The idea of refocusing immigration law enforcement from the immigrants to those Americans who employ and often exploit them is not a bad idea. Perhaps a reduction in illegal border crossings would result if the next time ICE raids a business they arrest the owners rather than the workers. They can start with the man currently occupying the Office of President of the United States. He has a long history of hiring undocumented workers. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/27/nyregion/trump-tower-illegal-immigran...
27
Not surprisingly, with plenty of help from his adversaries, Trump has stumbled into another bramble bush. Let's be honest here. There are people with a variety of motives advising prospective migrants on how to beat our immigration laws. For example, some are now advising migrants to skip the dangerous illegal border crossing and, instead, to merely present themselves to immigration officers to make a claim for asylum. And, with Obama's greatly expanded definition of persecution, they are instructed to assert unprovable facts, like they are being hunted by street gangs or are escaping domestic violence.
Children are used as hostages in this situation in that it seems more heartless to simply expel a child and, once they are here, easier to make the case for re-uniting them with parents for the good of the child. Then everyone stays! The separation policy quite obviously makes the child hostage strategy less attractive to the migrant population.
Sadly, many Americans believe that until Congress capitulates to an open immigration policy, it is both sensible and moral to support anything that undermines our existing immigration laws. That is not how this country is supposed to work.
It is important to note that many of these migrants are purposely violating our lawfully enacted immigration laws and they are voluntarily and knowingly exposing themselves to the risk of family separation. Who is truly at fault here? Enter legally or stay home with your kids.
13
Any perceived cruelty is the direct responsibility of the parents, who are knowingly and willingly breaking the law.
That the let wing progressive Democrats have openly encouraged them to do so, is just another reason why the same Democrats have lost the House, the Senate, the Presidency, all but 11 state governor spots, and countless other state seats.
Enforcing immigration law is not cruel, or immoral, or anything else, other than, simply enforcing the law.
Any parent seeking entry should do so legally. Period.
17
"Poor Mexico, so far from God and so close to the United States!" Profirio Diaz, former President of Mexico.
Many refugees flee the violent crime caused by the drug trade. Money and arms for the drug lords come from the US. We aren't solely responsible, but this is partly a case of "you broke it, you fix it." By undermining trade with Mexico, Trump will worsen economic conditions there and increase pressure to immigrate. His attacks on family planning abroad don't help, either.
We're still a magnet for high-talent immigrants. That's a huge advantage for the USA. Our greying population makes substantial numbers of young immigrants desirable. Trump's policies are based on racism and religious bigotry, not a careful analysis of what's best for our country.
Climate change threatens the ability of nations to feed themselves, a problem Trump worsens by promoting fossil fuels. We face a future of overwhelming refugee crises, with increasing violence and instability abroad that will threaten our security.
We need to be proactive, rebalancing our national security efforts with a smaller investment in weapons and more spent promoting stability through economic development. Healthy economies and peaceful societies don't produce hordes of refugees.
American and European refugee problems, bad as they are, are just a foreshadowing of what's ahead, problems that cruelty, walls, and regulations won't fix.
30
You do realize that using the threat of separation of families is a common authoritarian tactic (Russia uses it, among other nations) and that using children as hostages is illegal in both federal and international law, right?
21
I used to be a "send them all home" advocate too. In my neighborhood, I see Hispanics working at lawn care harder than any American would. Farmers need workers to pick their crops and can't find Americans who are willing to do the job. Some crops are harvested by having the workers "walk" miles on their knees among the rows. Again, you don't see any white or black faces among these workers. Instead, large swaths of unemployed white folks would rather subsist on opioids rather than take a physically hard job. We actually need a lot of "unskilled" workers who are willing to take the really hard jobs. Deporting hardworking people is not the answer. The god-president of the GOP, Ronald Reagan, is the one who granted amnesty to illegal immigrants.
Our immigration policy is a mess, but taking our anger out on helpless children is not the answer. We have also deported adults who were brought here as adopted children whose parents failed to apply for citizenship for them. As much as I am loath to say it, we need amnesty for the workers here now. We also need to give aid to the countries where their plight is so bad that the people risk everything to come here. The evangelicals, who are blind supporters of Trump, can't possibly believe that this is what their faith teaches. They should pressure him to change his policies. Children are being scarred for life.
20
"...obliged to choose tolerable cruelties....". Obliged?! The first paragraph stated truth, the rest of this piece gaslighted the entire issue to point of being unable to even suspend disbelief when finishing the column. Yes, migration is a big problem globally, but let's admit and address the issues that are causing it. We are better than this, most of us, and twisting the argument around is not helpful. It's everyone's issue, not just one party's.
20
Workplace immigration enforced systems like E-verify didn’t work in the past. Nor did political debate. Maybe it’s time to take a hard line.
13
This "solution", which basically solves nothing, is exactly why elite conservatives lack the intellectual capacity to persuade Trump supporters to abandon him.
2
Illegal immigration involves tough choices. The courts chose to make up the law as poor judges too often do - “a court ruling that forbids holding children for more than 20 days”. So the government treats a child as a “get out of jail free” card (remember Monopoly). Either the child is separated, or the parent must be set free in the U.S. This bad court ruling encourages more children to be cruelly smuggled into the U.S. so the parent gets a legal advantage. All immigrants believe they will become citizens the next time the Democrats take control of Washington. This is politics for non-citizens at considerable cost to citizens.
Alternative solutions involve expediting preliminary and final hearings for asylum and letting children stay with their parents in custody. If immigrants don’t have good proof send them back to their country and let them get good proof (affidavits, video, etc.); and hold the hearing in the local embassy. The current process admits good liars into the U.S. and it should be stopped.
14
Mr. Douthat spotlights the national hypocrisy that always and everywhere rules the immigration debate, namely that the demand for cheap labor is of paramount importance no matter the consequences and collateral human suffering.
5
The blame for the current shameful situation at our southern borders belongs to our craven, do-nothing congress whose members are too cowardly to defy the "Supreme Leader" currently residing in the White House, the extreme elements of their political base, and their billionaire benefactors to get effective, humane legislation on the books. Until congress finds the courage to work toward a bipartisan solution, nothing is going to change at the border. As it is, we're paying congress to do nothing but bicker, posture and preem for the cameras, and/or kiss the president's boots.
7
Mr. Douhat is correct but takes it as a given that if business doesn't like it, it isn't happening. And this is only one example.
That's the problem a columnist should be discussing. And it's a problem that The NY Times has not directed any one to do so. Readers are waiting.
We need limits on immigration that are actually enforced and yes that is everybit as cruel as laws saying I can't walk onto the Rockefeller estate break into their kitchen and make myself a sandwich even if my kids are hungry.
16
Under current Federal law, all an employer is required to do to hire a worker is look at a Social Security card (most keep a copy in their files) and get a completed I-9 form. Illegal workers supply fake Social Security cards as genuine looking as yours and perjure themselves to complete an I-9 form. Under current law, employers hire illegal workers every day and break no laws when they do. We need mandatory eVerify to verify genuine Social Security cards and the person presenting them.
Some states have mandated using eVerify already. Care to guess which ones? Red states. California, home to one third of all illegal "immigrants" in the US, went the other way. They passed a law preventing any jurisdiction in the state making the use of eVerify mandatory.
Here is a useful map showing where eVerify is required:
https://www.lawlogix.com/e-verify-map/
7
They say that the reason infants cry when distressed is because they lack a vocabulary to properly express their anxiety. When seeing the photograph of the little girl crying while her mother was being frisked, my eyes welled up with tears. Sometimes they are no words.
10
Democrats are NOT working toward "open borders" -- please stop repeating that nasty bit of Republican disinformation. We favor sensible legal paths to residency and citizenship so desperate people don't resort to dangerous illegal crossings. Ask yourself, Ross, what would happen to a penniless Mary and Joseph crossing our border with Jesus in arms, to escape persecution in their homeland. Ask yourself, Ross, why we are not rounding up, detaining and deporting en masse the many white migrants who overstay visas indefinitely. Why is is ok to cross illegally by airplane but not by walking through untold dangers?
Ask yourself why a Congolese woman LEGALLY seeking asylum due to murderous and sexual violence in the Congo, was detained and her small child forcibly removed, placed in an unlicensed overcrowded facility, and denied contact. Ask yourself why your family values do not value poor brown families. You claim to be Christian and hold lives and families sacred. You should be the first one out there opposing this cruelty in your column and on the streets instead of talking party politics. Who are you, Ross, when it counts?
18
This attack on families happened before in American history. Slave families were very often separated, as were many Native American fami!ies.
So the USA has had some (many?) dark moments in its history. And apparently these dark moments are continuing under this administration and it's complicit Congress. Yes, Republicans, I'm speaking to you. You're going to go down in the history books as one of the most misguided (or downright bigoted) Congresses of America. Your grandchildren will read about your cruelty.
It's interesting that Trump admires Andrew Jackson. Jackson's cruel treatment of Native Americans must be a field guide for this Administration's treatment of Hispanic immigrants.
14
Gut wrenching and appalling behavior.
The point that always seems to be missed in these discussions is that American employers need, and hire, immigrants. So the immigrants come here because they CAN find jobs that are better than their country of origin. EMPLOYERS WANT THEM.
Moreover, many of the jobs that Latino immigrants take are agricultural. Americans won't take those jobs. Even with much higher unemployment, Americans won't take Agricultural jobs. The extremely low wages are a result of Americans demanding and expecting inexpensive food.
However, those who are emotionally offended by the presence of poor people with dark skin would much rather point fingers at the rapists, killers, and animals swarming over our borders than to address the problem where is really lies. Greedy white Americans who love paying substandard wages and white customers who expect cheap products. "We have found the problem, and it is us." ... our greed and tendency to point fingers at others.
7
How about admitting first and foremost, we all benefit from these folks...produce pickers, gardners, housekeepers..let’s be honest!
I think lawmakers in DC would be very surprised at how grateful the American electorate would be to see some courageous, creative legislation that offers border control and safe haven. There just have to be some bright thinkers, right? That would be the way to keep America GREAT!
PS...anyone remember a wonderful young man saying something about “suffer the little children to come unto me”?
7
The bottom line is even if there is a law you don't have to lose your humanity to enforce it.
8
Another attempted tear-jerker aimed at justifying illegal immigration and an open border policy for the left.
No less than 4 other similar articles here this am, it's almost laughable.
There are MANY other topics the NYT can/ should cover instead of making this the only front and center story.
Most of us can see through this attempt and it serves to only strengthen our resolve and vote republican.
9
As usual, Douthat blames it on "the Liberals."
However, he forgot to mention that it was the obstructionist Republicans who filibustered all the bipartisan bills (which would have solved the problem) that were introduced during the Obama administration.
Douthat, like most most rabidly partisan conservatives, once again presents half-truths and false equivalencies.
19
So, I am waiting for the investigative journalist to break the story about all of the incarcerated adults, in the US, that have minor children with them. As the saying goes, "Tick tock, Clarice, tick tock."
.
In view of these "tragic", "cruel" and "inhumane" circumstances, regarding the separation of children from adult illegal aliens, I have drafted the following memo.
.
TO : All would be freedom seekers
From: America's taxpayers
Subj : Immigration Policy
Date : 17 June, 2018
Please be advised, our immigration resources have fallen extremely short with respect to the number of in country applicants. One of the resources that is nonexistant, are facilities to house families with minor children. For the safety of the children, they are separated from adult guardians. If you disagree with this policy, please seek other solutions to your needs.
Please be advised, Canada and Mexico have both offered to assist with resettlement needs. Further, Canada has government health care and low cost prescription drugs. Mexico has a similar program. Additionally, both countries have strict gun control policies that are fully enforced. Additionally, Canada and Mexico both use the metric system.
It is also possible you you to apply for legal entry into the Estado Unitos, at any American embassy or consulate.
tu amigo, Miguel
Republic of Taxes
5
You must have taken a class in degrees of cruelty - and blaming Democrats for Trump's policy - from Donald Trump himself.
14
Russ, your are without a doubt completely without any empathy for children. Your comments merely add to those of other trump apologists for what is reprehensible conduct unbecoming not only a citizen of the US, but a human being as well.
If you are a father, I hope your children know better.
Donald could stop this in a minute if he really wanted to. Instead, he heeds the advice of steve miller, someone who will hopefully be charged one day with crimes against humanity.
13
This article is an apology (long winded) for bad behavior by trump and his ilk. Liberals are on the right side of this issue. Sorry.
5
Ross, you will need immigrants to pay for your retirement. Anything leaders do to reduce immigration today will cost you a great deal in the future. Its simple demographics.
3
Knowing Trump, kidnapping immigrant children, so he can blackmail congress to fund his 'wall', would not surprise me.
He may throw in DACA to sweeten the deal --- if he has to.
6
Fourth paragraph from the end, first sentence: "... open borders, as much of the Democratic Party seems to want,"
Ross, please substantiate that assertion. I don't think you can, which means you're lying, just like Trump does. Opinion writers don't get to assert a lie.
Rest of opinion piece is mostly good.
9
Ross,
I have always thought your columns had strong logic, despite my disagreements with many of them. But this one boggles my mind. Separating children (some infants) from their parents as a deterrent? Why not cut people's hands for deterring stealing? Or cut their genitals for deterring rape? What would we call a society that does that? Would you want to live in one? Where is your empathy? Have you lost it like most of your conservative brothers who have also lost their minds?
8
Maybe if some of the people who hired illegals went to jail, that would be a deterrent to people coming here for jobs knowing that they wouldn't get hired.
3
When the Jews were fleeing Germany, facing similar adversities, we did not even have mass-graves. Yet pre-World War II blocking Jews from entering the US was shameful.
Now we have mass-graves.
https://www.insightcrime.org/news/analysis/homicides-mass-graves-and-tru...
It is even more shameful denying refugees a safe haven.
4
The taxpayers of this country cannot afford to make the U.S. the orphanage of the world. Illegal immigrants are ILLEGAL. The parents of these children are doing an illegal act. They want our benefits. It is sad they are/will be separated from their parents who should have thought about that before they came into this country illegally. The socialist democrats are ruining this country.
8
Let's simplify matters.
Trump wanted to build a border wall.
The Congress said no as it doesn't work and is too expensive.
Trump continues to sell the wall to his base. What should he do?
He institutes a policy which separates children from their parents, something which hearkens back to WW2. He blames it on the Democrats.
This creates general outrage among Americans and the world.
Trump's thinking, The democrats will now fund the wall as the way to end this barbaric policy. I won.
Trump is despicable!
10
This column is a repulsive apology for an even more repulsive policy.
How about long, mandatory jail terms for employers (I'm talking owners of small businesses and CEOs of larger ones) for anybody employing an illegal immigrant? Problem solved.
Oh, that would mean Mr. Douthat's hero, Donald J. Trump, would go to jail.
Sorry about that Mr. Douthat.
Dan Kravitz
9
Ok, and we are still feeling some angst and sorrow about those opioid addicted white young moms who never worked hard for anything in their lives. And now their parents are raising their children while they get high because it feels better than what????? Can we swap out the immigrant moms of the opioid moms - the moms who would OD in the front seat while their kid watched in the back seat. I want the immigrant moms. And their kids. They will make America great.
8
Trump and his acolytes know his policy is an abomination, proved by their frantic attempts to pin the blame on the Bible and the Democrats.
4
Dear Conservatives;
Unless your job demands it, you do not have to support Trump. He is not a conservative, he only plays one on TV. His fearsome base is not Conservative either. They are a wide variety of white people who share a fear and loathing of an uncertain present and future where they might not set the rules. If you who share a Conservative philosophy, a reasoned world view and stay with Trump, he will drag you through unspeakable gutters into financial crime, soiling the Constitution, misogynistic impropriety, inhumanity to the vulnerable, trade wars, environmental disaster, and it will leave a stink that won’t wash off.
13
It's a miracle, I agree with Ross. Enforce the E-verify system, nationally.
