response to official persecution, not domestic violence or criminals. It’s not our responsibility to resolve every sob story and take every person in an unfortunate circumstance the world over. Central American countries are not persecuting their people. Virtually none of them should qualify for asylum no matter how sad their personal circumstance.
47
The definition of compassion is: sympathetic consciousness of others' distress together with a desire to alleviate it. Our immigration laws were based on compassion but, as they continuously make obvious, the Trumpsters only care about themselves, and they remain willfully ignorant about the actual benefits (financial and other wise) that immigrants bring to our country. Read to get educated in order to make wiser choices based on empirical evidence rather than racism and sheer uninformed bias, start with https://www.bushcenter.org/catalyst/north-american-century/benefits-of-i...
2
The author writes compellingly about the dangers of domestic violence. Asylum is granted to those who are persecuted because of ”a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion,” or those who subject to torture “at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity.” The private hell of a person subjected to domestic violence does not meet the asylum standard. Should it? It’s worthy of debate. It’s not the law now. If we want to expand the scope of protected refugees then we will need to amend 8 U.S. Code Sections 1101(a)(42)(A) and 1158(b)(1)(B)(i). Suggesting that those who follow the law don’t care about the law is an appeal in equity and unhelpful to those she asks us and the courts of law to embrace.
33
"...consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity." Why should this not include police officers refusing to assist someone seeking help in cases of violence, whether criminal or domestic?
Every day I hope that next day, I won't find another reason to be ashamed of my country. Nearly every day, I am disappointed. Why is our president insulting our allies? Why is he creating tariffs of dubious value? Why did he allow the U.S. to threaten Ecuador for daring to propose the WHO to encourage breastfeeding? And why is he separating families at the border, especially without sufficient planning to reunite them? If these children are not promptly returned to their parents, I call it kidnapping.
2
I have been a Christian for 80-odd years, and I do not recognize my church in your description.
We were a country of laws. #45 is trying to turn the USA into a kleptocracy where the only rule is: "I gotta get the goods while the getting's good." Laws must go because they slow the Robber Barons down.
Vote! Vote! Vote!
12
Yes, we were a country of laws. #44 ordered federal law enforcement officials to ignore the ones he didn't agree with. Did you complain then? Bad precedent to set.
10
As usual, every Trumpette must go to "But what about..."
Every POTUS tells law officials what to ignore and what to pay more attention to. However, no other POTUS has OK'd such suffering of children who will be forever scarred without any plan to rectify it.
1
I finally figured out where the money angle plays into this - the GEO Group is probably in bed with Trump and the GOP and have a sweetheart deal to make millions off of the "trumped up" immigration crisis. It all makes horrible sense now. We will pay for this as a country for decades as these children and their parents suffer the cruelty of soulless and cravenly greedy rich white men who put money ahead of morality/ethics.
7
Asylum can not be found in Mexico or Brazil? These countries are a lot closer?
41
Perhaps those being pursued by domestic or gang abusers seek asylum in the US *because* of our strict entry laws. Mexico may allow the pursuers to cross their border.
2
Maybe the asylum seekers know they won't be treated as well in Brazil or Mexico, maybe they will encounter some strict punishment for trying to claim asylum using lies.
Why doesn't the NYT examine this question?
It's worth knowing.
2
"It’s one football stadium of people. We can afford that level of compassion in this country."
Of course we can. Just place them in the pooreset neighborhoods who can afford it the least. And then pat ourselves on the back for our compassion. Rinse and repeat.
22
Hey, rat,
Fully 26% of the students in my son's high school were of Latino descent as of last year. We've had a ton of new immigrants from south of the border come to Logan, Utah over the past couple of decades (we even had an extremely traumatic raid at a meat packing plant south of our fair city a few years back). We really don't have a lot of poor areas that can't afford them here. And by all appearances, the immigrants are both assimilating and adding to the local culture.
So, indeed, pat ourselves on the back (for the good sense to accept these hard working and honest people into the community). Rinse and repeat. We could use a new influx of them.
And why not? The first large, permanent wave of pioneers of European descent in Utah were illegal immigrants to Mexico (This was actually the place for Mexico in 1847, Brother Brigham).
4
"We really don't have a lot of poor areas that can't afford them here."
In other words, they were placed in the poor neighborhoods, not in the wealthier ones?
Nope. We. Really. Don't. Have. Poor. Areas. We Just. Have. Hardworking. And. Honest. Immigrants. From. Central. America. Many. Of. Whom. Are. Earning. A's. In. My. College. Courses. And. Will. Be. Moving. Into. Your. Neighborhood. When. They. Graduate. And. Get. Jobs.
And. Utah. Was. Settled. By. Illegal. Immigrants. To. Mexico.
1
I’m done with “rule of law.”
Rule of law was devised by and is used by a people with no legitimacy whatsoever. Our white Anglo ancestors effectively stole this land from the original inhabitants, and then stole every single piece of land that these migrants are trying to get to from Mexico.
Rule of law is nothing more than a ruse to protect white privilege and the winners of the citizen birth lottery.
We need to trade “rule of law” for social justice and human rights. Borders are wrong, full stop! People have a right to come here, and the people who are already here should be ashamed by their unwillingness to share and open their borders!
11
The Democrats will lose from Republican marketing to independents, based on these individual cases of no-borders fans. Most of the country wants strong safety nets and strong borders. A handful of people like Trans Cat Mom are going to throw the election to Republicans (and thus Russia) with their open borders talk.
4
I'd love to know how many are collecting social security by claiming someone else's SSN.
5
Trump owes Russians a lot of money and none of your faith in him changes that fact. NY banks stopped loaning to Trump more than a decade ago.
1
The current Republican administration has made a mockery of everything decent and inhumane. This is the tip of the iceberg. It gets worse from here.
Amnesty for convicted felons who are right wing extremists and domestic terrorists was the latest tell. Caging asylum seekers and children was yet another.
In eighteen months, this country has morphed into a Jonestown variant, with 'I alone can fix it' Trump barreling through the place like the leader of a demented cult, threatening to destroy whatever rules of decorum, laws, international alliances get in his way.
We are running out of time to stop this ball from rolling downhill.
18
Trump and Sessions have gotten caught violating the law. They claim they are only doing what previous administrations had been doing. However, in so doing, they admit what they are doing is wrong. Like the person stopped by a state trooper for speeding, who claims that the car ahead of them was speeding first and should ticket them first. And so was the arresting officer was speeding too. And those radar devises were wiretapping private and personal proprerty (the car). And the government has no right to restrict the individual's First Amendment right to go (expression) as they please. And God, not state troopers determine the consequences and so far God seems just fine with speeding which even atheist physicists set at 186,000 mi/sec thank you very much. And if it's Trump who's behind the wheel, he'd add, "And I'll sue you for slander and defamation of character for your suggestion that I'd be the kind of person who would break the law!"
Trump and Sessions do not deny what they do. They claim that National Security interests trump all other considerations (even if they can't show how national security is lessened with more legal treatments of asylum seekers). They also claim that the public wants them to break the law and democratically, mandates them and makes them scofflaws. They claim they are answering to a higher power. In my view, this disqualifies them as Americans, yet, even Roosevelt denied Jews assylum by claiming that Jews were likely spies.
5
The United States intervened in El Salvador, Guatemala and most recently Honduras. In the case of El Salvador, the United States never legitimized the refugees that were fleeing the civil war the US created and many remained as undocumented, growing up in gang-infested gun slinging neighborhoods in Los Angeles. Then Obama deported them. They have become the warlords in the vacuum left by the destruction of civil life and infrastructure. These are the “cartels” that are now extorting, terrorizing and killing people. These are the American bred terrorists who speak English and have made these countries the worse in the rates of femicide in the world. Now, we are turning away people who are trying to stay alive. This population is the third or fourth generation from Central America suffering the interventions of the United States.
5
Research shows that most people from El Salvador are primarily interested in economic opportunities and reuniting with friends and family already in this country. Nearly six-in-ten said they would move to the US if they could including 28% who would move to the US even without any authorization.
http://www.pewhispanic.org/2017/12/07/rise-in-u-s-immigrants-from-el-sal...
14
The US has intervened all across the globe -- in Asia and the ME and we have accepted many more immigrants from south of the border than anywhere else. The deportation of gang members started way before Obama as the original gangs rose in the early 90s. We do have the right to deport violent criminals and maybe the fact that this population is so susceptible to gang participation shows they are not ready to be immigrants to this country either.
I am not wholly unsympathetic to why young kids join gangs but there is always a choice at the end of the day. If you truly don't want that life, you do have ways out considering that we have structures and the rule of law here that would not side with the gangs over the victims.
4
It’s difficult now to say the Pledge of Allegiance and mean it. We have become someplace else where the president coddles Putin and has disrespect for his own people, party, and country.
4
“The Rule Of Law?”
I really hate to break it to you, but if Donald Trump is returned to the White House in 2020, the imprisoned immigrants will be joined by “undesirable” American citizens, and they won’t be part of Trump’s “base.”
If you think I’m being hysterical, stop and reflect upon fairly recent world history. Think of one European country in particular that rounded up its “undesirables” under the direction of a populist “leader” who wished to return a Germany, diminished in self respect and humiliated by the ending of World War I, to some fancied history of greatness and pre-eminence.
Don’t for a moment think that, with a president unfettered by law and aided by a complaisant and meekly docile Congress—not to mention a Supreme Court that would routinely rubber-stamp his excesses—that “it can’t happen here.”
15
Trump just pardoned Dwight Hammond Jr. and his son Steven Hammond. What does he care a out the rule of law?
11
The most lawless president we've ever had talking about "the rule of law" should be told that the rule of law can only be respected if he stops making up laws that don't exist. Asylum seekers are not criminals and immigrants with children are not lawbreakers. The lawbreakers here are Trump, Sessions, ICE, HHS, the Border Patrol and anyone else separating children from their parents. The federal judge monitoring their failed attempts to reunify families should order the administration to pay $100,000 per day to every parent who is not reunified with his or her child by his deadline.
5
What price will our government pay for violating our own asylum laws? These people are legal asylum seekers. They are allowed to come here to seek asylum. They are refugees. Would hope the NYT would place an article about the jailed babies on the front page until they are all returned. We are an international disgrace. Miller/Trump never intended to return these stolen babies. Now that the judge has said they must..they are still not really reuniting all of them. An identifying bracelet could have easily been used to track the parents and children! The anguish of the poor, desperate brown people pleases Trump's racist base. The babes are pawns in the game...an unspeakably cruel game.
5
The perversion of the law was by wiley attorneys. I don’t think fear of gang violence in your barrio should qualify you for the same asylum that
Hutu from Rawanda were requesting
Or Christians from Egypt.
Or Jews from former Soviet Union .
Or democrats from Myanmar
According to the law a refugee is some who is unwilling or unable to return to their country of nationality
because of “persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion, or (B) in such special circumstances as the President after appropriate consultation (as defined in section 1157(e) of this title) law”
11
The entire premise of the article is false, and citing Vox was a nice touch.
Asylum is the new Open Borders, folks. If Democrats ever want a shot at any of the three branches ever again, they need to get tough on immigration, ASAP.
37
It ain't so just because you say it's so.
Open Borders is a canard. No elected politician has proposed open borders. Everyone understands there can't be — and isn't — unlimited immigration. If you think it's easy to come here, just try sponsoring ONE person abroad to get a residential visa. I think that will change your mind.
All the author is saying is that people applying for asylum deserve a hearing, under our own laws. What about that premise is invalid? Do you think that's not what the law is, or do you think we shouldn't act under the law?
1
"Rule of Law" is a quaint concept in this administration. Pardons for Sheriff Arpaio and the Oregon ranchers whose defiance of federal land management set off the seizure of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge by an armed "militia", are messages to "The Base" that the concept of "Law" is fluid, is open to interpretation, and can often be ignored by both enforcers and citizens who are free to interpret the "Law" as they see fit.
A president who asserts that Neo-Nazi demonstrators, one of whom ran his car into a crowd of demonstrators, killing one of them, are "fine people". A leader who encourages his rally audiences to rough up protestors, who defames journalists as "enemies of the people", is sending the message that might makes right.
Demonizing minorities, immigrants, women and the poor is OK. Intimidation and bullying are tolerable when exercised against opponents of his administration or authorities defending any part of the "Rule of Law" that the "Emperor God" in the White House disdains.
Does all this messaging by the Tweeter in Chief portend a growing trend of vigilantism, a dawning epoch of greed, cruelty, and neglect, of "Brown Shirts" in America? As our feckless leader might say, "We'll see".
6
I'm not sure Trump understand the difference between a refugee and an immigrant. And if he does understand the difference, it's even worse because he knowingly lumps them together as brown criminals that are not welcome in America.
8
This administration does not care about the rule of law. To think otherwise is delusional.
7
When has this grifter ever shown respect for any law?
12
This is unbearable.
6
There are only 5 grounds for seeking asylum: a reasonable fear of future persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group and political opinion. Attempting to escape poverty or widespread violence in your own country doesn’t qualify you for asylum. The vast majority of immigrants trying to enter the country don’t have a cognizable claim for asylum. Ms. Nazario knows this. The immigrants know this as well. So, encouraged by “immigration activists,” they game the system: arrive at the border, claim asylum, request a reasonable fear interview and then never show up for the interview.
This article, which purports to set the reader straight on "the rule of law," does no such thing.