Instead of locking up the undocumented and, especially their innocent Children, LOCK UP the Employers. You know, those famous Job Creators, the engine of our economy, blah, blah, blah. A few hundred middle aged white guys, in cheesy mug shots would be a wonderful deterrent. Within Six Months, 90 Percent of this practice would stop, guaranteed. What have we got to lose ????? Nothing. And this horrendous child abuse would greatly decrease. The reason it's happening now is Trumps pandering to his base, for the Midterms. Admit that FACT. Seriously.
17
I don't know, Ross, your "assessment" of Obama's attempts to reform the immigration system don't seem to accord with reality, even a reality reported by Fox.
Republicans didn't want to fix immigration then and they certainly do not want to fix immigration now: it's their big winner, it's Trump's power slogan at his rallies. Bannon said just this morning that immigration should not be fixed until into 2019 ie. after the midterms...and you can bet than in 2019, it'll become in 2020, after the election.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/06/30/president-obama-says-e-verify...
10
As Trump's methods are turning medieval by the day and insults hurled to the neighbors are as rattling as calls for war, we should ask ourselves where will this will stop. It must be this November! Or else this ungodly infection will spread and our democracy will be high jacked by this oozing pustule, Trump's Party. This is a war for the sanity of America and here's the call to arms: Vote!
5
Ross - stopped reading when you wrote that this policy is an outrage for "liberals" - is it not an outrage for humanity? Good grief.
15
I have never heard anyone say we should have open borders.
17
First and foremost, where did you get the idea liberals want borders to dissolve? That is right-wing propaganda from places like Fox News. You should be above such unquestioned sweeping generalizations. It makes you sound like a deplorable, not an intellectual.
Read the inscription on the Statue of Liberty and you will understand liberals. Sending many asylum seekers back will result in murder, rape and assault. Because race is not a badge worn by the Democratic base, we can avoid being automatically dismissive because of country of origin, or preferred language. Not so much for the panicked remnants of the Andy Griffith Show, Nashville and NASCAR crowd.
It is a horrible conundrum. We give that to Trump, just as we did to Obama. The responses by each is telling. Obama tried solutions out of the spotlight, knowing he had an unsympathetic House. Trump parades cruelty to make a statement and sate his Roman Coliseum base looking for cruelty. Obama was concerned with our international standing and appearance.
Trump conversely acts on impulse, putting himself in the spotlight while driving away our most loyal allies and enbracing power-loving pigs like himself.
Democrats would love a well-thought out policy that a majority could coalesce around. If you, as conservative, should fear and mourn anything, it is the loss of the GOP to a man who is now a mob boss requiring a blood oath of loyalty to him alone. Our House would be at home in China and its personality cult.
15
Of all the wounds this Godless and hopelessly corrupt administration has inflicted on our collective psyche, the practice of separating children from their parents at the border is the worst we've seen...so far. On this Hallmark holiday called "Father's Day" every American should remember that we now live in a country that rips families asunder as a matter of policy. We should be ashamed. We should be angry. As always Trump is doubling down on the policy while lying and blaming the Democrats. I called utterly worthless Republican Senator Pat Toomey (R-PA) to express my opposition to this barbaric policy last week and will do so again this week. If you live in PA the best number to call is his Allentown office: (610) 434-1444. I always speak to a person when I call that number. Let the fascists know we are watching.
15
Two points of agreement with Ross. One, as he notes, dealing with these children is a problem that predates Trump. Heck, we've been losing track of thousands and nary a liberal complaint was heard. The second is that this issue has again smoked out the true position of the democrats - open borders. From their standpoint, if you can get here, you can stay.
10
The GOP owns the immigration problem. After all, it was a GOP Congress that refused to even discuss Obama's reform bill. So quit trying to blame others and own up to it without the needless fiction that Democrats want open borders. With the Trump administration's policy of separating children from their parents at the border, we are at least finally exposed to how morally bereft the GOP is on immigration.
If the GOP were willing to punish capitalists for hiring unauthorized immigrants, it would have done so long ago. It isn't. Nor is it capable of cutting off its Trumpian base of racists who want a return to a fictional white Amerika.
Punishing employers can only be a part of the deal, anyway. Any reform lacking increased guest worker provisions will fail to meet the needs of the U.S. economy. Where will all those farm workers, custodians, maids, landscapers, and food processing workers come from if there are only employer sanctions? Nowhere.
7
If it deters illegal aliens from trying to sneak in, I’ll accept it no matter how “barbarous” it seems.
10
Open the borders. We'll survive. Do away with ICE. We'll survive. Become a people who truly believes in whatever manifestation of God we worship. We'll survive. Reach into the future. Bring all of us along into that future. Learn to love. Burn whatever parts of whatever Holy Books are used to promote obedience to law rather than love. Learn to look at the other as self: this self, a respected self, my self. Learn to regard this world, this planet, as ours, belonging to all of us. No boundaries. No walls. No barbed wire, sniffing dogs, armed thugs. Love. Welcome. Share. Get used to living in a bigger family. One we cannot so easiiy control. We'll survive.
6
I do not understand why America has to put up with this nonsense. If separation is bad, send back both parents and children together. If they have real problem, let them go to American embassies in their countries instead of coming to the boarder travelling thousands of miles. Since supporters of illegals used all kinds of ways to legalize illegal immigrants but failed, they are using children to shame Trump administration to approve more illegal immigrants. Given a chance all people of these countries would come to America, but we cannot afford it. Catholic church wants to bring these people because most of them are Catholics and the Church wants to increase their numbers as others are leaving the church and Democrats want to bring them because they are their future voters. American children will be taken away from their parents if they are not safe or the parents commit crime. These people rightly advocate to separate American children in unsafe conditions, but oppose separation when it is the children of illegals. What a double standard. Why the liberal media is pre occupied with this situation, they should go back to Stormy Daniels, if they are not interested in Russia collusion any more.
10
The dirty little secret here is that Republicans hate E-verify for the very reason we need it. E-verify would sharply curtail underpayment of illegals and require businesses (i.e. the Corporatists) to pay at least minimum wage instead of covertly paying illegals less. As usual, the Republican hacks are doing the bidding of their corporate masters.
17
The murder rate in El Salvador last year was 81/100,000, Detroit was 55 in 2012 and 41 last year. If I looked around long enough, I could find higher rates somewhere in the USA.
These rates are different but would not palpably impact the individual living in those areas.
Yet, I don't see Detroiters fleeing their hellhole to go to Canada, or even turning themselves in to ICE for amnesty because of domestic abuse or a chaotic life.
10
Douthat has so much wrong in his foundation for his opinion piece that I don't where to start. It's one thing to have a bias. It's yet another to make up your own "facts" to support it.
10
OK, let's crack down on employers who hire the "undocumented."
It's not complicated.
"Lock them up, Lock them up!"
This would serve as a deterrent to employers whose businesses depend on the "illegals."
15
The reality is that pro big business chump and
the hypocritical GOP will never enforce E verify
It goes against their self interest of cheap labor
Why enforce with a mechanism that will hurt the bottom line of your mega donors?
It is far easier to act like they are acting
On top of that i see no rush of chump supporters to take the dirty jobs from the immigrant labor pool
A terrific example exists in the carpet capital of the world Dalton Ga Just ask any of the unemployed white angry unemployed trump supporters
You are bound to get an earful
5
Trump is cruel and will be a cruel dictator. He sees cruelty as strength.
6
Of course Ross, I get it now. Putting children in concentration camps is an Obama Administration sequelae.
So, Trump is right after all ... the Dems did it.
4
Sadism-pure and simple--along long lines of Gina Haspel Torture--should anyone really be surprised. The minute Trump was voted in I knew "Constitutional Crisis". Obama should've refused to leave..........
6
This "Cruelty" is self-inflicted by the Illegal Immigrants. If they do not break laws and cross our borders illegally, this will not happen. Period. This is 100% the Illegal Alien’s fault.
8
Like a typical Republican you speak of this issue in non human terms as if these chidren are collateral damage. Like a typical Republican you blame it on Obama. Republicans had a clear shot at immgration reform including enforcemen under GWB. What dd they do, nothing.
12
this policy, and worse, appeal on a visceral level to the Trump supporters who respond to his strong borders for security plank: rippib babies from their mothers sounds bad, but, hey - they're illegals and they got themselves into this trouble by their illegal actions crossing US borders. it's their own fault. America for Americans, only... (most esoecially the white ones).
but AG Sessions has been on this tear for years and he is in his element. this is the cookie Trump has doled out to his abused AG after badmouthing him for months.
these two need each other, they compliment each other, they egg each other on to ever higher levels of ignomy.
why, you can almost hear Sessions cackling through his drawl when making statements about the illegals he's sworn to protect us from.
3
Here you go again......Obama did it.You once again show yourself as a self described "conservative Christian" who is more concerned with the rights of the unborn than with the rights of living ,breathing,conscious children.You need to climb down from your gilded perch and see what HELPED make California great again......Mexican immigrants.We are now the fifth largest economy in the world.Up until Trump, we had virtually an open border with Mexico. By the way,you must be aware that from the debacle of 2008 through 2016,more Mexicans have migrated back to Mexico then into the United States.This fact was documented by the Pew Research Center which further found that this negative migration was because of their desire to return to their families and to find better jobs.I guess Obama did it!
4
Mandatory eVerify and employer audits are the key to restoring a functioning immigration system.
An estimated 40% of illegal "immigrants" enter legally on a visa and just stay. eVerify could be used to curtail employment for this category. It would dry up the jobs magnet. It would begin to unravel the scofflaw ecosystem of illegal workers and wink wink nominally law abiding employers who hire them to compete unfairly against employers who are more scrupulous in their hiring.
eVerify is a core part of the Goodlatte bill in the House. It's time for Democrats who decry employers hiring illegal workers to get behind the only measure that will stop it.
9
So if Im an immigrant who gets caught illegally entering, I can claim asylum. If I do, and they dont put me in some sort of detention, then they will have to let me go in America. After that I would just never show up for my hearing and be free. What's the point of even having an immigration policy?
We might as well just not control it at all if I can game the system that easily. Just open the doors and say do whatever you want.
As soon as American citizens aren't separated from their children when they commit crimes, I'll be perfectly fine with not separating illegal immigrants when they get caught committing a crime. Remember, these people had ZERO plans to ask for asylum until they got caught breaking the the law. They only asked after getting caught.
Maybe we could detain illegal immigrant families together near the border and process their claims in some kind of fast track court. But they cannot be released.
5
Mr. Douthat sets up a false choice: Separating families at the border or enforcing E-verify to keep unauthorized immigrants from employment once they enter the country. To present and discuss such choices conflates two separate issues: border enforcement vs. how we treat immigrants who are present illegally. The Trump administration must be held accountable for the fact that they are putting in place policies on both fronts based on the same underlying principle: immiseration of immigrants. President Trump and his supporters believe that by making immigrants miserable in every possible way, they will not seek to come to the USA or will not stay here once they are gain entry. This is merely a rehash of the self-deportation theory, since at some level, Trump recognizes that it is impossible to deport 11 million unauthorized immigrants. Deportation also separates families. This is most especially the case when the unauthorized immigrant spouses and parents of US citizens are deported.
We Americans are faced with a clear choice: Is our official policy to guide how we formulate immigration law and how we enforce our laws going to be to make the lives of immigrants miserable or are we true to our identity as a nation of immigrants ? Are cruelty and inhumanity toward people who are seen as The Other really who we are as a nation? President Trump and his enablers are making immigration the core moral and political issue we must face as a people. Let's not pretend otherwise.
3
E Verify might lead to better outcomes. Then again, it might lead to a large illegal immigrant population with no work, and families to support.
What do you think that would lead to? Those that cannot go back to their native country for a variety of reasons would become either homeless, part of a black market, or engage in criminal activities.
E Verify by itself is not a solution. Most of these people want to work and be good parents. We need to find a way to help them survive. We need to make sure that they can't go back.
Trump siad that even those threatened by gangs should go back!
I cannot agree.
2
I wonder how many of our friends who have poured scorn on Republicans approve of their homes being taken over by strangers? If they are ready to let them come in and take over their homes, and are eager to feed and care for them, hats-off to them. It's rare to find people who practice what they preach.
But in reality there're a lot of gas bags who want to do charity on someone else's dime.
4
First we need to stop demonizing immigrants. The hate and racism are not defendable.
We need laws that ensure that all workers are paid a fair wage and that illegal immigrants are not used to reduce costs. Go after the employers.
We need to fund efforts to address the problems in other countries that fuel the desire to immigrate.
We need to recognize the need for immigrants both to fill jobs but also as a way to vitalize our country. Remember we are all descended from immigrants.
We need to legalize the dreamers. In fact we should encourage the immigration of families with young kids since they will more likely buy into the American dream and be productive members of society.
Yes we do need enforcement at the border but it should be measured and humane.
If we are not willing to do this we should start by sending back all legal immigrants including those who have obtained citizenship starting with Melania Trump.
8
I’m all for E-verify. Show me one person who isn’t. So why hasn’t this policy been implemented? It’s been talked about for years. I think the real issue is that big business doesn’t want it, sontheir foe the republicans make up excuses for why they can’t pass it.
What also isn’t mentioned anywhere in this article is WHY so many people are risking life and limb to come here. I’m sure if you asked them they would all prefer to stay in their one country but living/surviving has become close to impossible so they see no other choice.
What are Trumps great policy ideas to help these countries improve their own economies and domestic security so people aren’t so desperate. Certainly imposing tariffs that will further damage these economies is only going to make this worse.
4
This is an interesting article. If you read it carefully, you'll see that Ross is basically correct. What the Trump administration wants to do is inhibit immigration. And this is an effective way of doing it. But, restricting work prevents would be a better one. It would be less coercive. It would work as almost every other country does. But, it is against the interest of the donors of both parties, up so it will never occur. The rich Republicans just like the rich Democrats want cheap labor. The poor Republicans, Trump Republicans, want a job. Trump can't admit that. So he thinks cruelty is better than nothing.
We should be able to make an equitable system that restricts immigration by restricting access to work permits and also allows itinerant agricultural workers as needed. But that would require an honest government that is unaffected by campaign contributions. We at makeitfair.us are working on a system which takes money out of politics and allows for better decision-making. Come and join us. Look us up on Facebook or Twitter.. Follow us on YouTube. Find out how you can help to make it fair.
5
Millions of people streamed into this country in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and all it did was make is a superpower and a symbol of hope for the world. These people worrying about “open borders” are less rational than they think they are.
4
And the vast majority of them came in legally through Ellis Island as did all four of my grandparents and my mother who was 2 years of age on arrival. I welcome immigration, but in a controlled manner.
6
But 1898 wasn't 2018: the former had industrial revolution labor needs and no welfare state, while the latter sees dwindling factory work and expanding social services. The "land of immigrants" spiel is an abstraction that doesn't accurately describe each era of a 400-year history.
9
Really? How did the ones on the Mayflower arrive? With visas stamped by the Iroquois?
It’ll never happen, Russ, because the Republicans, including Trump, are phony about illegal immigration. If they were serious they would be going after the employers of illegal immigrants, with deterrent-level penalties for violations (not cost-of-doing-business penalties for the few that are prosecuted). Instead, they make political hay by going after the immigrants, who are largely defenseless and don’t vote. In the meantime, it’s business as usual for hiring of illegal immigrants, as it has been for generations.
12
No country can afford to have “open” borders with no checks and balances. Over the years the impression has been generated that if you can somehow get to the US, you can stay and even get jobs. This does not make for a good immigration policy. Successive presidents have, unsuccessfully, tried to tackle illegal immigration. I feel the current problem has more to do with Trump’s image than with separations at the border. Snatching children from their families is not the right way to go. But then neither the democrats or the republicans seem to have a workable solution.
8
What makes laws, any laws, work to curb undesirable behavior? Fear. Fear of getting caught. Fear of consequences.
There are two ways to instill this fear: massively enforce the law so many lawbreakers are caught and word filters out or enforce the law enough to change the messaging so lawbreakers and potential lawbreakers understand they run a real risk of getting caught.