45
Oops! You were doing so well, too!
It's the "never" that gave you away.
Most do in fact show up for their hearing. A pilot program under Obama, cancelled by Trump, hired caseworkers to monitor asylum applicants. At a cost of $36/day, 99% showed for their hearing.
Ankle bracelets are more expensive, but also effective. Detention works, too, albeit at $900/day.
So your "never" is less than 1%.
As the article points out, this so-called flood would fit in the Superdome in New Orleans. We could handle it, if only we'd act like grownups. Just, you know, a matter of choice.
3
So what the asylum-seekers have to prove, then, is that they qualify under one of your five grounds. Why not let them do try to do it? Why imprison them when they do? Would you like to be imprisoned while you sue someone for running into you with their car? How do you know they "never show up for the interview'? Is that why there are so many people in detention centers?
2
Hey, Don L. from San Francisco,
But the US Government may confer the status of refugee upon those fleeing harm in their home country. As refugees that would be given some protection.
Check out the link below. And leave a little room in your heart to search the immigration code a little bit more deeply to find some legal means of helping these poor souls who, after all, our our fellow human beings. It is easy to find trivial and historically insignificant justification to turn away a person in need. It takes a bit more effort to find some historically redeemable means of taking them in.
https://www.uscis.gov/humanitarian/refugees-asylum
I am a huge supporter of police and law enforcement employees in general, i appreciate their service. But the Border Patrol is pretty much dead to me. Or more correctly, like the undead to me. They are the zombies of law enforcement because they have shown themselves to be complicit in their violation of the rule of law and their cruelty in enacting the duties assigned by their evil masters. I think we're looking at a "spit in their food" situation for a long time with the Border Patrol. Do they know who is in the kitchen?
1
Law, what law? We're Americans and we do whatever we want, especially to the weak and poor, and declare that to be the law. This is a jungle, not a civilized nation. We like it that way. Witness how the Oregon ranchers were pardoned.
13
Sonia Nazario states “It is illegal to penalize asylum seekers, but we have criminally prosecuted them for “illegal” entry and violated their rights to due process by taking away their children.” In support of her statement, she provides a link to an article that references the United Nations 1951 Convention on the Status of Refugees.
Article 31 of the convention (Refugees Unlawfully in the Country of Refugee) says: "The Contracting States shall not impose penalties, on account of their illegal entry or presence, on refugees who, coming directly from a territory where their life or freedom was threatened in the sense of Article 1, enter or are present in their territory without authorization, provided they present themselves without delay to the authorities and show good cause for their illegal entry or presence."
With few exceptions, migrants who cross the U.S. border illegally do not qualify as refugees under Article 1 of the convention. They are not coming directly from a territory where their life or freedom was threatened; they are coming from Mexico or Canada. And none of them can show good cause for their illegal entry. Applying for asylum at legal ports of entry is much easier, safer and cheaper than rafting the Rio Grande or trekking across the Chihuahuan or Sonoran desert.
25
No one really knows the true numbers of immigrants on our Southern border. We've seen reports that suggest the total number of immigrants coming from Mexico and points South have decreased over the last few years. With the uptick in gang-related violence in Central American countries which destroys families, many of the newer immigrants could be higher in number than those who just want to visit relatives (and are turned away even if properly documented at border crossings) or wish to seek any employment which is even close to sustaining themselves and their families.
Compassion is the root to a solution to the problem we now see with immigration. Maybe, we should, after criminal background checks, allow those who pass that test, to enter the US? What have we to lose? Our country was and is founded on immigrants with many being "illegal" many generations back. How many jobs are these immigrants "taking away" from us? Very few, if any. These people perform jobs which none of us would ever want. Let's staff our legal border crossings with enough people and the humane and compassionate and legal tools to do the job and give these immigrants a chance. Maybe we would then see a dramatic reduction in illegal immigration.
Canada? Asylum seekers at the southern border this year would fit in a stadium. Asylum seekers at the northern border would fit in a Volkswagen.
I don't know about Article I, etc. I don't know anything, really, about refugee and asylum law. What I do know is this country has laws, and courts to enforce them, and judges to decide cases. I see no reason for me to judge the legality of the applicant's case, because I have a government. That's what my tax dollars are for.
5
The vast majority of Americans who signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and the vast majority of Americans who fought in the Revolutionary War were native born, not immigrants. America has never been a "nation of immigrants."
Trump et. al. still believe in the rule of law--they just also believe that Trump _is_ law.
1
It should be intuitively obvious to most casual observer that one does not cure a disease by attempting to cure it symptoms. The women and children showing up at our border are symptoms of a disease whose problems are entire attributable to those countries, government, culture that causes them to run from their own countries as if their hair is on fire. True progressives should not be hoodwinked into believing otherwise; if the disease isn't addressed, we will continually suffer the symptoms--until they become fatal. When women and children run away from you, it's you, not them. The US isn't a panacea for the world's ills, not a wet nurse for everyone's problems. It is the 21st century. Countries need to begin acting like it. Responsibility to one's own citizens should be a priority and a right, a human right. This is the unstated real Rule of Law--the Law that says to treat your women, children and men as human beings. To act or believe, or dance around this fact is disingenuous and, frankly, dangerous. For people to believe this is America's fault is intellectually dishonest and does nothing to address the root of the disease.
8
It is rather sad that you are completely oblivious to our own government's pernicious role in creating these conditions. Cartels and drug violence are products created in the US and exported south along with profitable traffic in arms to sustain them. Our country has a long and clearcut role in supporting dictators in these countries along with generous assistance from our military. You decry progressive thought, but turn a blind eye to any facts that contradict your positions.
You treat a broken arm, and it heals. Symptom, or disease?
Entirely, you say. The drug trade here — Americans buying cocaine — have no culpability? No role in the violence in Mexico and Guatemala? This is the 21st century, as you say. Where have you been?
We could do more, sure, to treat the disease. We could end the war on drugs, for one thing. We could do more to stabilize those governments and stem the lawlessness. We could, and we should.
Meanwhile, and no matter what, asylum seekers do and will show up at our border. Is it so much to ask that we treat them as human beings, that we take their case seriously, that we follow our own laws, and advise them of the process?
1
It’s like abortion and kids - the GOP doesn’t want abortions, but also doesn’t want to pay welfare to poor families with kids. They can’t have it both ways. Similarly, one either follows The Law or one doesn’t. You don’t get to cherry-pick based on your preferences.
2
Evangelicals and other so called Christians are complicit in this violation of human rights and further violation of the basics tenets of our foundation. The right wing has gone on a rampage against illegal immigration and is now lumping all immigration into the same pot. I hold Christian religions responsible for this debacle - they're happy to align themselves with an authoritarian who is erasing separation of church and state and taking away the rights of citizens as well.