This country failed to enforce its immigration laws for so long that the message making its way down the spine of Central America was "get in and you can stay". We are now paying the price.
How do we enforce speeding laws?
13
The problem with your argument is that the law is being selectively enforced. A lot of enforcement against immigrants, little against the people providing jobs.
Here's how it really works: We allow millions to cross the border to take jobs (benefits us) and we throw back some fraction of these in enforcement. This is how business likes it. It's like culling deer. You want a manageable population. But you don't want to wipe them out.
Now we have what should really be called a refugee problem: Desperate people fleeing insecurity This is not the same as our previous illegal immigration situation and should not be managed as if it was.
Not by acting like Nazis. I don't say that lightly. I lost family members to Nazis. Indifference to cruelty starts gradually. Each cruelty desensitizes and leads to the next. We are breaking our own laws by doing this to LEGAL asylum seekers, people fleeing rape and deadly violence, deny them their RIGHT to due process How do we enforce laws against violating civil and human rights, and get the word out that breaking THOSE laws have consequences?
1
Any discussion about the Cruelty of separating children from their parents at our borders- should begin with calling a Lie- a "lie." The *Democrat Law* which Donald Trump continues to propagate as fact- does not exist:
"In 1997, the settlement of a class-action lawsuit set policies for the treatment and release of unaccompanied children who are caught at the border. The Flores settlement, named for a teenage girl who brought the case in the 1980s, requires the government to release children from custody and to their parents, adult relatives or other caretakers, in order of preference. " (Associated Press-June 14, 2018)
That Jeff Sessions has turned the asylum process into a criminal process, thereby insuring Children "have to" be separated, is nothing the agreement called for (or previously interpreted by the Clinton, Bush or Obama administrations).
Trump doesn't know or care how legislation is made and allowing him to continue to slap his evil practices with a Democrat Label, is every journalist and opinion writer's duty to call out- before proceeding with any further discussion on the matter.
18
All of this problem began with the 1965 grand LBJ experiment in wide open 3rd world immigration. Not only did the U.S. begin to take in 1+ million annually, the nation looked the other way on the other million illegals who sauntered in and overstayed visas. This has rolled forward, gathering steam since then - enabled by every administration and every Congress. No one has had the spine and political will to simply plug the hole and fix the immigration laws to curtail legal and illegal immigration, which is where we, the UK, Europe, Canada and Australia are headed. The world is overpopulated now, mostly from 3 excess billion uneducated, high breeding 3rd worlders affected by climate change and global economics that spells distress and famine and war and chaos - so they migrate someplace "better", until that better place is the same kind of dilapidated, overpopulated sinkhole. It is inevitable the human population must control its numbers and 1st world nations must limit those flooding in. Anything else is merely musical chairs with no winners.
3
Actually, not too long ago, when the borders were more forgiving, there was much less of a problem - people came for seasonal work and "self-deported" (please remember that this concept started as a satirical joke) more readily because they knew they could come back again without risking their lives.
21
First off, note that NAFTA, the investor-protection agreement masquerading as a free-trade agreement, allows capital to slosh across the borders of the USA but doesn't allow labor that same right.
Second, note that US companies are known to have advertised jobs in the US in Mexican newspapers and websites, saying, in effect, if you can get here (say, a slaughterhouse in the Midwest), we'll give you a job.
It is Congress, that body whose approval rating is even lower than Trump's, who could fix this with a guest worker provision. But they have been playing political football with this issue since Ronald Reagan debated George H. W. Bush in the Republican primary races. Both of them proposed exactly this: guest worker visas.
America's shame grows with every day of this Congress and this Administration.
"We're just following orders" is now the order of the day, spoken in willful ignorance of the ghastly, grisly historical predecessor of its use.
I was relieved that Mr. Douthat didn't turn to his usual pretzel-like arguments to try and justify the Administration's horrific behavior.
12
Addressing your last sentence. This is just as contortionist as Mr Douthat's other columns. Basically, it boils down to this: What Trump and the Congress are doing or not doing is cruel but they were forced into doing it because of Obama and the liberals and what they did or didn't do. We're in this mess, and these people are being treated so cruelly, because the Democratic Party wants open borders. EVEN LIBERALS have an interest in finding ... a way of cracking down. Mr Douthat cannot conceive of the possibility that we are all in this together; he must further divide us. He can also not concieve of the reality that Trump and the Congress have no excuse for the daily injury they are inflicting on this once great county.
1
"We're just following orders". And, if no one followed orders...
1
I never understood why all the fretting over illegal immigration by the GOP mostly (loudest) but no sanctions against the people here who hire them. It seems easiest overall to adopt some tough laws against that. Who knows, maybe that will increase wages, another problem our country can't seem to overcome. Jobs plenty, but what of the quality and can you make a living at it? Most everyone I know wants our borders to be respected. If this turmoil happens when the government enforces the laws, imagine the chaos and fighting if the laws were toughened.
20
Having visited western US states with large farming communities, it is obvious that the majority of farm workers are Hispanic in origin. What percentage are legal is unknown, at least by, but the number must be considerable. These areas tend to vote Republican and I am really curious about how those farmers will handle sowing and harvesting the crops without all those illegal workers.
I realize Canada doesn't have the size of the problem, even in relative terms, but we don't have an ICE and aggressive CBP. Our Mounties have helped border crossers rather than arresting them, except for criminals.
What has happened to "shining citadel on the hill"? Although I never really believed the US was that noble, I liked it a lot. I hope it can find its true nature again
12
Please research Canada's immigration "point" system, and you will find that its requirements are much, much more stringent than US requirements. Much. Pretty much no one over a certain age, with ANY chronic illness, lacking either an advanced university degree and/or significant wealth is allowed to immigrate to Canada. And the US typically allows 1 million legal immigrants a year, while Canada allows about 300k. Big difference.
6
Canadian sanctimonious hypocrisy is so tiresome. Canadian immigration policy excludes people it doesn't need and has an English-French speakers only clause, ie, No Latinos Need Apply. Canada has a huge boarder wall in place called the United States so it hasn't needed an ICE ... their government is discovering that needs to change.
6
The vast majority of the California farm workers are not here legally. In out Congressional district, our Republican Congress man is "against illegal immigration" but is even more against the INS arresting all the illegal farm workers. He has been instrumental in protecting the farmers who knowingly hire them. But I can't blame the farmers. Without the illegals, American agriculture would collapse since Americans refuse to take the jobs no matter how high the wages and benefits are.
1
The denial of the social pressures of overpopulation in third world nations is one of the rankest idiocies of the God-addled USA. No move by Trump was more stupid than cutting off aid to family planning in these countries driving out their own people because they have too many children.
27
VATICAN Inc. is the culprit in all of the 3rd world, as well as in the United States. The pope is the biggest proponent of open borders, forced birth for young and poor females everywhere.
2
Truth. Well said.
1
Well, I suppose we should listen to one another.
This is written with all the empathy of the Californians who wanted to close their borders to the Okies fleeing the Dust Bowl back in the late 1930's.
May God have mercy on us all.
11
Oh that refrain- " America is better than this". No it is not.
Exhibit A: The holding pens with little children paying for the "sins" of their fathers.
Disgusting. Embarrassing. Humiliating.
25
These are not holding pens. Since 2014, those underage illegal immigrants are placed in both homes of relatives, in foster care (FYI: There are not enough homes for AMERICAN kids in distressed circumstances). The new arrivals are in what are much like a cross between day care and college dorms - supervised, provided schooling, ample 3 meals a day, cable tv, activities, trips to amusement parks. All on the taxpayer dime.
Feel free from Singapore to send a check to help defray these costs, sponsor or perhaps take in one of these extended illegal immigrant families.
1
Your solution was never broached by Republicans because the beneficiaries of cheap labor is the employer. Money drives every decision they make. Staying in power long enough to loot the Treasury is their one and only goal. No matter how cruel they must behave, it will remain a long slide into a moral abyss. It is disgusting.
25
By..." the Republicans benefiting cheap labor" do you mean the "republicans" who control Facebook, Google, most Silicon Valley titans, California government, Disney ?
You're take on this is despicable.
14
Most Latino immigrants DO NOT take jobs from “regular” Americans, who refuse to do landscaping services, roofing, fruit picking, meat butchering, and many other labor intensive jobs. Someone has to do this work. Why not immigrants who want to do it? This “taking our jobs” talk is mostly nonsense.
20
No they just keep the wages so low that no thinking American would work for them. Keep shoving that one down the throats of struggling Americans.
3
Add poultry plants dangerous construction
toilet cleaning janitorial work home health aides
Child care providers
The list is endless
Like i said i don’t see ‘ real americans” lining up to take these jobs
Does anyone?
1
"Some harshness, some deterrence, really is unavoidable in any immigration system that doesn’t simply dissolve borders."
Is that really what you think? That government has to be harsh to enforce its laws?
Because you're wrong to believe it, and more wrong to excuse or endorse it.
The state can be compassionate and strict at the same time just like a good parent, or that God you toss around so flippantly to excuse your every cruel and bigoted thought.
A God, by the way, who is not likely amused, no matter the Catholic civil war you seek to foment on his behalf.
It is a nice touch, though, that you lay the source of public concern about this vicious Trump policy at the feet of 'liberals', those namby-pamby, traitorous, irreligious snowflakes.
In case you hadn't noticed, even some Evangelicals are protesting. I imagine you'll find the occasional Catholic in that parade, too. Granted, not your brand of 'good' Catholics, but Catholics all the same.
Bottom line: you don't have to set out to hurt people to enforce the law.
Other bottom line: no matter what you do, no matter what you say, no matter how big you puff yourself up or how loud you scream, if a person believes they need to cross our border in order to live, or to let their children live, they will cross it.
In this age of declining American birthrates, of jobs at every level going begging for lack of applicants, that isn't really a bad thing. As we are soon to find out.
18
The U.S. has a balanced birth rate. We are not in decline. The largest demographic is Millennials - all in their prime breeding years. We already have nearly doubled our population since the 1960s and do not suffer from a lack of babies. No 1st world nation needs to import babies. All are returning to normal levels that would insure a high quality of life, instead of the degraded lower levels that come with excess populations where cheap labor rules and half the country is underemployed and stressed. It's happening not just in the U.S. but all over the UK and Europe as well.
5
When you don’t have a logical or even an emotional argument, just throw the word “liberal”or maybe “progressive” in every other sentence. Most policies taken up by this administration are first based on lies and false premises. They are based on twisted tiny parts of the law, Bible or conservatism in them. They are fashioned by people trying to feed the worst instincts of their base. There is no argument for the family destruction going on. This policy is similar to turning away German Jews from escaping to America during the Holocaust citing the law. Some American impulses never change.
15
For once I agree unequivocally with Ross Douthat.
7
What happened to the Republicans' embrace of "Family Values?" Well, it happened to conflict with their warmer embrace of The Great Wall to keep out, harass and terrorize non-European immigrants seeking to enter our country. When thwarted by Democrats' refusal to encircle our borders with an impenetrable physical barrier, Team Trump turned to physical isolation and separation of children from their parents. It worked for Trump's forbears in Nazi-era Europe. Why not import a good idea from the old homeland to Trumpland?
9
Republican "Family Values" only applies to white middle and upper class people.
1
Nobody has the right to obey orders - Hannah Arendt
The defense of Germans for cruelty: we obeyed orders. Same as Sarah Sanders
29
What I don't get is what life-form was evil enough to tear that nursing baby away from Mama.
Would the journalists kindly track said operative(s) down? Interview them?
Breastfeeding is sacrosanct. It serves a number of vital developmental needs. Forced weaning, premature weaning, weaning in this brutal manner damages the body and psyche of both the baby and the mother. Any woman who has ever experienced abrupt weaning knows how extremely uncomfortable it can be.
Where did the young baby wind up? Who held her or him? How many times was s/he being fed? What if s/he was allergic to formula, as so many babies are? And what about the breast-fed babies who simply will not accept formulas of any kind?
These are health emergencies for very weak, fragile human beings. I commend everyone rising to the occasion to protest, visit, advocate and intervene on behalf of these littlest, weakest of our human brothers and sisters.
Eternal shame on theTrumps, Kushners and passive GOP! End this atrocious breach of basic norms!
1
Douthat's right about one thing, which is that Democratic and Republican politicians alike talk nonsense about this issue. The truth is that the American hospitality and construction industries, among others, are utterly dependent on illegal immigrants because of the wages and working conditions they will accept. The people making their way toward our southern border are not idiots; they KNOW there's work here for them, if they can just get past the guards. How do they know? Because when there's a call for people to clean toilets at seven dollars an hour, native-born Americans don't show up. They do.
So if you want to do something about this, start paying busboys and lettuce pickers a living wage plus benefits. If you don't want to do that, admit you don't want to do that, and live with the results. Honestly, and with as little gratuitous cruelty as possible.
20
What a ridiculous column! Anyone who attempts to define the other side and set up a straw man to knock down or blame as many pundits do, is out of ideas. While it is true that the U.S. nor Western Europe cannot accept every migrant fleeing war or economic hardship, there can be diplomatic and economic efforts in the areas of origin to ease the crisis. Yes, we are and will remain a global economy and yes, we should attempt to raise all boats. Sharing the declining world largesse is a moral imperative.
10
The intent of this policy is to do something so abhorrent that the Democrats will give in and agree to fund Donald's wall in order to stop it. Pure evil.
16
I see, you have tied the problem to President Obama and suddenly it has become less traumatic! That is, less so to the Republicans because they are looking for a solution to the problem. Yeah! Right!
5
Clearly, Trump's government is the one of a perverse low life; together with all Republicans and his minions in the White House.
Now we have a government of the perverse: a design of the "Founder Fathers" with their Electoral College; otherwise that dude wouldn't be in the Maison Blanche.
5
Actually, the problem is a 1911 Congressional Act that froze House membership at 435. That number is NOT Constitutional. Most citizens now live in or near population centers, and are badly under-represented while rural areas are over-represented. This imbalance spills into the EC. The Senate was designed to equalize STATES; the House to equalize PEOPLE. Even the UK has a bigger House than ours! UNFREEZE THE HOUSE! EQUAL REPRESENTATION FOR ALL!!!
3
Why is it that only undocumented immigrants are considered criminals, yet their employers are not? No problem putting the least of us in jail and letting millionaires do whatever they want to and with said immigrants. And if you are Donald Trump, you're even allowed to cheat them on their pay.
Perhaps ICE could separate employers from their employees to help settle this mess.
10
In the case of asylum-seeking refugees, we Americans are the cause of the problem. Our craving for drugs together with our destructive and ineffective "war" on drugs have created an enormous market and kept it illegal. In effect, we created and sustain the vicious drug gangs.
If poor families trying to escape the murder, rape etc. in Mexico and Central America truly are creating a national security crisis, we should treat drug addiction as the health problem it is and legalize drugs. We should heal ourselves, not blame the poor people being crushed by our hypocritical, destructive drug policies.
4
Most Everyone crossing the border illegally, pays coyotes (cartels) to help do it. These gangs reach into the US continuing to extract their due in these communities. These gangs know how to use the kids to garner sympathy...its working.
5
The cruelest thing? what about other contenders: gutting the ACA, throwing 1,000,000 citizens off healthcare. Guiding and assisting in the destruction of Yemen? Giving away $2,000,000,000,000 to the very rich so they can gut SS. Medicare, Medicaid. Setting up all future generations for an extra fast end to civilization by promoting coal, flirting with nuclear war.
I'm 100% positive the cruelest things are yet to come. Thanks Douthat, for the assist in putting him in power.
30
The real problem with immigration is apparently a large number of the American people are scared to compete with a bunch of people who don't speak English, have no money whatsoever, and who have no real work skills beyond menial physical labor.
If you are really competing for the same jobs with those people, maybe its time to reevaluate your own life instead of tearing apart immigrant families to try to deter them from coming here.
9
Regarding refugees knocking on the door from people or at risk from many points in the world,… The European Union, the U.S., and Canada are confronted with large and growing numbers of “surplus” and displaced people from the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, and parts of Asia.
Is it “Christian” to bar excess immigrants? No—it is un-Christian to resist immigrants. Can a country accept another billion people “at risk”? In each individual case—yes. All billion—no. That is the moral dilemma. It is a dilemma for non-Christians and secularists as well.
My own view is that the large majority of “illegal” immigrants from Latin America have come to the U.S. because work (at low wages) was available. Until the U.S. makes employing illegal immigrants a serious crime—probably with jail for the employers—we must recognize that the U.S. government is in effect telling employers “it’s alright” to hire low-wage illegal immigrants.
I have long thought that having tolerated illegal employment, the U.S. should accept those who entered the nation to take such jobs. They have become part of the labor force. IF the U.S. wishes to minimize illegal immigration in the future, it should be prepared to seriously penalize employers of new illegal immigrants along with deporting new arrivals. If the U.S. is not willing to enforce a ban on employing illegal immigrants, it should stop removing those who have taken jobs that are available.
Andrew Biemiller
4
Show up charged with a jail-able offense at any court in Virginia, and if you have a child with you (and no other legal guardian), the judge will warn you that the child will go into foster care if you are sent to jail. Not certain why anyone feels that illegal aliens should be treated better than our own citizens.
9
And the cycle goes round. We have, by far, the highest incarceration rate in the developed world. Russia is a close second, but no other developed country is even close. And while our policies are devastating to families and promote a cycle of incarceration we all pay.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/uk/06/prisons/html/nn2page1.stm
2
The E Verify solution is silly. Many, if not most, of these illegals will find day jobs for cash from small employers or homeowners seeking cheap labor who can "hire" them with impunity.
Douthat's snide comment about Democrats wanting open boarders is off the mark. Most Democrats understand the need for boarder control, indeed, most Americans of any political affiiation understand that. The devil is in the details and getting both houses of Congress to cooperate.
23
Let's use E-verify to separate the corporate types, small employers, and homeowners seeking cheap labor, who hire the illegals, from their children, by putting the exploiters in jail.
1
Wrong. He was exactly correct that most Democrats want open borders. You can see by comments here that most NYT readers want open borders. I agree that the child containment occurring now is cruel, but the reality is that no matter what Trump does, the democrats will call it cruel. And ANY restriction on immigration, ANY measures/laws put in place that result in ANYONE (other than a white male) being turned away will be branded as cruel, and ranted and railed about by the Dems, because their goal IS to open the borders completely. It would be refreshing if just once they admitted it.
1
I have yet to meet anyone in my liberal outpost that thinks open borders is a solution. Stop with the unsupported criticisms of liberals.
What we do believe in strongly is compassion towards our fellow man whether minority, LGBTQ, immigrant, female, it matters not.
10
Are you serious, Mr. Douthat? There's no "order on the border" from a Trump government that is busy creating hatred and hostility for the American people in the governing circles of every country involved in this business--especially the government and people of Mexico, where the border is. You can't moan about what immigration is doing to America without asking what America is doing to create it. How about our own absurd rates of drug addiction which creates these vicious cartels that move these people to our borders? How about Mr. Trump's calculated efforts to impoverish and humiliate Mexico, which creates NO incentive in that government to help border enforcement? Hey, there are experts galore who could expand what I've said to giant tomes. Get real, Mr. Douthat.
6
Much of the Democratic Party wants open borders? Really? Please name your source for making this statement. You know as well as I do that you made this up. Democrats and, hopefully, most Americans cannot understand, much less, approve of this immoral cruelty waged against families desperate for a way to secure safety for their children. The obligation of any parent is to protect their child. We have become a nation, not of laws, but a nation of unjustified meanness.
Here’s the suggestion. What say Congress, the senate and that man in the White House come together and reach a fair, humane and smart solution. We hired them to come up with solutions. We did not hire them to torture children as a means of negotiation.
And for all those “Christians” in this country that support that man in the White House. According to my Bible the Holy Family fled to Egypt to evade Herod’s order to kill all the first born. Mary and Joseph sought amnesty to protect the baby Jesus. Do you suppose that they had the right documentation with them? Seriously though, where would we be if Egyptian policy demanded that Jesus be separated from his parents? Would He still have been able to fulfill his great mission? Would we all still have the opportunity to be saved by his sacrifice?
Are we truly a nation that approves of ripping a baby out from the arms of their mother?
11
A thought: ask the UN Refugee Agency to establish resettlement camps for Central American refugees outside the U.S. Republican America is committing a crime against humanity by taking the refugee children away from their refugee parents. I'm a child of Holocaust survivors. My parents were in displaced persons camps in Germany after the war. They came to the U.S. as refugees due to supportive policies, and the kindness of many who made it possible. As a physician in the 1980s I cared for many Cambodian refugees. Never did I hear a story of children taken away from parents in the resettlement camps for Southeast Asians. Nazis did it. Pol Pot did it. But never immigration officials. I don't know if asking the UN to help is or isn't a good idea, but it's all I've got right now.
21
This is a balanced and thoughtful article, but it occurs against a backdrop of unspeakable cruelty towards the children of asylum seekers. Congress must act immediately to stop the psychological torture of young children. Then we can discuss E-verify.
1
Concerning immigrantion, I believe two things: 1) all immigrants situations are not equal; asylum seekers should be treated with dignity and respect and not like criminals; 2) penalize businesses that hire illegal immigrants (yeah, that’s gonna happen) to the point of arresting repeat offenders.
That said, do not mistake Mr Trump’s actions as a legitimate response to this issue. The decision to separate children from their parents is for one reason only — to get HIS wall. It is pure ego and venality. Anyone thinking otherwise is deluding themselves.
Seriously? So a man who comes into the country illegally with a wife and kids and gets free public education, a job, etc. is not a criminal, but the taxpaying American citizen with a small business is he hires him? It's another example of how illegal immigration both hurts our economy AND creates two classes of people. It's not an employers job to police the borders. That's the job of the state. The employer's job is to provide a good or service to people. Since the state can't do ITS job, it mandates good old taxpaying American small business owners to do it instead. It's be almost funny if we end up throwing small business owners in jail. What about THEIR kids? Yet another example of how this debate makes it seem like illegal immigrants are above the law.
2
Ross Douhat endorses the view that somehow Democrats want an utopian “open borders” policy. Who are these Democrats? I don’t know any and in my daily life I deal with many running the gamut from the ultra liberal to the “almost” Republican kind. And what seemed to be a column discussing Trump’s separation policy ended up being a column blaming Obama for the current quagmire. When smart men like Douhat peddle this nonsense is no wonder Trump falsely accuses Democrats for passing laws that require him to separate families seeking asylum.
Yes, we cannot accommodate every person who wants to come here to escape horrible situations at home. But blame should be placed where it belongs: Congress. Those men and women talk a good game but in reality they do nothing because their big donors and we the voters regardless of our protestations are interested in keeping open the spigot of illegal immigration so that our houses can be built cheaply and we can continue to enjoy tomatoes and other veggies for a fraction of what they would cost if expensive American workers picked them.
4
E-verify would go a long way to stopping the in-flow of illegal immigrants, but I would go even further. Instead of employing more border guards, I would hire immigration enforcement agents to go into the suburbs to impose stiff fines on anyone ANYONE, who has a nanny, gardener, housekeeper, pedicurist, roofer, laborer, factory worker etc. who is not legally authorized to work in this country. I wouldn't even bother with prosecuting the the workers, just attach a huge fine to the hirers and if caught a second time a jail sentence would be in order. Illegal immigration would stop in a minute and the program would pay for itself. If there were no means to make a living, people would not come here illegally and the countries they come from would be forced to deal with their own problems, instead of subsidizing their own GDP's with remittances from wealthier countries. Other countries manage to do this, I don't know why the US can't. Oh yeah, they don't want to, because people like the president would rather pay people from Croatia to work at their establishments, than pay a decent wage to someone from Maine.
7
Here's a dose of truth much needed in this era
of purposeful GOP misinformation/outright deceptions:
First of all, on 3/6/17, Trump's own John Kelly confirmed that the DHS department under Trump was considering separating children from their parents at the border.
https://www.cnn.com/2017/03/06/politics/john-kelly-separating-children-f...
Secondly, this was *never* an Obama policy.
Leon Fresco, a former DOJ official for President Barack Obama, said the administration looked at it, but ultimately rejected doing it.
"It was never implemented because the idea was that it was too detrimental to the safety of the children to separate them from their parents, and the thinking was it was always preferable to detain the family as a unit or release the family as the unit," Fresco said.
3
Far too many Trump-supporting, law-and-order Republicans welcome and hire illegal immigrants because they can pay them less and don't have to provide them with benefits. Farmers, food processors. slaughter houses, construction companies, hotels (including Trump's), restaurants, hundreds of landscape companies all across the country, not to mention the well-to-do housewives who hire housekeepers and nannies all knowingly employ illegal workers, all the while pretending to support Trump's get-tough immigration policies. If the administration started cracking down on the employers who provide these workers jobs instead of ripping immigrant families apart, they might make a dent in the number of people coming her. Once word got out that there were no jobs to come to the US for the stream of immigrants would be reduced. As long as they know they can get a job, any job, they will continue to come. All those self-righteous Republicans who applaud Trump policies with one hand, while hiring illegal workers with the other, should be arrested, fined and have to undergo periodic investigations of their hiring practices.
4
The best solution is to route these migrants into “blue” and Democratic areas as rapidly as possible.
Send a flood, tell the world that the gates are open, and then let them go to Malibu, to the Hamptons. Send them to the south and southwest side of Chicago, to Portland, to south central L.A. and East St. Louis. Send them to Baltimore.
The problem we have isn’t an argument over the consequences of mass migration from the third world, it’s that a certain class of people has been wholly insulated from these consequences. Despite the “sanctuary city” laws that many progressive communities pass, large concentrations of migrants don’t actually live in these cities because of saturated housing and shelter options. And so these migrants wind up in the exurbs, in rural America, in quiet rust belt communities. And when the people there have to deal with it, they turn to Trump. Across EU, the people who experience it have their own Trump’s.
The politicians, commentariat, and working class on the left are always the last to open their eyes, not because they’re more virtuous or less intelligent. They’re simply ignorant, and haven’t been given a proper chance to experience the consequences.
So why not give it to them? Why not have the Federal Government support a rapid, mass migration program into Democratic communities both rich and poor? They’ll either change their minds about open borders, or figure out how to deal with the challenge in a humane and scalable fashion.
4
So where was Ross Douthat's outrage when American children were separated from their parents as a result of non-violent crimes committed in the United States? So what is he difference. Douthat belongs to a religious organization which does not believe nations have the right to limit the peaceful movement of people from one region to another. In other words, his church teaches we don't have the right to limit immigration. Coincidentally, 90% of Latin American immigrants belong to his church. So lets be honest. Douthat does not have a problem separating children from their criminal parents. He simply supports bringing millions of members of his denomination into the United States and giving them citizenship and voting rights.
1
e-Verify is an interesting idea. But, help me understand why it will be better to have thousands of illegal immigrants who have no money living amongst us rather than the present situation?
The most shameful aspect of illegal immigration is that US leaders are not united in calling for an end to the all-pervasive corruption that shapes the socioeconomic and political realities south of the border. There is no reason - other than that corruption - that Mexico is not as prosperous and free as, say, California (some snickering permitted). To think otherwise is to be truly chauvinistic. Why don't our leaders demand this? Economic self-interest must have something to do with it, I suppose.
2
Your argument about immigrants taking jobs from American workers doesn't hold a lot of water. Farmers especially cannot find many American citizens willing to do the hard field work of harvesting vegetables and fruit anywhere in the country. Many American workers feel such jobs are beneath them. Until unemployed citizens are willing to do these jobs that supposedly are being stolen from them by the "other," to support their families and keep them going, then this argument is empty and specious.
4
The real hypocrisy is that our economy depends upon illegal immigrants to provide low cost labor for farming, restaurants and construction. After American businesses hire them, we choose to blame the impoverished workers.
If we want to stop illegal immigration, we need to stop the hiring. That also means allowing the market to determine what wages are needed to attract Americans to back-breaking work -- it will be a lot more than the minimum wage. That will also mean accepting higher prices in may areas. The Republicans don't want to accept those economic changes, so they will continue to blame the workers.
3
Mr. Douthat has done his homework this time and is right on in this piece.
Both political parties are not equally to blame for America's immigration policy mess, and deterrence by cruelty is completely the fault of the wrecking ball Trump Administration and its hypocritical backers in Congress, e.g. most Republicans there. However, both parties have dragged their feet on E-verify and have treated national ID cards (which could have had much the same effect, as in most other countries, and for many decades already) as a "3rd rail" instead of the basic sensible policy that they could and should be.
Ultimately, America has always been inconsistently ambivalent on immigration. Ready to look down on or bash immigrants and/or ignore the social and infrastructural problems of a large scale influx, but wanting their cheap and on-demand labor.
3
E-Verify creates incentives for migrants to engage in illicit ways of making a living in the United States when they otherwise would not. This happens because it disqualifies them from options to pursue legitimate enterprise.
If a person can work and live out in the open they generally find this preferable to living underground. When a person can work for a reputable employer who (hypothetically) doesn't steal from them they prefer this to black market or illicit means of making a living.
It's puzzling that Mr. Douthat, who frequently writes about religion, doesn't even mention the Gospel of St. Sessions, which requires the use of Trump's (concentration) camps for these children.
4
It is both heart warming and enlightening to read your calm, rational, explanation for the logic behind the destruction of families and the psychological torture of innocent children. No it isn't nice but surely some deterrent is necessary right? In making your point you blithely insinuate that the U.S. had no border enforcement in place before the Trump administration decided to adopt this cruel and inhumane policy. "Some harshness, some deterrence, really is unavoidable in any immigration system that doesn’t simply dissolve borders." In doing so your are adopting another GOP canard that is frequently used but is built on pure fabrication; that the US had no immigration system in place previous to Trump and simply let immigrants stream across the border unchecked. That is not the case. What is true is that the Trump administration has knowingly created both the travesty at the border and the unresolved DACA situation as cynical negotiation tactics to fire up their base. This oft repeated lie will not protect your morally bankrupt political party from reaping the righteous indignation they so richly deserve this November. Happy Father's Day Ross.
4
A much better option would be US forces going into Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, and setting up maybe 50 or 100 safe zones. There would be money for extra pay the local police to work with Spanish-speaking Americans, paid a premium for their language skills. It wouldn't be easy, but not as bad as Fallujah, but those countries, with the will, could be cleaned up enough that their citizens wouldn't be fleeing physical danger.
1
This is a balanced and thoughtful article, but it occurs against a backdrop of unspeakable cruelty towards the children of asylum seekers. Congress must act immediately to stop the use of psychological torture on young children as a tool to force congressional action on immigration.
3
Your premise is flawed.
Many even-handed students of this issue, like Warren Buffet's son, for one, have concluded that native-born workers do not and will not compete with unauthorized immigrants for the kind of work performed by the latter.
Thus, there is no native-born labor market for industrial farm work; or work in a slaughterhouse, back-breaking, low-paying work under harsh, un-palatable conditions. This work makes fast-food restaurant work, typically viewed as the lowest form of entry level labor, look like paradise.
I dare say that a native-born worker rationally would opt to rely on the social safety net, which is available to him/her, but not to the unauthorized migrant worker, rather than do this kind of work.
2
Just remember that all of us do not feel the same as you, Mr. Douthat. That is why we elected Donald Trump.
Melania Trump has stated that she will focus on an array of projects promoting children's well-being.
I'm waiting for her to speak up...