4
Not all Christians are aligned with Trump. Using that sweeping brush to paint an entire category of people is the same as what Trump has done re immigrants, progressives, etc.
3
You never hear about them in the Times but many Christian denominations are in no way aligned with Trump. The Evangelicals are in a category of their own.
1
Most Americans welcome legal immigrants, but not illegal aliens.
US laws allow foreigners (aliens) to seek entry and citizenship. Those who do not follow these laws are in this country illegally (i.e., illegal aliens) and should be detained and deported; this is policy in other countries, too.
We cannot afford to support our own citizens: the poor, the ill, elderly, disabled, veterans, et al. It is therefore utterly impossible for US taxpayers to support the millions of foreigners who would like to come to the US.
The cruelty lies not in detaining and deporting illegal aliens, or forcing those who wish to enter the US to wait for processing. What is cruel, unethical and probably illegal is encouraging parents to bring their children on the dangerous trek to US borders and teaching parents how to game the system to enter the US by falsely claiming asylum, persecution, abuse, etc.
Abolishing ICE makes sense only to advocates of open borders, a policy no nation will ever approve. We will lose the mid-terms and 2020 elections if open borders becomes part of the Democratic platform.
29
I'm all for legal immigration and asylum. But what did Obama do? If, in fact, it was better, why not mention the methods during the years he was in office? He did deport over 2 million.
10
The sad thing is that these stories are probably true for hundreds of millions of people around the world and the sad fact is we can't take them all. That's just the plain and simple truth--I'm sure these horrific stories exist in every country around the world, including ours--we simply do not have the ability to take in everyone. I wish we could but we simply cannot.
One thing I never quite understood about seeking asylum in the US is that we allow those who can get here on foot to present themselves at our border to seek asylum. This means that we automatically favor people from South America since they're the only ones who can present themselves at our border without any legal way to get here. People from Africa, Europe, Asia, and Australia can't even get to our borders because they would be prevented from boarding the plane to begin with (well, not people from Europe or Australia since we let them in without a visa) but doesn't that seem highly discriminatory and prejudiced?
16
There seems not to be much difference between the gang violence in Central America than the flippant “get over it” attitude that migrants encounter by Border Patrol agents and while they’re detained in facilities across the country.
The photo of the migrant caravan that accompanies this piece puts the immigration issue in one small but telling capsule. These families are non-white, poverty-stricken and desperate, and the youngsters and babies represent the changing demographics of America in the coming decades. These immigrants represent the flood of Latinos who will eventually become the largest minority bloc in the US. It’s obvious why the president, Congress and Jeff Sessions don’t want them in the country. The credible fear of these asylum seekers means nothing to them.
1
If women qualify as a social group, so do men. This would make 100 percent of the global population eligible for asylum in the United States.
9
Sonia Nazario states, “It is illegal to bar people seeking asylum from our ports of entry, but we have effectively done just that.” But the United States isn’t barring asylum seekers from legal ports of entry.
The Trump administration’s decision to replace the “Catch and Release” policy with a “Zero Tolerance” policy produced a surge of asylum seekers at legal ports of entry. Many migrants who had intended to cross illegally went instead to the legal ports of entry. Some ports of entry are busier than others. When the lines of asylum seekers grow too long, officials tell those at the back of the line they should come back tomorrow. But this happens only at the busier ports of entry. The lines will quickly grow shorter once asylum seekers adjust to the reality that spousal abuse or fear of gang violence no longer qualifies then for asylum.
The United States should change its asylum laws to permit asylum seekers to apply for asylum at U.S. consulates and embassies in their home country, thereby sparing them the long journey to the U.S. border, but advocacy groups would oppose the change. They want a return to the Catch and Release policy because it permitted illegal border crossers to reside for years in the United States while awaiting their court dates. In Houston, the hearing are now scheduled nearly five year in the future.
10
Ah, but kind sir, they are barring asylum seekers from ports of entry.
3
Speaking of the "rule of law" according to international law those seeking asylum are to seek asylum in the first safe country. They are not to travel to the country of their choice and then seek asylum. Those seeking asylum from Central America should seek asylum in safe Costa Rica or Mexico not travel through Mexico to come to the United States.
11
Sadly, I see the result of Trumps rhetoric about asylum seekers and immigrants taking hold in the comments posted here. I agree with some that assisting central american nations establish effective rule of law would be very beneficial I can also recognize that desperate people will not be deterred from trying to find safe haven, wall or no wall. In the same circumstances we would do the exact same thing. There is obviously much misunderstanding about the immigration issue.
3
Anybody can make up a sad story. And if it’s true, the trouble will follow them here, becoming our problem. Close the border, build the wall.
16
Most people here illegally overstay visas. Building the wall will do nothing to stop that.
2
If the words of the poem by Emma Lazarus, engraved in the base of the Statue of Liberty, were law, then there would have been no immigration problem. Economic and political reality demands it not to be so. Added to that is atavistic xenophobia of the cave man, standing his own against other tribes. Perhaps a choice of the place of residence on Earth is one of the fundamental Rights of Humans, but should not the rights of the indigenous people, to live with others "like them", be also considered?
1
He had and has no intention of being a law and order president. He has always been on the shady side of the law. But Trump is trying his best to put Putin law in place for us. That way he can rule over his kingdom while working for his lord and master. For whatever reason, Trump is afraid of Putin. Regardless of the reason, however, the outcome will be the same. Trump will carry out Putin's wishes with glee.
12
There is asylum and there is due process. People can seek asylum in churches, another city, or another country. But there needs to be an orderly process, not simply illegally crossing a border. These people need to be stopped at the border until they can provide some justification that would support their cause. They should know better than drag their small children with them. If the illegal immigrants care about the rule of law, then they need to act like it!
12
So, these people leave their children behind in the mayhem and other problems while they try to enter this country? Maybe you ought to rethink what you've said. I'd rather come here illegally, with my children, than stay behind and die. Wouldn't you?
3
Thanks so much for the link on asylum. It says quite clearly they could "APPLY" for asylum, and we have to accept that application under certain circumstances. Accepting the application doesnt mean we are under ANY obligation to GRANT asylum. I actually spent the few minutes reading it because I knew there was a problem with your article on the outset. We are under no obligation to accept anyone. There is no law that says the US MUST allow people into our country. Being an American is not a right, Ms Nazario. It also says we dont have to accept their application if they could be find safe haven in another country. So what about Mexico, Ms Nazario? Why cant they just stay there? Thats a big question, isnt it? For if they cant, why not? Why wont Mexico let them stay? If they are fleeing Mexico, which is doubtful since many Americans actually vacation there, then that means Mexico is a dangerous place, and we should have extreme vetting for anyone attempting to enter from there. Maybe even a wall? Considering border patrol arrests over 34,000 foreigners EACH MONTH attempting to enter illegally, not to mention, our border is so porous, thousands of children have waltzed across the border in the past few weeks, then were so "cruelly" separated from their parents when they were arrested, a wall actually looks necessary.. Sorry Sonia, but your interpretation of the law falls flat when anyone takes the 2 minutes to read your link.