3
Ross, Brooks and Stephens pretend to have yuge disdain for their party's leader, but they just cannot walk away from the mess that is destroying our Democratic institutions and climate and they cannot stop trying to indict Democrats for the lunacy they've elected to endorse.
the separation of children from parents arrested for various violations of various laws is nothing new and the assumption that all the family units that come to the border are ozzie and harriet harmonies is past naive, the established custom of using kids as pass cards into the country, not to mention the likely existence of other abuses, makes the "ripping"-kids-from-parents-and-putting-them-in-"concentration camps" argument past foolish (and, btw, if families are fleeing poverty and violence, those "camps" are hardly cellblocks.
the terms of this argument are not terms of humanism but rather political partisanship, the virus that has eroded the health of all of our debate.
reform, new laws that secure borders, ending the infusion of illegal border crossers, and a corollary plan for processing those who are and have been here (thanks to inadequate enforcement of existing law) without threat of deportation should not be difficult if we are truly concerned with the integrity of out immigration process and the dignity of those who are already here.
we can prosecute criminals, grant work papers (and a place in line for lawful immigration for those who want one) confer conditional resident status, etc., but please, no more auschwitz photos or "basketing" of those who oppose no matter the argument.
"...before impugning an opponent's motives, even when they may be legitimately impugned, answer his arguments," says philosopher sidney hook.
3
Ross, separating children and parents at the border is a conscious policy decision by the Trump Administration. No LAW exists that compels ICE or DHS to do what they're doing. The Obama Administration detained families but didn't separate them and suggesting the Obama Administration is somehow the first to encounter this border problem is laughable. Blaming the prior administration for bad policy by the current administration comes with an expiration date long passed so your reference to Barack Obama is a false equivalency. George W. Bush had the same issue and chose not to separate children from their families. That policy is simply NOT who Americans are and is a dismal reflection of Donald Trump and his angry and hateful supporters. And Trump blaming the Democrats for a law that doesn't exist is a simple lie so please call it what it is since the Trump enablers in congress have no stones to even mention it. I doubt you're qualified to address immigration policy so mentioning the E-Verify approach is meaningless. Right now the Republican policy on immigration and everything else is their way or the highway. Until that attitude changes nothing will be done in any area since the president just doesn't understand the complexities of competent governance and his supporters want simple solutions to complicated problems.
6
It should be obvious that the terms of nonracist immigration rules are open to discussion. It is equally obvious that such discussion is completely separate from obscene cruelty to poor people, whether immigrants or not. Ross is immediately suspect when he makes no such distinction but instead goads Democrats for allegedly wanting open borders (fake news). And worse, he treats family separation as a tool, not a moral issue. Which works better he asks in essence: breaking a leg, or extracting a finger nail? Such jesuitical gradations of cruelty are inappropriate.
3
The problem of illegal immigration from Central and South America needs to be addressed at the root. Most of those crossing the Mexican border as immigrants are from Honduras, El Savador and Guatemala. These are very poor nations where the poverty level is high and the rule of law minimal.
The United States should develop a plan, in conjunction with other South American nations to assist these three countries with economic growth and increased law enforcement. Improved conditions would substantially decrease the flow of people across our border.
Of course, this will not happen. It is so much easier to be dismissive, distainful, and cruel to our fellow man, and finding sustainable solutions to the scourge of human misery would require thought, commitment and compassion.
3
I am sure that similar articles were written in the lead up to the USA involvement in WWII as Jews, and other asylum seekers were turned away. In hindsight a terrible tragedy. There are an estimated 12.5 million illegals living in the USA among a population of 327 million, so about 4%. Truly the USA does not have a serious illegal immigration problem. That said, it is a wonderful distraction for the "law and order" crowd that are using it as a slight of hand trick while perpetrating far greater frauds (i.e. the benefits of the tax cut, the tariffs,) and letting go of so much that actually is illegal happening at the WH as the First Family turns us in the banana republic they can profit from. Of course Ross tries to paint liberals as wanting completely open borders just as gun proponents paint liberals as wanting to take away their guns...hindering our ability to work together for sensible controls for both of these issues by sowing more discord. And in doing so Ross implies this terrible strategy was forced on the WH, a tactic he employs in many of his pieces. But Ross, you can't have your cake and eat it too.
9
To deal with immigration, maybe we should properly fund immigration courts so they can keep up with the case load. Instead of tent cities for terrified children and babies, the tents should house judges, lawyers and social workers.
To stem the tide of immigrants, maybe we should reach out to Central America with something like a Marshall Plan to build their countries into strong, stable, law abiding and upholding places where their citizens won’t fear for their and their children’s lives.
3
I have never heard an American liberal, progressive, or Democrat speak of desiring open borders. One must wonder why Mr. Douthat uses fodder from extreme conspiracy theorists and false Republican talking points used to encourage hate and fear.
In my view, Democrats empathize with Dreamers and do desire a path to citizenship for these children, who should not be penalized for their parents’ actions of crossing a border. Democrats appear to perceive democratic values to include those Foundational values of equality, freedom, and common good to be extended to all people. This only can be construed as desiring open borders by the ignorant jumping to false conclusions.
The more important problem to address are the inhuman punitive measures applied to people of color (often referred to as “Others” by some faith and political activist groups alike) who come to this country to escape persecution (much like the first European immigrants to America), oppression, fear, poverty, and violence.
This sadistic, near-sociopathy might characterize those who relish pulling wings off of flies to watch them suffer expanded to include human beings. Are such measures an actual deterrence or an excuse to appease the vengeful in what appears to be anchored in racism and bigotry? It is not difficult to differentiate so-called solution from sadistic, near-sociopathy when the former is being implemented with the latter.
7
Ross, the idea of open borders did not begin with Democrats.
It began with the former saint of the GOP, Ronald Reagan.
How soon we forget.
In point of fact Ross, Reagan wanted to create a Visa Program that was based on need, as opposed to quota driven and envisioned a day when one can go to work on the US side of the border, then go back home to the other side at night.
It is a matter of public record Ross. He made many, many speeches on this subject.
Nor did Reagan want a wall.
Most importantly, Reagan defined the true evil as the employer and created a criminal code that reflected that evil. He wanted to go after the exploiter, as opposed to the exploited.
He ran on these principles and saw it as an extension of his free trade policy.
If anything, this demonstrates how far your party has strayed from the ambitions of Reagan, as opposed to those like you attributing the idea of open borders to Democrats.
Next, E-Verify in its current form can disqualify as much as 2 to 3% of the legal US workforce, including citizens.
Would you not say that these kind of percentages are unacceptable?
It needs to be modernized and integrated with other systems and billions were dedicated to achieve this in the Senate compromise bill in 2013.
Guess which party killed the bill Ross?
Obama attempted to change the system and it was the GOP that stonewalled any effort. If a policy is cruel, then look no further than the GOP.
It was your party that created this monstrosity!
1
Yes,Ross, if the government really wanted to rid American businesses of "illegals,' it would be brutally punishing American employers for hiring them.
Then, those Americans who resent having these soul and body crushing menial jobs stolen by "illegals" could get them back.
But, wait -- the racist rhetoric candidate and president Trump has used indicates something else at play.
For aficionados of the Trump/Sessions approach to our borders, it's a "two-fer": punish immigrants who want the jobs by separating them from their children and/or compelling them to leave. And, then, force Americans (not like "us real Americans") who don't want or cannot do the jobs to "earn their keep"as indentured servants.
The snark, the cruelty to others, the abuse of allies, the cursing out of poor countries and their people, the mocking of Americans who express care for others' misery, isn't a bug. It's a "feel-good" feature of this Administration and it does what it is designed to do: play well to "the base."
2
So, embedded in this essay is the caution that if lots of brown people become residents, legally or illegally, in the U.S., eventually a woman of color, e.g. Kamala Harris, will be elected President.
3
The "open borders" argument is the kind of intellectual dishonesty we expect from conservatives; but, for the NY Times editorial page to allow that term to be used is offensive.
Just because Democrats don't want to waste $28 Billion on a wall that won't stop a single illegal immigrant, a wall we were promised by candidate Trump that would be paid for my Mexico, doesn't mean anyone supports open borders. 13th century solutions to today's problems is about all we seem to get from the Republicans.
4
There is no doubt that our country's immigration policy is in total disarray. Douthat does an incredible word twisting job and never fails to throw red meat (open border liberals - really?) while being an apologist for the incredible level of inhumane treatment of immigrant families and children by the administration.
But if honest discussion of immigration policy is truly called for let us please include the completely worthless (and outrageously expensive) border wall and the fact we now have the National Guard criminally twiddling their thumbs on our southern border. Fix bayonets indeed!
And oh by the way, I give the Germans (and Merkel) credit for playing a huge part in addressing the human toll of the ME mess left by the destabilizing wars that the US hand great hand in. Too bad no good deed goes unpunished.
3
It's clear from reading the comments on this column that most NYT readers both understand the sordid, nasty history of immigration reform over the last 10 years and resent Douthat's twisted logic that it's all liberals' fault. Congress could have made significant changes to reform the law but hasn't. Obama tried to address the issue, but was ignored by law makers. Obama finally did "something" that dared to be an attempt at a compassionate solution. Now, Trump supporters claim this means liberals believe in "open borders" (not one person I have ever met believes in such a thing). Most also agree that those who employ improperly documented workers should receive jail time or severe jail sentences. Most also believe that there are solutions to this ridiculous problem. Of course, "business" owners will never pay for their part in creating the immigration problem.
Liberals- if you want this whole thing to end, you need acknowledge that Trump supporters don't care about real reform. they merely like to waddle in a pool of lies, resentment and ignorance. When the issue of illegal immigration comes up, let them know that it is the Republicans in Congress who brought us here.
6
THE immigrants trying to enter our country illegally or via asylum is totally out of control. These aliens have been forewarned of the separation of families trying to cross our borders. The hypocrisy of the US conference of catholic bishops, the MSM, other religious organizations who constantly cry outrage and criticize our country and president for demanding closed borders, are 100% silent on criticizing the leaders of those countries of Guatemala. Honduras and El Salvador who are responsible for making the lives of their citizens intolerable. Who are these despots and why are the Catholics and democrats totally silent on them and their leadership
?
5
This policy "has become a source of outrage for liberals."
In the writer's lexicon, liberal is a word of scorn. By identifying the "outrage" as theirs he denigrates that outrage.
Rather this immoral policy is an outrage for moral people.
If these illegal aliens are truly asylum seekers, justifiably fleeing horrific violence, you would think one or two of them might show up for their appointed asylum hearings.
Experience has shown they were busy on that day, apparently.
Detaining them until their hearings is the only responsible thing to do.
As soon as we have family detention centers for US prisoners who wish to have their kids stay with them in jail, we can think about offering that service to illegal aliens.
3
We should immediately mandate E-Verify. Employers that knowingly hire illegal immigrants need to be tried and sent to prison if convicted. Not just hiring managers- owners.
The far left, on illegal economic immigration, is completely bonkers. Their arguments are silly are self-serving.
They argue that these illegal economic migrants do the work Americans will not do. Well of course any sane citizen would refuse to work back-breaking jobs for slave wages. What the far left is really saying is that they want to 'help' poor and desperate people be taken advantage of. All so they can feel good about themselves but, really, so they can get cheaper goods and services.
The far left wants to 'help' people by making them part of a permanent underclass of servants and wage slaves. They want to 'help' people who are (supposedly) suffering from violence and crime in their home countries by making them suffer from violence, crime and economic deprivation here in the US.
Big business and illegal economic immigration advocates (the far left) want the same thing- cheap, desperate, labor. Both are willing to make citizens suffer mightily to achieve their goals.
At least we will all get to live in our new Third World paradise together.
5
Ross is up to his usual shenanigans, completely misrepresenting the role progressives, especially President Obama, has played. His comments make it seem as if President Obama was throwing his arms open to illegal border crossings. All it takes is a half hearted search to remind us that Obama sent the National Guard to the border in 2010 (as Bush did in 2006), resulting in a steep drop in illegal human traffic. What both Bush and Obama wee somehow able to avoid was this travesty of ripping young children away from their parents.
1
We buy their drugs creating drug cartels which destabilize their governments. They flee because of the violence in their own countries just as any of us would.
If we legalized drugs and sold them in state or liquor stores then the cartel bosses could become legitimate business people paying taxes.
We could tax the sale of drugs to pay for treatment for addicts. Certainly our drug enforcement has been a colossal failure, we have lost the war on drugs and the sequelae is much worse. Besides take away the cachet of illegality about drugs and the desire to use them will probably be reduced.
Since illegal immigration is essentially economically motivated and since the wages paid to illegal immigrates tend to be lower than those paid to US citizens and since unemployment is below 4% and since much of the work done by illegal immigrates is work that directly benefits American consumers by lowering costs (home construction and home remodeling) and since other work done by illegal immigrants is work US citizens are loath to do at any wage (lawn maintenance, slaughter house jobs, agricultural field work) my conclusion is that this proposal is right up there with trump's tariffs as a truly dumb idea.
I was wondering how long old Ross would take to blame Obama and the Democrats for this horror show. It's so predictable. I almost quit halfway through, but was eager to see what he suggests is the solution. And I agree, as liberal as I am, that e-verify is the answer. I am not alone in this. In fact, many articles I've read on this state that most Americans support it. Just like most Americans support some sort of gun reform. And yet nothing is done. Why is that? Big business controls our "government". Those who voted for Trump voted for the status quo, they just don't realize it yet. The one thing this hateful, un christian, separation of families has shown is what I believed all along. Most Americans, including Trump voters, are not cruel and evil people. Most Americans are decent and generous people who will not abide this cruelty much longer.
1
We are at that moment when we should all ask ourselves: What did I do? Not what could I have done? That is the question about morality. What did I do? Nothing really. Can't say you didn't know.
Perhaps if the republicans hadn't pledged to block anything and everything for 8 years, solely in the name of prejudice and ignorance and winning, we wouldn't be in the mess we are in.
11
It is the height of irony that Trump so derides NAFTA, both during his circus campaign and his train wreck presidency.
After all, it was US corporations' shift of focus away from Mexico in favor of China almost immediately after the signing of NAFTA that caused the illegal immigration to surge, peaking in 2007.
US corporate FDI (foreign direct investment) to Mexico dwindled as China became the preferred destination for their capital.
Think of it as locks in a canal. If you open the gates (border) before the water level (living standards) is even on both sides, disaster! That's the situation that NAFTA was supposed to address. It was supposed to even the water levels so it would be more akin to the situation between the US in Canada.
The problem is we never fulfilled the promise of NAFTA!
1
All of this immigration violation is tragic to behold. There is no Statue of Liberty on our SW border to welcome immigrants, either. We do need a new Ellis Island in our desert to welcome all those eligible to come here. Ellis had to turn away those not eligible. So there's always a story of joy accompanied by a story of sadness. We need to find a way to make immigration work fairly for all who seek it.
1
I have always felt that punishment for immigrants when they are treated unfairly by employers is unjust and counter productive. Douthat is right though, we should use the least cruel policy to accomplish the desired results. So we should force all employers to pay a fair wage and provide safe and humane working conditions. When we do, Americans will be competing on a level playing field with immigrants. This would constitute a hardship for employers, but it would be the least cruel way to accomplish our goals.
2
I do not believe that 'open borders" is a Democratic party policy as Mr. Douthat implies and, surely, most Americans of either party believe that a country has to have control of its borders. If tighter border security requires the creation of some form of physical barrier, I ( as a moderate Democrat) am not opposed to that.
However, the real issue is how the US can help foster the right economic and social conditions in Mexico and Central America so that these people have economic opportunity and personal safety in their home countries. Historically, illegal immigration has eased as living conditions and opportunities have improved in Mexico and Central America. One of the benefits of NAFTA, which Pres. Trump never discusses , is that it created good paying jobs in Mexico and, thus, was an incentive for Mexicans to remain there.
We should be putting more of our resources and focus on helping these countries build the kind of societies that will encourage their citizens to want to live there, knowing that they and their children will be able to live without fear and with the opportunity to improve their lives.
At the same time, we needs to take steps to improve border security and reach a reasonable and humane compromise on the status of illegal immigrants already in this country, both the 'Dreamers" and their families.
1
I think it's important to distinguish between people who are coming to the US for work and people who are coming for refuge from violence in their home countries.
Those who are coming for work should be allowed in if their labour is needed (as it indeed seems to be)—maybe on a temporary work permit. Creating a legal way for them to enter the country and work—as well as ensuring they are treated fairly and protected by our labour laws—would be beneficial. If there's a legal path to work, then those who take an illegal one (and those who employ them illegally) can be punished. Right now, there's no legal path to work—but there's still a large demand for the labour (from employers) and for the jobs (from the immigrant workers)—so naturally there are lots of illegal workers.
The refugees and asylum seekers present a more difficult problem, because (while some may also be looking for work) their primary motivation is finding a safe home. The US can't take all of the world's refugees and asylum seekers, so this is where some kind of international program needs to exist to do two things: (1) reduce the violence in the countries people are fleeting; (2) find ways to settle those who are still under threat in sustainable ways in various countries. If only the US still had people and a government that respected the international order and wanted to work cooperatively with other countries to do good for the world. Unfortunately, the US has made a different choice.
1
So allow in everyone willing to undercut the wages of Americans... because that is why employers "need" immigrant labor?
That is a distinction with indifference.
3
Unemployment is very low in the US now and not a lot of Americans are signing up to pick vegetables. Plus, if we applied US labour laws to the migrant workers (including minimum wage laws) they would compete on ability and willingness to work, not on lower cost. This assumes (as I did) that the labour is needed and not unnecessary surplus. But the evidence is it is needed as there is a shortage of farm labour.
As Mr. Douthat notes, since the federal court, as the result of an ACLU lawsuit, banned family detention centers, the children must be separated from their parents just as are U.S. citizens' children are when their parents are arrested.
The solution to this problem is to re-legalized humane family detention centers for illegal border crossers. We can no longer let the adults go. They dissappear into the Hispanic milieu with the aid of well funded activist groups.
4
Honesty, is not only too much to be expected from this administration, but as this column shows, also too much to be expected from Ross Douthat. It is factually flawed (stating as a proven assertion that DACA encouraged waves of illegal immigrant youth), condescending ("even a liberal" and variations thereon) and, its solution for E-verify to save is about as porous and impractical as would be an NRA version of "universal" background checks.
The real solution - which Douthat and his tough-minded brand of compassionate conservatism evade - is that this nation possesses in abundance all the resources necessary to address the "immigration crisis" if it only had the will to do so. How? If we have the chutzpah to propose spending $20 billion for a wall, we have the wherewithal to invest likely far less in building and maintaining the humanitarian systems, facilities and programs to process, house, sort, assign or reassign, train, employ and monitor the aspiring human resources following our hallowed path of seeking and finding harbor in this great nation.
5
The Koch Brothers and Chamber of Commerce Republicans love low-wage immigration.
Let’s start with the basics. The Koch Brothers are libertarians and, as such, believe in open borders for goods, services, and people. Their belief is grounded in the sincere belief that national governments are adversaries that disrupt normally functioning markets. Chamber of Commerce Republicans are a little more subtle, but no less focused on limiting employees’ negotiating power in order to boost margins.
Their preferred tool is to offshore production to low-wage, low-regulation countries and then bring the products back to the U.S. toll free. Since some industries like construction, hospitality, some retail, landscaping, and agriculture cannot offshore production, the solution is to flood the U.S. with low-wage immigrants, legal ones if possible, illegal ones if necessary.
Their opposition to mandatory E-Verify is completely understandable.
The real mystery is what happened to old-school Democrats who understood the impact of offshoring and open borders on labor and domestic wages. The first clue begins with Bill Clinton and the next one with K Street lobbying budgets.
5
"The real mystery is what happened to old-school Democrats who understood the impact of offshoring and open borders on labor and domestic wages."
Bernie Sanders gets it. Tellingly, he's also (to his immense credit) not a Democrat.
3
As a life-long Democrat, I support efforts to halt illegal immigration to our country. I support additional border patrols. There is a type of lawlessness on our southern border that isn't healthy, and we need to deal with it.
And as a life-long human being, I am ashamed of my country's cruelty in its handling of these children. Children.
This will go down in history as Trump's version of the Japanese Internment Camps.
My father was a pastor. He died six years ago, after a long and meaningful life. I miss him terribly. But I'm glad he does not have to read about Jeff Sessions defending these actions as being Christian. I don't know what it would do to him. There are no words to describe this distortion of the message of Jesus.
11
Well, you should promote a law to bring down the Statue of Liberty and put in its place a monster with all kind of guns.
Ah! and change the legend: You poor, oppressed people, don't dare to come to my shores: "do not make my day."
Missing from this discussion are any thoughts about why people choose to leave their home countries in the first place. That is where the genuine solutions are. If we build a world where there are only "haves" and "have nots", we condemn ourselves to this constant struggle. If we can learn to share the wealth, globally, and oppose violence, whether from war or crime, people will be more content to remain with their families in their home countries. That may sound like unrealistic idealism, but we must be looking at why they leave their homes, and not become victim to the false arrogance of why they come here.
The right answer is to detain families together - in specially built, minimum security centers while their immigration claims are worked through. We used to be able to do this. That’s what Ellis Island was. Somehow through the years, this simple and logical approach was made much more complicated than it needs to be.
.
And another thing to note. The numbers of immigrants coming through our borders are a good measure of how Great America is - we should want more. And the corollary is also true: if ever immigration stops - we will know our Nation has failed.
11
The number of people who want to get into Harvard is a good measure of how great Harvard is. But if Harvard took everyone who wanted to get in, it wouldn't be Harvard anymore.
2
George W Bush's compassionate conservatism didn't work. So now the GOP is going to try Callous Conservatism.
5
Callous? How about Cruel.
The consequences of the "amnesties" which is a fiction, is to bring hard working younger people into America. America needs this very much or we become like Japan and Europe. Old with a slowing economy.
It should also be pointed out to Douthat that the Democrats tried to enact an immigration law and the Republican Party blocked it at every turn. He those who once favored such a law faced with the evil base turned against it. It is not both parties. It is just the Republican Party that is to blame.
12
Illegal immigration won’t stop until employers are held accountable. Better yet make it the law that tax deductions for none e-verified employees won’t be allowed. And end the hypocrisy of independent contractors. Our immigration system is broken and our loosey goosey employment laws are broken. This won’t get better so long as workers are not as important to the GOP as employers.
25
Even when we interned people of Japanese ancestry in WW2 we didn't separate families.
14
Liberals and progressives were well aware of the deportations conducted under the Obama Administration. I remember reading articles referring to Obama as the “Deporter in Chief” so don’t think we were unaware. It was one of the Obama Administration’s policies that I particularly didn’t agree with. But the right never gave Obama credit for that, or anything else for that matter. What we need to for Congress to develop and pass a bipartisan plan to strengthen our immigration system.
6
but what Republicans truly want, and the only thing they will truly work for, is legislation that eliminates anyone who is not white. it may be impossible (let's hope), but anything else is a nonstarter as long as the GOP is in control of the process.
1
Stating that democrats somehow are supportive of open boarders paints us with too broad a brush. Many democrats are strongly supporters of closely monitored and controlled boarders(not white elephant walls) . There are also many of us that strongly support e-verify. It is the republican business owners with support of some democrats that prevent the implementation of effective e-verify that would help prevent the future illegal flow of workers from outside of our country.
8
They are "illegal" because congress has refused to deal with the reality of the need for categories of workers in this country that native born citizens are just not meeting. Be they agricultural, or factory workers processing meat products, landscape workers, hospitality workers, restaurant staff, etc., etc.
So congress will continue to play their games, families will continue to be broken apart, 45 will continue to lie, America will continue to be disgraced.
1
What the country desperately needs is a sane policy on immigration. But sane policies is not something this country is very good at. It is not just immigration: consider gun legislation, health care, mental health issues, infrastructure investment, etc. The list keeps growing while Congressmen spend most of their time raising campaign money so they can keep getting their paychecks. lavish pensions and better health care coverage than their constituents. Trump is just the apotheosis of a me first disease that has infected almost half the population.
13
E verify is not the answer, not just because the database is inaccurate but because it does not solve the statutory language problem that makes enforcement against employers difficult. Nor does it solve the labor demand problem for farm workers or address the independent contractor loopholes.
Our immigration enforcement system focuses on the easily replaceable immigrant rather than address the real problem of the employers and the systems inability to address their needs. It's intentional because immigrant labor legal or illegal is not only less expensive it also provides diligent workers in difficult to fill jobs.
We need orderly immigration that meets the needs of this country and recognizes the importance of family immigration. We spend billions on detaining individuals who pose no threat and spend minimally on the court system that resolves if they can stay in our country. This creates a bottleneck of literally years of delay before they have an answer on whether or not they can stay in the US. In the meantime life goes on. They have children, build businesses, become a part of our communities.
Where is your fiscal conservatism on this giant waste of money for unnecessary detention? DHS's own study though VERA institute established it is not necessary to detain asylum seekers to insure they attend court. Of course then there isn't millions for the private prison corporations no one to blame as the dangerous or threatening other.
4
Douthat ignores a major problem: seasonal workers are needed but not paid enough to make that work attractive to anyone but those forced to take what the can get. And those, almost by definition, are undocumented workers.
Strict enforcement of documentation requirements will lead to industries having to choose between shutting down or much higher wages.
If you want a solution, ask Republicans in Congress, who have held the majority since 2010, why they can’t get their act together and pass comprehensive immigration reform.
Repeating Trump lies 3000 and 3001 that the Democrats are responsible for this cruelty and that Democrats want open borders is not part of the solution.
Sorry, Mr. Douthat, if you are not part of the solution, you are a part of the problem. And make no mistake, you are part of the problem. And for that there will be no pardon.
10
The Reveal podcast pointed out that illegal immigrants living in America increased dramatically after we made it harder for them to come in to do seasonal work.
Also, Ross ignores the point the Americans have refused many types of jobs. Paying decent wages might help, but not enough to solve the problem.
5
Trump's separation policy was conceived as a deterrent to illegal entry into the country, never mind the traumatic effect on the children. Public officials who support such a policy are unfit to serve, especially Trump.
22
Look at it objectively: The parents are getting exactly what they want - their children are in the USA, many of them in foster care, and safe. This may sound cynical, but if you think it over, it is the truth.
14
And what deterrents WOULD you approve of, Mr. Landrum? That's the thing with Democrats - All I'm hearing are criticisms - not solutions.
1
Yes, how lucky for the children: Trump concentration camps, imbued with the love for others, especially immigrant children, that shines through him, his current republican administration and its supporters.
Conventional Douhat sophistry. Condemn the separation policy and then by some strange alchemy blame it on "Liberals" and the previous Obama administration as if illegal immigration hasn't bedeviled politics in this country for decades.
Nor would e verify solve the issue of the roughly 12 million illegals many of whom have been here for years. As for deterrence there are practical limitations on this as a policy as the separation issue demonstrates.
27
Calm down. He's just giving a little history lesson to those who think Obama had NO role in this. He's spot on. And you're right- it goes back decades. And finally, someone willing to take a hard line, stop kicking the can down the road and bring it to a resolution. What do you think the answer is? Put the families up at a Four Season's? There's a lot of women in American prisons too,that we have separated from their children, because they broke the law...Where's your outrage for that???
Mr. Douhat more politely and seemingly more rationally ends up just where the Trump lies begin - it's all Obama's and the Democrats fault.
How about Congress's failure to act to address immigration in a comprehensive way? Addressing immigration also includes the recognition that these immigrants that we are trying to keep out at the border play a crucial role in our economy filling many jobs that would remain unfilled otherwise. It includes helping Central American countries address their drug violence problem (linked to our own drug problem) making staying put a better choice for many. It includes recognizing that immigration is likely part of our economic future for us given our declining birth rate and aging population.
No Democrat I know wants open borders; that's another Republican lie. What the ones I know want is policy that recognizes that we need a certain number of immigrants, that is rational, and most of all that is humane even to those who attempt to cross illegally.
56
I know several Democrats that do support open borders.
When the Earth is ruined by overpopulation, the blame will fall directly on religions competing with each other by population growth.
Mr. Douthat is correct in his assertion that e-verify would have meaningful effects in deterring illegal immigration and promoting legal immigration. However, given the current divisions, congressional passage is highly unlikely (not even being discussed in negotiations to my knowledge).
Consequently, a rational, common sense humane solution is still elusive given the sheer number of migrants and land to be guarded. Instead of splitting up families once they enter, as absurd as it sounds, building a wall actually starts to make more sense, as it's preventative rather than reactive. Triage of cases could begin at the border itself, rather than by ICE or the court system. I know many dismiss Trump out of hand because of his antics, but many of his policies are reasonable to many americans.
This subject is Trump's signature issue and how he won the election and why he keeps bringing it back into the press. Democrats are playing directly into his hands. Was this not Bannon's strategy of trapping the democrats and pushing them as left as possible? Unless the democrats have means to change legislation, of which they have none now, they need to moderate on the subject, until they can win elections.
4
A wall would accomplish little else that satisfying the cravings of those consumed by hatred. The argument that status determinations be made at points of entry makes sense. Right now, points of entry are abysmally and intentionally understaffed. People are waiting in lines for weeks to have their five minutes with an ICE official. If we want to control immigration, the opposite should take place. We should encourage migrants to enter through points of entry where determinations are quickly made. Instead, we make that nearly impossible forcing well-meaning migrants to enter unlawfully. The bottom line is we are unwilling to spend the money to fully staff points of entry and unwilling to require e-verify and punish employers who exploit the undocumented. None of those measures requires removing children from their parents. The crisis of splitting up families was intentionally created by the Trump administration to create a dis-incentive for migrants. It is cruel and ineffective.
What America lacks is a sane, ongoing approach to immigration and the work of foreign nationals here. What's missing is the understanding that immigration is not a stable situation but one which changes from year-to-year, that policy must be adjusted to meet those changes - either by regulation or legislation, and funding provided to make it work.
What we have done, for example, is insufficiently fund and staff the agencies that regulate guest workers. Farmers who would love to have them harvest their crops can't get them, but can't pay rates required to get Americans to take the demanding and exhausting work. They find themselves forced to either hire illegally or let their crops rot in the field.
How we deal with what system we have compounds rather than helps solve the problem. We don't have enough immigration judges or attorneys assigned for those who arrive without papers. We don't have enough staff at home and abroad to deal with guest worker and other visa applicants. We don't have a system to track those who arrive legally and help them comply with our rules.
We create a market for illegal workers. We make it easy for those with legal entry to overstay their welcome. Then we rail about the immigrants rather than fix the broken system.
Hint: Sane immigration requires funds. We either pay upfront or pay with enforcement. We either welcome and regulate or decry and brutalize.
Republicans have chosen the latter.
It's been good politics.
21
The problem is that, as long as the current system of using illegal workers as 'serfs' creaks along, the business community won't rock the boat. Since we realistically can't disgorge all of these workers at once from the economy, Trump would be smart to find a 'McNamara' to number crunch how to deploy the existing ICE agents into small raiding parties among the nation's businesses to capture as much of the workforce into the mandatory E-verify system as possible (since only violators are force into that). This would pressurize the business community enough to really support a completely mandatory E-verify coupled with a guest worker program.
4
I was thinking the same thing, that many of these children are separated from their parents while their cases are "adjudicated." Why not hire more judges and attorneys and adjudicate faster? Can't find enough legal people to do the work? Use the border wall monies Congress is doling out in dribs and drabs and pay higher salaries.
Seems to me, a short time ago (10 years?), new lawyers were being minted faster than the economy could absorb. Put them to work. If not for higher pay, how about student loan forgiveness for X number of years of work on immigration issues?
4
Why not make the legal immigration system we have work with full funding first? It's going to have to be funded afterward to make e-verify work.