32
While I can empathize with the asylum seekers, we can't just let everyone in from poor countries. If we let everyone in who claimed spousal abuse or gang violence, half the world would come here and claim asylum. Whose going to pay for it? Many of these people will need government assistance. I was born and have worked and paid into social security for more than 35 years in this country. I hope to retire in a few years. don't want people like the author deciding that my social security money should go to immigrants.
52
Your social security money will go to you. You earned it. That's how it works.
6
Partially true. It surprised me to find out that our gov gives SS money to immigrants from other countries who never paid into the system. They are tough on American citizens but just hand it out to immigrants. And when SS runs short whose benefits do you think they will cut?
6
clearly you don't understand how social security works. today's workers pay in to the pool that your check draws from. Immigrants pay in even though they will never be allowed to draw unless they become citizens. Seasonal workers don't want to be citizens.But they pay SS anyway. Most immigrants work hard and support themselves. selfish people are not asked to support them. Good Christians believe we should help our neighbors. clearly you don't. ok. your social security check is determined by the amount you earned and paid in, and by your age when you file to receive it. There is a household cap of 2500 per month. Immigrants have no effect on that. Save up now. Blaming innocent people because you failed to plan ahead is scapegoating.
"You are either for the rule of law, or you’re against it."
The GOP in general, and the Trump administration in particular, distort or deliberately bend laws to fit their own political purposes. They know their devoted followers remain willfully ignorant of laws so that cherished fairy tales can float freely above the cesspool of evidence that would stain the lily-pure moral of their story.
Unfortunately, the GOP and Trump will ignore any and all critiques, written or otherwise. They only understand raw power, and until they are stripped of that power, they will do as they please. So stripping them of power is Job Number 1. Once their power is gone, prosecute them to the maximum extent permitted by law, all the while shouting "Rule of law!" Delivering a strong dose of their own medicine will do the country a world of good.
11
I don't find that Nazario cares about the rule of laws. There shouldn't be such large numbers of immigrants coming from other countries: (1) they should fix their own countries not run away (2) they should emigrate to countries closer to their native countries that are Spanish-speaking and closer to their attitudes culturally speaking. (3) It is the immigrants who are illegally immigrating who are disregarding laws, so if Nazario really cares about law enforcement she should be laying the major responsibility for breaking the laws at the feet of illegal immigrants. (4) Being "cruel" doesn't mean it is illegal. Does Nazario care about law enforcement or about being kind? They are not usually the same thing.
34
Many, many undocumented workers pay into the Social Security system without any hope of recouping what they've put into it. They are, in fact, paying their dues.
1
Did you miss the part about it not being illegal to seek asylum in the United States? And it's a pretty tall order to ask somebody who is being targeted for death to simply stay someplace and "fix their country." Would you have given the same advice to Jewish refugees in the 1930s?
8
U.S. asylum law makes only a person who has “a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion” eligible for asylum. A person who fears spousal abuse or gang violence is not eligible for asylum in the United States. The law empowers presidents to grant asylum in special circumstances, but as the article points, the present administration has announced that gang violence — the most commonly cited reasons for fleeing Central America—does not qualify someone for asylum.
U.S. asylum law states that the “burden of proof is on the applicant.” An applicant “must establish that race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion was or will be at least one central reason for persecuting the applicant.” As a rule, immigration judges can make quick decisions because few asylum applicants can present any evidence that they fear persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion. Judges are also familiar with conditions in Central American nations. They know Central American nations are not persecuting asylum applicants on of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or—with rare exceptions—political opinion.
20
Mr. Case is right about the criteria in the asylum law, but dead wrong about a dearth of persecution on the basis of political opinion in Latin America. The crashing irony is that the United States has for a couple of generations (at least) propped up despots who illegally displaced democratically elected leaders. In short, many people have historically fled the regimes our government put in place or propped up, only to face a place of refuge rejecting their asylum applications on the basis of 'law and order.'
8
About 30,000 people "disappeared" during Argentina's "Dirty War," which lasted a decades and ended in 1983. This works about to about 3,000 a year, or 250 a month. But the "Dirty War" is over, The U.S.. Border Patrol catch about 50,000 illegal border crossers a month. It estimates that it catch only 54 percent of illegal border crossers. So more than 90,000 cross illegally each month.
J. Young, please state exactly which Latin-American despots, now persecuting political opponents, are there because of the American government.
Donald Trump & Jeff Sessions are insecure deluded narcissists. That's nothing new. But they've now managed to inflict their pathology on the immigration bureaucracy charged with dealing with vulnerable human beings seeking help, turning US policy into a punishment tool designed to degrade and debase the unhappy individuals who believed they would be treated fairly by a country of immigrants. They've also managed to degrade and debase the country. Schoolyard bullies, not fit for any office.
13
Trump's great immigration lie is that the people he wants to afford no due process are illegal immigrants when they are largely asylum seekers. He pooh-poohs that notion saying that the ones put before immigration judges have been coached in what to say, as if he weren't champion of having lawyers instruct him how to lie and to evade the spirit of the law by distorting its letter. Does he wish to deny people due process and legal representation. We all know the answer to that: No!
Trump wants "strong laws," meaning the ability to do whatever he pleases and to deny the rights afforded by the Constitution's Bill of Rights. Trump admires "strong leaders". That seems to mean ruthless dictators. So the circle closes; those that are trying to escape the tyranny of ruthless dictators shouldn't come to the United States because it now is no longer a beacon of freedom, home of the free, land of the brave, but a cowering cowardly lot lorded over by a dictator who is audacious enough to name his son Bar(r)on.
6
Part of the problem is that migrants have been gaming the system for so long it's like the boy who cried wolf. How can we tell who is really threatened and who is just saying that to "get a better life?" When we know that migrants are being schooled to say what they need to say to get in, how can we trust the law anymore? I think 106,010 people in 9 months IS getting to be a flood, and I am sure we will have more birthright citizens coming from that number. I recommend that NYT readers read Philip Cafuto's "How Many is Too Many," a progressive argument for reducing immigration into the United States.
42
Unless you're an indigenous person (American Indian), relatives somewhere in your family tree 'gamed the system' to get into this country.
Maybe those who present this argument should ask themselves why it was ok then, for them, but is not now.
2
I cared about the rule of law when Bush v. Gore happened, but no one else did. The Dems didn't fight back. I cared about the rule of law when McConnell refused to hold hearings for Merrick Garland, but no one else did. The Dems didn't fight back. I cared when the media played up a Russian-owned real estate developer with $100M of free publicity. No one else did. The Dems ignored the hot buttons he pushed and didn't even show up in the crucial swing states. Now you want a fight for illegal immigrants? Still waiting for the Dems to care about US citizens. You can take a number and get in line.
24
Rule of law is a joke. I walk out of my house in NYC and pass thousands of people breaking the law. One in 15 people are illegal immigrants. Half the people on food stamps and housing assistance are working off the books and in reality don't qualify for assistance. Thousands of people are driving without proper driver's licenses and insurance including registering cars in states which protect illegal immigrants. Probably half the legal drivers are committing some form of fraud against their insurance companies. Illegal electric bicycles are sipping up and down streets often used for deliveries. U-turns are illegal but you can't take a drive without seeing 3 or 4. The IRS does not compare people's spending with their reported incomes allowing tax evasion. Religious institutions act as giant money laundering operations, Racial and religious discrimination in business and government is rampant. Government jobs are used as a giant spoils system for insiders. The list goes on and on. Rule of Law, what a joke.
11
Thank you for this horrifying but very illuminating piece. I had not seen the immigration crisis presented in these terms before.
Now tell us what specifically we can do to help.
Marching in the streets has no impact on this administration--they do not care at ALL about the public opinion of us east coast liberals.
Obviously we all need to vote (not that my NYC vote will make any difference, but yes, I do it anyway). So, what else? What nonprofits are doing the best job fighting this? What else can we do?
12
Amen, we should be holding our mighty corporations accountable, they have so much money from their tax cuts, since they are not giving workers a wage increase. Where is their social sense of responsibility. Hit them in their bottom line and go after wall street. Why isn't Facebook doing something to assist in finding these three thousand children. they are so wonderful why isn't Musk instead of going to Mars working with the government at solutions for the horrors of these countries. What are these tech leaders doing?
This is the worst of capitalism just thinking about what I have and what you don't.
Immigration reform has been talked about for the last thirty years, the GOP has sat on their hands and done nothing, the parties refuse to work together because of the constant rejections of ideas.
Zero tolerance created this issue and zero tolerance by the public and pressure on corporate America, we might be able to get something done.
Every woman has the right to a good life in every country so I don't want to hear about the legal way. When your dead your dead so lets all grow up and do the right thing.
1
The "Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees" is a treaty signed in 1951 by 145 United Nations members. It It is a multilateral treaty that defines who is a refugee, and sets out the rights of individuals who are granted asylum and the responsibilities of nations that grant asylum. According to this treaty, Mexico is in gross violation.
The trip from the Guatemalan border to the US border, through Mexico, is ~ 2000 miles. The moment that Guatemalans, or any other citizen of a Central American country crosses the Mexican border, ultimately seeking asylum status, per international agreement, should have their cases reviewed in Mexico, by the Mexican government. But instead, rather than abide by an international treaty, the Mexican government allows them safe passage through their country and then publicly shames the US for stopping them at the border, and processing them in a legal and orderly fashion.
I have been working and paying taxes for 46 years. I wish I was treated by the US government as well as illegal immigrants are treated. I too would seek asylum in the US. Free: food, shelter, clothing, welfare, education and medical care. And a government that will shelter you if you enter or stay illegally. Who *wouldn't* take advantage of that? Most people around the world want to live the American Dream, but many do not want to pay their dues as tax-paying citizens and legal aliens do.
45
Adherence to 'rule of law' is a flexible concept, completely absent from US drivers.
6
Article 1 of the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, as amended by the 1967 Protocol, defines a refugee as:
'A person who owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it.'
If married women, common law wives and girlfriends who claim they have been battered by their male partners are all now to qualify as a social group, then we might as well tear up the Convention.
31
We need to start practicing democracy, that is, treating our own citizens with compassion and equality. Then we must use our democracy as a model and a guide to helping our southern neighbors find their own democracy. If we don’t practice our democracy, upon which our laws are based, in this country, it makes sense that we ignore it in other countries.
13
Trump's view of the rule of Law as G &S might have put it
My name is Donald Trump, I’m nominating Kavanaugh,
He’ll have my back according to the article I saw,
His other views are lagniappe, Conservative of course,,
In view of that I’d nominate him if he were a Horse,
Now Mueller has me sweating, I’m afraid of what he knows,
And I’ll be hit with perjury if I have to depose,
I know Brett will support me, I read just what he wrote
It’s made my nights much pleasanter, and on a happy note,
And I know just why!
58
Beautifully apt as usual, but you've made a small mistake: Trump read?
5
Larry Eisenberg I enjoy your comments and the form you use to express them a pleasure. This one however was genius. Thanks.
One can believe in the rule of law, but also understand that it can be subverted. We have a president who wants to do away with due process for some, but touts SCOTUS appointments approved by the Federalist Society. He does not have much use for a free press, unless it facilitates his use of xenophobic and mendacious rants, broadcast every day.
Our current president's disdain for and manipulation of the law have been noted: "Donald Trump and the Rule of Law," by J. Toobin, 6 Jan 2018, The New Yorker.
The rule of law can be used as a weapon, something that occurs throughout history. We see this not only at our southern border, but in our courts where collective bargaining is gutted in favor of corporate interests. It is hard to escape the central role of well-paid lawyers from elite schools in all of this.
This is not a plea for lawlessness. And immigration problems are not confined to the USA.
When we have a dominant party who appear to believe that the ends justify the means, we get into trouble. These problems can be moderated, can be fixed. But it does not happen overnight, and it will not happen if people do not go out and vote.
91
Thank you for a courageous and articulate description of what is and what should be. "Desperate people can't b deterred" -think of the desperation of so very many Americans coming here in the 19th century to escape the Irish Famine, persecution in Europe, all of us huddled masses yearning to be free. These are the folks that made America in so many senses. There were bad results -Mr. Trump is but one example- but there were also so very many wonderful things that came from that open door. It can happen again. America, you are so much more than crying children forcibly separated from their parents. Let's fix this.
114
"Opponents of immigration have long had one rallying cry: rule of law! But most of the people seeking asylum at the Adelanto Detention Facility followed the law to a T."
What a harrowing tale told by Sonia Nazario. I'm stunned that details such as these don't make it to Congress which should not only be providing oversight of these matters, but correcting them or passing comprehensive immigration reform.
This situation mirrors the Japanese interment or the rejection of European Jews during World War II but seems worse because an entire political party is complicit in its continuance.
America has lost its humane, spirited defense of the downtrodden, adopting cruelty and indifference in the hopes of discouraging asylum seekers.
It has to be a gory hell in their countries of origin that these people would prefer to take their chances at the border rather than return to an almost certain death.
The Trump administration is figuratively crossing its arms and saying, no, no more room, we don't want you, go back home because we don't want your kind here.