Can you imagine, Ross, funding the government at such a reasonable amount that we could adjudicate every case within days, and send home everyone not allowed to stay swiftly and with an application in hand to try again legally? Picture a country that does not allow 11m border crossers and visa overstayers to rattle around an underworld for 10-20 years, stealing SSNs, driving down wages and living in fear and poverty. That would take money for administration and enforcement. Would you pay taxes for that? Would the businesses that hire illegals pay? Would politicians forego their campaign money?
4
You're so naive, Mr. Douthat. Let me break it down for you. The Trump administration's immigration "policy" at the border is race-based. Nothing else matters. It's hand-in-glove with "build that wall."
Are Homeland Security officials and narrow-eyed customs agents stationed at JFK or Dulles or Miami checking the credentials of people from Norway? From John Kelly's Ireland? From Donald Trump's Germany? Are the children from these countries separated from their parents at airports, screaming and crying, while mom and dad are frog-marched off to windowless offices inside steel doors to be questioned?
You write that this "is the wickedest thing the Trump administration has done so far," but you always manage to gin up the sins of the Obama administration with your breathless "it started with them" justification. Your readership cannot be great because you're divisive and pejorative: "liberals;" "the left." You're as much a name-caller as the president you confess is "cruel," but you duck out dishonestly in allowing Congress to remain free of blame here.
You're beating the tired dead horse of "executive fiat." President Obama created DACA because John Boehner told him he would put an immigration bill before the House for a vote and then smirked and said "no." Paul Ryan, after assuming the Speakership vacancy, said, in almost his first utterance, "we can't trust this president on immigration."
So this is a racial issue, sir, not an employment issue. That's why we have it.
35
No, it's not a racial issue. Is the US treating every African and Asian visitor in this way? If not, then clearly it's an issue about a particularly porous border, and the fact that the US does not have such a border with Africa or Asia.
1
A universal reality of our time is that local troubles become global as people flee war, oppression, and economic despair. Whether the “from" is Yemen, Libya, or Guatemala, the result involves refugees “here"—more than any time since WWII.
There are no walls tall enough or oceans wide enough to stem this flood. Barriers do not work because these families have little to lose and much to gain by moving.
These movements are fueled by the underlying reality that the here is simply much richer and safer than there. Economic privation breeds lack of opportunity, growth of gangs and militias, and repression as local ruling elites try to keep the lid on.
The solution requires a very difficult thing. We must address the issues of economic and social disparity in the countries that are sources of refugees. In order to address our problem here, we must address the issues there. How many nurses can be trained with the cost of a single F-35A fighter jet (they run $94 million each)? How many teachers can be trained and schools built and equipped with the cost of a single Virginia-class submarine ($2.68 billion)? How many roads, bridges, and communications networks be built with the planned upgrade to our nuclear weapons in the next 30 years ($1.2 trillion)?
The actions of the Trump Administration in tearing babies and children from parents merely reveals the underlying hypocrisy of our policies. Where we put our money tells us where our priorities really reside.
13
I am waiting for Mr. Douthat to support the claim that "much of the Democratic Party seems to want" open borders. It's a flat-out canard.
I don't know any Democrat who doesn't believe that we have to control our borders and control immigration. We differ on how that should be accomplished. Tearing babies from the breast, raping teenagers in captivity, and dehumanizing asylum seekers are not our idea of effective immigration policies.
5
Douthat has slyly determined that the policy is 'wicked'. Does he think we're in a fairy tale, or is he just smirking, as usual, at his own cleverness?
Read on and you will learn that "because Trump is hated ... the persistence of that problem has suddenly become a source of outrage for liberals." But there's a solution: "policymakers are therefore obliged to choose tolerable cruelties."
To revel in cruelty during an epidemic of cruelty and to ding the powerless when the powerful are pushing at every boundary --- this makes for a kind of vocation, I suppose. But must it be practiced on these pages?
6
Most pro-life groups support Trump. It is remarkable how much cognitive dissonance is shown in their posture:
1. They are tied up with extreme 2nd amendment supporters as we are awash in gun deaths (including suicides) and injuries, so many hurting or killing children--a clear problem for the public's health.
2. Now we have interment camps for children at our borders. We are not yet as bad as during the good-old-days of Japanese interment camps, but the focus on children is sad and ugly to see.
Any number of the most developed nations have problems with immigration, they struggle to find stable middle-grounds. But what some are doing--with public visions of Attorney General Sessions subverting biblical text and Trump blaming the Democrats--is shameful, as we see admonitions to "obey the law" contorted in twisted ways.
4
Mr Douhout's op-ed piece includes two citations. One, curiously cites an opinion column he wrote in 2014, the other cites a SSRN abstract from IZA. This organization specifically advises that any citations include a warning that the research is provisional. I guess like, the present administration, he likes to have his own facts. I'm sorry, this column lacks integrity.
3
Doesn't all of this add reinforcement to the idea of a wall?
I wonder why this tragic situation couldn't be stopped at the Mexican/Central American border.
1
”But morally, E-Verify seems vastly preferable to the brutality of family separation and the harsher Obama-era measures that liberals have belatedly discovered. Trump is showing us what the greater cruelty looks like; that makes it a good time to choose the lesser one.” Varieties of brutality that equivocate the policies of Obama with the whimsical sadism of Trump are too much to ask readers of this narrative to fathom. And that is the intended result. When reason prevents defense of an atrocity, resort to gibberish.
Morality does not permit cruelty, at all. Expedience is the arguable point. Not morality. Douthat, the absolutist, makes room for cruelty to children but denies divorced Catholics absolution. Not Christ-like.
Republican policies are anti-Christ. Degrees of less cruel are always cruel. Taking children from parents, taking food, shelter, healthcare, and education from children and families is the norm. Lies are acceptable, as is “a tradition” of racism, misogyny, and sexual abuse and discrimination, leveraging the Presidency for personal profits and venerating dictators and tyrants while insulting allies and neighbors is the norm. All this in the face of a stolen election are the foundation of the morally bankrupt Republican Party and it’s supporters.
3
The Reagan immigration reform was supposed to solve the problem. Let those here stay, and force everyone to be verified at every job (e verify).
It was never enforced because the big Republican donors who wanted cheap labor whined and fussed. Who is responsible for the current mess? Republican bosses (including Romney who had illegals mowing his lawn). E verify could work, but it won't until the pained cost of hiring undocumented workers is higher than the profit those low paying jobs are bringing in.
Oh, and by the way, the cost of food is going to skyrocket.
9
The U.S. Senate passed a bipartisan immigration reform bill in 2011. It doubtless would have passed the House and been signed by President Obama. Speaker John Bochner never brought the Senate bill to the floor of the House for a vote. The Republican “Tea Party” wing was in high spirits after their electoral success in 2010 and saw the bipartisan bill as too accommodating to immigrants. This political maneuvering was an early sign that Boehner’s leadership in the House was doomed.
Of course at some level Boehler’s unwillingness to override the extreme right of his caucus was political “genius.” It left the immigration issue unresolved. The Republican Party has ridden that issue hard (often speciously asserting — as you do — that the Democratic position is “open borders”). This unresolved issue elected President Trump.
Your column ought to have acknowledged this history. You were writing for this paper during all of these events.
19
Sems to me we'd have better results in reducing illegal immigration, by jailing the people who hire them.
I'm wondering why that hasn't happened?
3
Why am I not hearing Republicans say "What would Jesus do?" anymore? I'm guessing it's because they know the answer.
14
Admittedly your livelihood is involved, but it must take some terrible toll constantly refining your positions on what type of cruelties you oppose and what types you support. Particularly when you are not the target of any of them.
16
After clearly excoriating Trump for his cruel and inhumane immigration policy Mr. Douthat made this remark: "...the kids living in converted Walmarts or passed off to relatives or foster families and unaccounted for thereafter — has suddenly become a source of outrage for liberals." Only liberals? Are conservatives not also outraged?
3
Mr. Douthat,
This isn't just "a source of outrage for liberals", as you say, but it is or should be a source of outrage for every living being. That this is happening in America is so incredibly sickening that it is almost unbelievable. Republicans are doing this. Never forget that.
5
Only a Republican could come up with a phrase 'tolerable cruelty' and suggest it unabashedly as a preferable 'official policy'.
Last I looked, the Constitution of the United States forbids 'cruelty'.
You probably forgot that.
9
It's amazing how intellectually lazy governments and people have gotten. It's either cruelty or amnesty. Let's not bother to think through an actual solution because that might take longer than a news cycle or at least a "term".
1
When an American parent commits a crime, his/her children do not accompany him/her to jail. Such is the case with adult illegal aliens; they are detained and provision is made for care of their children. Also, in some cases it is necessary to determine whether youngsters are actually the children of those claiming to be their parents (one of many forms of gaming the system).
The US has immigration laws that allow foreigners to seek entry and citizenship. Those who do not follow these laws and procedures are in this country illegally (i.e., lawbreakers) and should be detained and deported, though allowed to seek legal entry and citizenship after they return to their home countries.
The US cannot afford to support its own citizens: the poor, the ill, elderly, disabled, veterans, et al. It is therefore utterly impossible for US taxpayers to support the millions of people from other countries who would like to come to the US. That is why there are laws limiting the numbers of immigrants allowed into this country each year.
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 teaching foreigners how to game the system to enter the US by falsely claiming asylum, persecution, abuse, etc.
Note: The children are being cared for in very good conditions, not in "cages" as shown in deliberately misleading photos from the Obama era published in the media.
14
So sad that you believe the lies on the economic impact and have little understanding of the importance of the constitutional guarantee of liberty. The propaganda machine has done a fantastic job of hiding the economic importance of foreign labor authorized or not. Here is a republican Texas controller's report that thought it was going to confirm your facts but reality isn't propaganda and the study showed a net economic gain. https://www.fosterglobal.com/policy_papers/TexasAnalysisCost-BenefitOfUn... this is the summary for some factual perspective:
“The absence of the estimated 1.4 million undocumented immigrants in Texas in fiscal
2005 would have been a loss to our gross state product of $17.7 billion. Undocumented
immigrants produced $1.58 billion in state revenues, which exceeded the $1.16 billion
in state services they received. However, local governments bore the burden of $1.44
billion in uncompensated health care costs and local law enforcement costs not paid
for by the state.”
Ofcourse republicans don't do studies like this anymore because facts are irrelevant when the true motive is nativism or racism.
1
A recurrent theme in many of the comments on this subject takes recourse, like this one does, in a dispassionate reference to "the law." As if this is, in and of itself, a sufficient analysis. But being merely a human invention, the law is hardly infallible. Our history is replete with examples: the Constitution's Three Fifths Clause, the Fugitive Slave Act to return run away slaves, or, in modern times, just ask pro-lifers about Roe v. Wade.
Being humane sometimes requires considering the human condition beyond the sterile language of law. Separation of children, as is occurring at the southern border, is immoral regardless of the law.
I notice your silence regarding the lawbreaking companies, many very large, who hire illegals just out of greed. Should we condemn the desperate people while giving the greedy a free pass? Would people come here illegally if there were no jobs? Seems weird to make the most vulnerable the criminals who just get what they dese4ve while ignoring the real crooks!
I live near a village in Mexico which routinely sends successive family members illegally to the US. Relatives in the US contribute, and due to the well-paid kindness of cartel coyotes, most get through, eventually. (If unsuccessful the first time, the cartels proved a very large discount for the retry.)
The problem for the current crop at the border is that they are Central Americans who can't afford the cartel. People fleeing murderers rarely can.
We need an immigration policy that works for American society, which is right now screaming for workers, and small towns, who are in dire need of people who will lngly settle there. Within this policy is room for compassion for refugees.
Without this, no politican can afford to strongly back E-verify, then take the backlash of harried employers.
It's the Economy, Stupid.
2
Most people who are anti-immigrant really don't know much about a complex situation that is endemic to the Southwest, a part of the country with its own history and beginnings.
We acquired the Southwest by conquest, a war against Mexico, and we acquired Texas and California by war, also, including in California broken promises to the Californios who joined with Fremont against Mexico in 1848.
Most Mexicans are Mestizos, "mixed" Indian and invaders. The Southwest is their ancestral homeland. They are "first people."
The economy of the Southwest has always depended on Mexican and Latinos. They do not compete with non-natives, non-Latinos for jobs, period. This is a myth.
We had a bracero program of importing Mexican labor to harvest crops for decades, because Americans would not take those jobs.
Central Americans have been driven here by the wars we intervened in to repel communists. We supported the side that oppressed most of the people in Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala. Abrams and North and Reagan knew nothing about these countries. The gangs came from LA and the Southwest and invaded these countries, ruined them. We owe these refugees.
DACA recipients outperform American students. Immigrants are self-selected to be enterprising. Many start businesses.
Deporting these people is madness and ignorance and racist.
We need a general amnesty and then a rational program to admit immigrants.
8
This is an attempt to put "context" around an inhumane practice that is really the worst thing (of its kind) I've seen in the United States in my 70 years. I wasn't here for the Japanese-American "camps" in WWII. But thanks for mentioning "President Kamala Harris". I had a brief moment of joy at the thought.
10
If you do not have legal status here, you are still human.
That is, whoever, however, accompanied or alone.
You are still a human being with which we all share the same ambitions, loves and hates, needs, ignorance and genius.
Or is our real status as free human beings here questioned?
Is this 2018 or 1858?
Who is the slave and who is the master now?
We are fighting terror by terrifying millions everywhere.
Without real solutions, we simply kill, maim or cage.
What else can we do?
We can go forward in a positive way.
If we must intervene somewhere let's send troops to Honduras, Guatemala to repair infrastructure, plant crops and businesses, defeat the drug-mafias and make it the practical alternative to stay there and live.
That is what everyman wants everywhere.
Give everyman the opportunity to stay with his family and live, and that is what he will do anywhere every time.
The truly sad thing is that you will never see either party press for a mandatory E-verify system. Both know the country would seize up if the 'serf' class of illegal workers had to be disgorged from the workforce in one go.
8
Ross repeats the lie that Democrats “seem to want open borders.” This is a Fox News talking point, not a fact. In fact, the liberal wing of the Democratic Party wanted increased wages and saw illegal immigrants as pushing wages down. We wanted employers prosecuted, not workers punished.
5
Government-sponsored, race-based cruelty is nothing new for American conservatives. Don't forget the internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII.
4
I don't think Franklin Delano Roosevelt would qualify as an American "conservative."
The Trump administration has not adopted a policy of separating children from their parents. In 2016 the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Flores V. Reno Settlement pf 1979 applies to accompanied migrant children as well as unaccompanied migrant children. This means the Department of Homeland Security must transfer all migrants children apprehend at the border to the Health and Human Services Department's’ Refugee Resettlement Program. The Ninth Circuit concluded: “We hold that the Settlement applies to accompanied minors but does not require the release of accompanying parents.” The ruling has the force of law. Migrant children who cross the border with their parents can no longer be held be in custody along with their parents as they were previously.
The administration has opted to start prosecuting illegal border crossers because decades of not prosecuting them has encourage rather than deterred illegal border crossers. The Border Patrol estimates it catches about 54 percent of illegal border crossers. The Border Patrol intercepted more than 50,000 in May. This means about 50,000 illegal border crossers eluded the Border Patrol,
https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2016/07/06/15-56434.pdf
4
Why are we so wary of immigrants who revitalize economies and make crime rates drop in places where they settle? What about Trump supporters, who have aligned with a Russian puppet doing the work to undermine our nation’s institutions from the inside?
20
Close the border. Apply at US consulates for immigration status.
7
job takers are taking them from job givers who get away with it with impunity.
immigrant labor is paying for my SSI and medicare. thank you Jesus, Maria, Jose.
vineyard workers where i live wear hoodies with the hoods pulled over their heads in heat up to or above 100 degrees at times. they are semi-skilled labor. want a job in a vineyard? come on out to . . . well, i really don't want to say because after you quit the first day you'll probably end up seeking social services that immigrants don't qualify for.