Unbelievable for a nation of immigrants.
244
I am deeply saddened and horrified by these stories. As a Texas resident, I was preparing my letters to my representative and Senator about the article, and I had to take a look at the law she referenced about the right to apply for Asylum.
If I am reading Act 208 correctly, the law specifies that qualification for asylum means that the individual has to be a refugee. Qualifications for being a refugee are related to "race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion."
Domestic and gang violence don't fit neatly into the law. These cases need to rely upon arguments that women and the poor are particular and vulnerable social groups. That's the discussion that needs to be taking place for the issue to be rebranded as "asylum" rather than illegal immigration.
By calling the article "Do Your Care About the Rule of Law? Then Act Like It," Ms. Nazario has a responsibility to connect the horrors that these people are fleeing to the law, and to highlight how these people are effectively refugees. She has dramatized the stories of these people, but she has not charted a course for applying the Rule of Law. More articles and research are needed to effectively make the case.
46
That is such a false, unfair opinion. If we're so terrible why are people dying to get in?
2
"Domestic and gang violence don't fit neatly into the law."
My understanding is that it's not domestic or gang violence per se that qualifies for asylum, but rather when the government can't or won't protect you from that violence - such as the woman who was told that the police could do nothing about her husband's abuse.
Border agents who break the law should face the legal consequences. If they behave in disrespectful ways towards people seeking entry for legitimate reasons, they should be fired.
70
According to Sessions, being beaten nearly to death by one's spouse is not a legitimate reason to seek asylum in the US. Neither is fleeing thugs who have either threatened or have actually killed members of one's family. If these don't qualify a person for asylum, what does? We need a list. They owe us, the American people, at least that much so that we can understand what is being done in our names. I have to admit I am both shocked and deeply disappointed to learn that a nation that claims to be an exemplar of Christianity is not only content to sit on the sidelines while desperate people try to escape mayhem but are participating in perpetuating the maelstrom. And we call ourselves manKIND. What a misnomer.
139
It is not "according to Sessions" It is according to U.S. asylum law.
15
Actually, Bill, it's according to U.S. asylum law according to Sessions.
It does not say "being threatened with violence or death by a spouse or domestic partner is not a valid claim for asylum" anywhere in the actual law.
"If these don't qualify a person for asylum, what does? We need a list."
Sure. Here you go:
"A person can qualify for asylum if he or she has:
A reasonable fear
Of future persecution
On account of
Race, religion, national origin, political opinion, or membership in a social group."
https://www.politicalasylumusa.com/application-for-asylum/
"My husband/the gang in my neighborhood is out to get me" does not qualify. As Sessions said (roughly), asylum in the U.S. is not intended to be a remedy for everything bad that happens to everyone anywhere in the world.
2
This conversation needs to evolve. The reporting here is fine but it leaves unsaid a critical issue: There is a smoldering war in Central America that’s coming at us leaving refugees on our doorstep. We need to deal with the root cause not the refugee effects. That probably means an incursion or at least assistance in keeping the peace in those countries for a while. It also means taking down the cartels because they’ve become too big and powerful. We are repeating the mistake of Syria in accepting refugees rather than dealing with Assad and Putin. It won’t get better and the longer we wait the tougher it will be.
214
Yeah, because what taxpayer DOESN'T want to spend another 5 trillion dollars on another war, and then spend the next 20 years occupying YET ANOTHER country with our troops.
5
The first step in helping Central America would be, "first, do no harm." Our "incursions" over the last few decades - supporting war and dictatorships - have a large share of the responsibility for the conditions that force people to seek asylum.
7
In response to this comment:"There is a smoldering war in Central America that’s coming at us leaving refugees on our doorstep. We need to deal with the root cause not the refugee effects."
In Central America there is a long legacy of US interference in democratic elections in the name of the cold war & protecting economic interests. The new head of the NRA, Oliver North, knows this history & directly participated in it.
Almost all of the weapons being used in Central America are made in the USA. This is true now; it was true 30 years ago. I remember meeting a priest who had been working to help Guatemalan farmers all through the horrendous civil war there. He spoke at our wealthy, L.A. suburban church to a tiny group of people who assembled to hear about his experiences. I'll never forget his voice cracking at the end of his talk, his plea: don't you understand that BOTH SIDES in the war are armed with U.S. weapons? Does anyone in the U.S. know this? Does anyone care?
The answer then, as now, is that a tiny group was trying to know, and trying to care, and wondering what they could do. The same seems to be true now. All of the issues are linked: the profiteering of U.S. gun manufacturers, the violence in these countries, the suffering at our borders and in U.S. detention centers.
Melania Trump's jacket eerily echos this priest's cry: he worked in Guatemala for decades & I don't know what ultimately happened to him. He really cared; do u?
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Thank you, Sonia, for a powerful, clear-eyed explanation of the illegal actions going on at every level of the government. Unfortunately, most Americans don’t understand that we have laws protecting those seeking asylum. The bigger issue is that the administration is deliberately conflating asylum seekers, illegal border crossers, and criminal gangs. Unfortunately, the media typically refer generally to “immigrants” without educating readers about these important distinctions and what laws should be followed. I hope the NYT will make these distinctions in future reports and explain the federal laws governing asylum seekers.
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I came to the comments section to say exactly this. Immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers are legally distinct groups, each with specific rights and criteria for entry. Under the international laws that we in the U.S. helped create, the latter two groups cannot simply be turned away, if that means returning them to a place where their lives would be in danger. This includes turning away a Salvadoran asylum seeker who would be at risk in Mexico due to international gang activity. When the language we use is degraded and co-opted, innocent people suffer.
NYT, please take the lead in educating your own readers, at the very least.
Do you happen to have a link? A single, puny statistic? Doubtful. And no, Fox News doesn't count.
Also, immigrants and refugees are not the same thing. You do not have to be a refugee to enter the country, but refugees are entitled to enter the country until the danger in their home country has passed.
Do you happen to have a link? A single, puny statistic? Doubtful. And no, Fox News doesn't count.
I believe everyone has made a mockery of our immigration laws.
We've had multiple "reforms" done over the past decades that were never implemented.
Politicians on both sides of the aisle were talking about the need to control the border and illegal immigration less than a decade ago. Today anything like that is viewed as racist.
As Trump has gotten more severe on the subject, Democrats have moved further and further west.
It seems like you are either for snatching sobbing toddlers from their parents or you're for giving everyone here illegally legal status, and welcoming everyone after that.
Of course, there is a vast middle--but politicians representing that middle are few and far.
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I hate to do this, but everybody is flinging laws at each other and at some point we need to stop.
It is not "illegal to bar people seeking asylum from our ports of entry." It is illegal to bar people who are on U.S. soil from seeking asylum. It is not "illegal to penalize asylum seekers." It is illegal to use the circumstances of their entry, even illegal entry, into the country as a reason for denying asylum.
With both sides trying to game the system, and trying to play on the emotions of Americans, this fight over arrivals at our Southern border isn't getting the job done, to admit those who legitimately seek refuge and restrict entry in accordance with the law.
The fight is awash with money, billions to private prison companies, millions to advocacy and lawsuits, what about fixing the system? The Obama administration asked in 2015 for $2.9 billion to hire the immigration court people to properly deal with the stream at the Southern border. The Republican controlled House, denied so much as a single penny.
The ACLU and others gamed the system under Obama thinking that if they could just force the Administration into enough restrictions, they would somehow open the borders. Now the new Administration is using those restraints to enforce cruelty and torture.
So we have something nobody likes, that is now behaving cruelly, and a polarized population that spits propaganda at each other. Good people are maligned, cruelty goes unpunished. How is that humanitarian?
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I largely agree with the conclusions of this article, but it fails to engage with the fundamental question posed by asylum policy: Why should certain countries bear the disproportionate weight of conflicts elsewhere? A woman fleeing her husband, whose own country refuses to protect her, would likely be as safe in Colombia, Argentina, or Canada as she would be in the United States. So why should the United States bear a disproportionate burden, simply because she happens to show up at the U.S. borders? Even the most open-hearted person must recognize that the admission of refugees, who typically arrive with nothing, often do not speak the language, and need various social services, imposes a cost on countries. Why should this burden be borne disproportionately by certain countries, like the U.S.?
The answer may be, "Well, the U.S. should bear the cost because it is an especially wealthy country." But that does not work because the wealth is so disproportionately concentrated in certain hands. It is a hard political sell to convince people that the U.S.'s wealth means it must be especially generous in offering asylum, even as it is apparently not wealthy enough to guarantee healthcare to its own citizens.
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I think you’ll find that Canada has done an exemplary job of accepting more than its fair share of refugees, especially those from Syria. To think that the US is alone in facing the challenges of refugees, many fleeing situations causes directly or indirectly by US aggression, is inaccurate and reflective of the inability of many, certainly not all, Americans to see a whole world picture rather than a narrow one of only self interest.
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That rather begs the question: Who decides what is a particular country's "fair share of refugees."
Canada does, indeed, take in a substantial number of refugees (although not that many from Central America). But does Mexico, which takes in far fewer refugees than the United States or Canada, take its "fair share"? What about Japan or Saudi Arabia--do they take their "fair share"? What level of development does a country have to be at before it can be expected to take refugees?
Dispersing a football stadium worth of people across a nation of over 300 million is hardly what I'd call "especially generous."
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We're the third most populous country on Earth. Not everyone can live here.
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The United States is the 176th most densely populated country on Earth. We have more empty space than Mexico, or any country in Europe and Central America. There is PLENTY of room for more people.
Also, countless studies show that immigration is a net economic positive for a country. The Republican party used to be pro-immigration for that very reason. There is no logical defense for the persecution of immigrants.
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USA is 161st in population density. We aren't full.
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I'd like to point out that the original comment here correctly stated that has the 3rd highest //total population// of any country on Earth. Nowhere was anything mentioned about population density.
It may shock (!) some of our urban-based friends, but there are many US residents that enjoy the current population disposition of the US just fine. The like open spaces. Even more shocking is the widespread belief in the US that responsible population growth/birth rates are vital to maintaining ecologically friendly policies, sane infrastructure usage and economic prosperity.
The US is not the catch basin for the world's population runoff. If there are other less responsible nations with respect to population growth and land usage, the right approach is to have them adhere to better conservatory and demographic planning principals, not jam the excess population into industrialized countries trying to even things out.
It really is hard to imagine that people can't conceptualize that there are other people that don't want 10+ story high rise sprawl all over their town.
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You are about to cross a busy street when you see someone get bumped, hard, by a passing car. You don't ask their nationality, their race, if they have a college degree, you just rush over immediately to try to help.
You see someone about to drown at the beach, you rush to do anything you can to save them.
These situations are the fundamental aspects of decency and humanity that almost all of us apply in our lives when someone else is in danger and we think we can help. The same principles are behind the international agreements and our laws in regard to asylum seekers. They are presumed to be people in grave, immediate danger and our laws say they deserve a hearing.
Our govt. is spending tens of millions of dollars to fly children away from their parents and to house both asylum seekers and people who entered the country without permission. Why can't we spend some of this money to treat them decently while, at the same time, preserving our national borders?
(How much are they spending? 100 children, in succession, placed under urgent conditions would cost 36 million per year under the contracts between the govt. and providers.)
Our humanity doesn't stop at the border and it has to extend to people in dire circumstances. No, this does not mean open borders. It means there must be firm policies and they need to be followed, not changed overnight to rip children away and then to be unable to reunite. We are a rich nation, we need to act like a decent, responsible one.
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Sometimes we attack cities and bomb people knowing innocent ones will die. Terrible, but reality.
I rush to help criminals who got shot all the time. I also support the death penalty. Local actions do not justify global actions.
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Someone who is desperate and comes knocking on our door, the southern border, asking for help is not a "global action". We know we can't save the entire world from various disasters (nor they us, if the disasters strike here) but turning people away without a hearing or locking them up pending a hearing is cruel and not respectful toward human life.
Virtually the entire Yellowstone National Park is the top of a volcano. If that were to explode, people in the western states would have three options: go east, so south (Mexico) or north to Canada. The line of cars trying to get into Mexico would be 100 miles long or longer. What if they decided to turn us away? What if they decided, "That's your problem, not ours."?
People help people as a matter of course. It is just a normal part of being human. Right now, there is great confusion between "illegals", people who jump the border looking for work and asylum seekers who are not illegal. Trump wants us to keep up the confusion and believe that he is doing good by locking up everyone. This is a violation of civilized practice, international norms and our own laws.
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There are almost 8 billion humans. Far more than the planet can support longterm. Almost 3 billion live on less than 2.50/day. Do we help them by moving them here? The era of just moving people to where conditions are better is over. Everywhere, yes even the rich west has too many people and too much poverty. Our problems have to be solved in situ. We can help people, we cannot take them in and it starts with birth control.
The behavior of the border patrol in dealing with devastated humans is more like what I would have expected to see associated with the Jewish Holocaust, not a police force in an America with the Statue of Liberty at one of its main gates.
I shudder to think that one of my neighbors could be one of those agents, devoid of ethics, emotion, and human compassion. Yet some of my neighbors are those people, or passive followers. These are people who would prefer to believe that unfortunate humans earned their plight as punishment for lifestyles and need to face their punishment.
This isn't an America I want to live in.
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You debase the memory of Holocaust victims by making such an inaccurate comparison.
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