1
Separating immigrant parents from children is wicked alright, but there is plenty of competition for the "wickedest thing" the Trump administration had done. How about praising a dictator who imprisons untold thousands in concentration camps, murders members of his own family, and starves his people? How about turning your back on allies whose soldiers fought and died alongside our own troops in war after war to defend democracy? How about insulting members of the FBI who put their lives on the line to uphold our Constitution and the rule of law? How about lacking even the courage to take responsibility for this wicked immigration policy by blaming it on the Democrats? How about trying to justify the policy by invoking the bible? How about lying over and over about everything. And...these are just the truly wicked things Trump has done in the LAST WEEK.
2
Every single one of these illegal entrants have the option of not crossing into the US or staying in Mexico and applying from there. No one is forcing them to come here or dragging their children along. 99% of them are economic opportunists. Too bad they did what they did. Americans are not responsible for their poor choices nor giving them instant whatever it is they want. We have no place to put or house all of those who desire to come here. No mas. It'd be nice to just welcome EVERYONE but that is not realistic.
5
And what made your ancestors different?
Don't op-eds have to have some truth to them even though they are not straight news stories?
It is widely reported the reason for the separation policy is to hold these kids ransom to get Democrats to vote for everything Trump's base is demanding, from the wall to lower immigration quotas, etc.
Obama was PRO-immigration? Is that why leading Latino spokes people called him the "deporter-in-chief"?
There is no such thing as "Dreamer amnesty" Actually, Trump, trying to show he was a "stable genius" proposed amnesty and HIS base called for his impeachment.
The only thing similar between Dreamers and the 2014 surge is they both involved kids. Dreamers were fully integrated into the American way. Some served in the military. The 2014 surge involved refugees and the Obama administration, while warehousing about 20% of them similar to Trump's method today, did not criminalize them or their parents or demand separation of families.
This problem was NOT passed along to Trump. Last year we had record LOW attempts at border crossings. But this year we have record high crossings. Obama no where in sight.
Liberal outrage is based on forced separation and excessively long detention.
We also get from Douthat the GOP lie that Dems are for open borders.
As for E verify, the Obama plan was to focus on employer civil penalties as opposed to GOP base satisfying work place raids.
And, wemight be further along with E Verify if the GOP did not shut down government in 2013.
4
Increasing the penalties of E-verify violations is rather meaningless as long as the program only applies to those companies previously caught hiring illegal workers. That is just another Potemkin approach to allow the government to pretend to address the problem without doing anything effectual on the issue.
This all seems like an odd historic temporal ripple. In the 19th Century it was white America's Manifest Destiny, aptly captured in John Gast's 1872 painting American Progress https://aras.org/sites/default/files/docs/00043AmericanProgress_0.pdf to push westward in the name of progress. 146 years later it's the 21st Century Manifest Destiny of brown skin people to push northward in the name of progress against the still formidable odds of victimization and marginalization that red, brown and black people who got in the way of "progress" faced a century and a half ago.
I always knew it was Obama's fault that 2000 children have been taken from their parents in the last two months.
12
I remember reading in this very paper when tens of housands of children reached our border alone that they had endured rape and hunger and traveled at the behest of their undocumented parents in America (who had left them behind years ago) that we should welcome them with open arms. Not a word against parents who payed coyotes to smuggle their children. Not a word against parents who willingly separated them selves from their own children. Your credibility is zero. You want open borders. Too bad for you the American people elected Trump because they do not want open borders.
3
Actually, three million more American voters cast their ballots for Ms Clinton. It was the plus or minus 80,000 in three states that gave him the Electoral College. And, no, we don’t want open borders but certainly not a wall either.
3
I think as unpleasant as it may be we need to head the words of Emma Lazarus
"Give me your tired, your poor"
"Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free"
"The wretched refuse of your teaming shore"
"Send these the homeless tempest tossed to thee"
"I lift my lamp beside the Golden Door"
Otherwise me mind as well take down the statue of Liberty and send it back to France. Seriously if a country as prosperous as ours cannot take in people as desperate as some of our Central American neighbors then we mind as well give up and ask Great Britain to take us back
16
Michael, yes, we are a nation of immigrants, and that used to translate into making this nation great. But the current illrgal immigration situation is out of control. And we now have something like 3.26 million people in America and 8 billion worldwide. As someone pointed out, the immigration needs of a country change from year to year, and we need enforceable policies to reflect common sense. Please try to see this from the perspective of a majority of Americans who don't live in the same "prosperous" America as you do. Most Americans aren't fortunate enough to live in a wealthy, progressive city / state like Boston, MA, with a comfortable life, benefits and security. Most Americans are asking "Where is the prosperity?" We've become a plutcracy of and for the 1%. Everyone else is living in third world USA. If America is so prosperous why aren't we helping our own citizens? The immigration issue is one of the central reasons working-class Americans stopped voting Democrat - and shockingly now support a dictator like Trump.
3
If the US is going to take in most of Central America's people (which will be the result of opening the borders to Central American citizens) then equity requires also allowing all those who define themselves as "desperate" in Africa and Asia to come in.
1
To me, the solution is clear. No wall, no laws will prevent illegal immigrants from coming to the US as long as they can get a job here. So:
1) Dump the wall - a waste of $.
2) Make E-Verify obligatory, put teeth into enforcement against employers of illegals
3) Amnesty everyone here today.
4) Eliminate the diversity lottery.
1 and 3 for the left, 2 and 4 for the right. Result: Effective policy.
Let's face it: the real reason there is no consensus on how to address illegal immigration is because we need their slave labor to do the menial work Americans don't want. When you are living in the shadows, you can't complain.
5
Why are we separating families? When they show up illegally turn the entire family around, intact. Give them a little booklet that describes the procedure for legally applying to immigrate here. You don't just show up.
8
Actually the law allows asylum seekers to just show up at our port of entries and request protection. They are applying legally and if you now anything of Stephen Miller you will know that he wants to end legal immigration. The most threatening thing about Trump's immigration policy, hidden by his horrific use of the deprivation of liberty and separation of families, is their push for culture change in the agency and society.
USCIS removed the welcoming language from their signage, brochures and web page and replaced it with security language. Our supposedly independent Immigration Court system now brags about the number of removal orders instead of their commitment to the objective adjudication of cases. Judges must hear biased and factually inaccurate pep talks by their boss Sessions who is asking or demanding that they ignore the rule of law and basic concepts of due process. https://www.justice.gov/opa/speech/attorney-general-sessions-delivers-re...
What if you're fleeing violence and/or persecution in your home country? This is, of course, why so many of our ancestors came. But now we want wholesale slaughter at our southern border, while we send this century's migrants back to their deaths, armed with booklets. Meanwhile, our president's in-laws get to "chain migrate" from a stable European country that there is little reason to leave. How lovely for us.
Douthat writes that tearing children away from their parents is "the wickedest thing the Trump administration has done so far". And we ain't seen nothing yet. You think this is bad? It's gonna get worse. Trump is wicked, his administration is wicked, and he and his administration are doing everything in their power to bring more evil and corruption to our country. And Republicans are cheering all the way to the bank.
9
“the kids living in converted Walmarts or passed off to relatives or foster families and unaccounted for thereafter — has suddenly become a source of outrage for liberals”
It ought to be a source of outrage to any human being.
10
Who are all these Democrats demanding amnesty and open borders? The Brietbart Democrats? Oh, yeah, those. The ones that exist only in the imaginations of GOP strategists seeking to get votes from the losers who can't compete with people who want to work hard.
14
We’ve all heard others declare (hypothetically) ‘if ... happens I’m moving to Canada/New Zealand/xxx!’ We all hold the belief that we would have the right to seek residency in other countries.
1
This is for Jeff Sessions who quoted the Bible as a source for ripping families apart:
"Matthew 25:35-40 New International Version (NIV)
35 For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’
37 “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38 When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39 When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’
40 “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’"
The Party of family values? Really? Mr. Douthat you might read these verses from the Bible as well.
Tomorrow is Father's Day and there will be fathers who came here to this country desperately seeking a better life for their children, only to have them ripped away from them. Some may never see these children again. Happy Father's Day Mr. Douthat.
4
Ross's true colors come out.
This problem was caused by Tea Party Republicans blocking a bipartisan compromise led by John McCain and Lyndsay Graham when Obama was president and Senator McConnell and Paul Ryan were trying to assure Obama was a one term president. Trump then rode the anti immigrant wave to victory appealing to the human fear module.
Ross is an apologist, both for Republicans and Christians. He knows better but he just can't help himself from always blaming Democrats, first and foremost, even with a totalitarian in the White House.
5
Trump was elected to stop illegal immigration. Democrats can protest at their own peril. They will loose in November and 2020.
3
Even in its worst days, ICE used discretion in implementing the Obama immigration policies. To equate what went on in the Obama administration with the wholesale separation of children from their parents under Trump is disingenuous at best. Shame on you, Mr. Douthat.
8
I looked up the demographics of Texas, California and Florida. Texas has a population of 28M people with 35%Hispanic. California has 40m people with 38% Hisapanic, Florida has 21M people with 25% Hispanic.
For the whole US the population is 325M with 17.5% Hispanic.
Canadian border states may have a significant ex pat Canadian influence but markers are hard to find. But there are French Canadians in New England and people in Wisconsin say "aye".
South America has embraced open borders with the Mercosur Residence Agreement, making borders less restrictive. Europe has open borders for Europeans with the European Union.
My view is that borders will be less important in the future. Certainly, Texas, California and Florida have not been hurt by influxes of Hispanic people over the last century. The restriction of immigration and walls will be put in the "dustbin of History" like the Berlin Wall.
We are not in a position to open our Southern borders, but we should not use the suffering of other human beings to gain political points. Separating families on our Southern border and uprooting families that have been here for a decade or more, makes us just cruel and certainly not Christian. Perhaps Mr. Douthat is right, a worker program and strict registration would be an alternative.
1
One way to alleviate this problem is for consumers to buy more produce grown in Mexico. The word would spread pretty quickly that U.S. farm jobs are drying up. Buy Mexican would also reduce the incentive for American agribusiness, already highly mechanized, to grow crops that can't be harvested and sorted mainly by machine, or to switch primarily to highest value crops. As for the Trump-loving growers of soybeans, the Trump trade war could shift production out of the U.S. anyway.
2
As a practitioner of immigration law for approximately twenty-five years, having worked in both the government sector and the immigrant representation side, I must say that this is the fairest summary of the situation I have seen. Both the "build the wall" faction and the knee-jerk left need to take a deep breath and tamp down on the hysteria, so we can discuss constructive changes.
8
I hear much ranting about the cruelty of separating these children from their lparents who have been incarcerated for having entered this country illegally. I hear no suggestions of a rational alternative. What else, exactly is it that can or should be done with children of those who enter the county illegally and who must be detained until they can be deported back to their homelands or wherever? They cross from Mexico, but for the most part also were in Mexico illegally as well, were they not? I ask again, exactly what is being proposed as an alternative -- send them to jail with their parents? Ignore the law and let the parents roam wherever they wish just because they bring children into this country illegally along with themselves? What? Accusations and proclamations of horror are easy. Finding appropriate alternatives are not.
4
I'm pro-migrant and anti-Trump/Sessions. That said, can anyone tell me why people fleeing, say, Guatemala or Honduras, and seeking asylum in the USA, cannot seek asylum in Mexico? Isn't the situation comparable to that of Syrians seeking asylum in Europe but passing through several countries to reach Germany? Why doesn't the first country of sanctuary have some responsibility?
3
It is time for Trump to take responsibility for his actions. He has been in office for almost a year and a half. This is his responsibility now, stop blaming his predecessors. Republicans have been placed in charge of the whole federal government, they are responsible for its outcomes. In the corporate world you get a year to blame others then it is your record. Trump needs to correct this. Really Ross you mean well but Trump is the issue here not Democrats from 2016. I thought conservatives took responsibility for their lives. This is passing the buck. Bad immigration policy is Trump’s issue not Obama’s. Time to take ownership.
1
Romney was hooted at for the *content* of his idea of "self-deportation" but for the demeaning and smug terms in which he expressed it. If he had said, "reduce positive incentives for illegal immigration" or "give people strong reasons not to immigrate illegally", there would have been precisely zero hoots. The left-wing urge to emit owl-like sounds of derision arises when people in power make a fetish out of pushing around people without power.
That aside, on the whole, this is a humane and clear-sighted article. If I don't agree with your conclusions, at least I can respect the measured and open way in which you make your arguments.
Gotta love whataboutism. As an independent I had no problem with how president Obama handled illegal immigration because it was fair and rule based. He focused on deporting criminals and when Congress refused to act, used his executive power to protect children so they wouldn't be punished for their parents decision to bring them here illegally.
Trump's policy is cruel for the sake of cruelty. President Obama showed that you can enforce the law without putting on a show for the world to see. Quoting the Bible was particularly galling.
Illegal immigration has always been a sore spot for our country. Using e-verify would solve the problem provided the fines were steap enough but our business community fights being required to use it. They benefit by using illegal immigrants to control labor costs and Congress does nothing which makes them equally complicit.
There will always be those jobs that native born Americans will not do. Immigrants have always done those tasks while their children get good educations and become innovators and job creators. Congress needs to stop using Trump as cover for their failure in finding a balanced approach that pleases no one but is good for our country. Congress needs to do their job and force Trump to veto rational legislation, at which point he will own the blame for this mess.
3
Folks keep on saying the child separation policy is meant as a deterrent. To believe that one would have to believe that Trump actually cares about illegal immigration, and has implemented a policy that, though flawed and cruel, is at least targeted at the problem.
But this policy isn't aimed at immigration. What it really is is a test for the rest of us. It is a check to see how far he can go and get away with it. If Americans will tolerate imprisoning innocent children, what else might Trump get away with? Where we are today is atrocious, but if we let it stand we will be led somewhere truly horrifying.
1
Russ,
All this disinformation and nonsense about immigration isn't going to solve the problems of:
- not enough good paying jobs for American
- low pay for Americans
- flat to now declining household income for decades
Root cause analysis reveals that it is not immigrants and illegal immigrants who are keeping wages low, too few good paying jobs, and flat household incomes.
Root cause analysis is that the financial sector driven by activist investors literally punishes public companies that don't raise quarterly earnings. The easiest way for management to keep earnings high is to squeeze workers even as productivity increases.
Look no further than how the stock market reacts to companies that raise employee incomes: That stock declines!
The Wall is a massive sleight of hand distraction in the con game. All those Americans scraping by are being deceived that the Wall will improve their financial situation. It won't because immigrants are not the root cause of the problem.
2
Douthat tries to show he has a heart, then falls back to his dogmatic position that 'someone has to suffer'. That usually isn't Ross. His easy life, low taxes, fine schools, and open future are just fine--but that's his as he makes really clear.
This is complicated by his lack of understanding of the labor market, which by the way is shared by all shades of the political spectrum. The fantasy that keeping immigrants, particularly illegal immigrants, out will enhance opportunity for American labor betrays a lack of awareness that with a decreasing unemployment rate the people who are not working are unqualified. Thus Ross's dream that hurting immigrants will enhance American jobs is actually completely wrong. What it will do is hurt American businesses that cannot fill needed positions. Of course, those businesses may not need workers since Trump seems to want to take the American and global economy.
How did we become this nation, where children suffer as the synecdoche of our division and hate? Children.
Mr. Trump could care less about immigration. He’s lived in New York his whole life, surrounded by immigrants and their descendants.
He is doing this solely to keep his base rabid, and to keep GOPers on the Hill afraid of his base. It is all purely political to him. And, like much of what he does, it is as simple as it seems.
But the rest of us have to live with this. We should be screaming in outrage.
Our republic has just entered an era of moral repugnance not equalled since slavery (which also was often justified with biblical citation).
Children need need kindness, they need security, and they need to trust the adults who appear around them. And if their parents brought them here, they need our help, too.
Charity, hospitality, and kindness to those in need are core tenets of the world’s most widely practiced religions.
How did we become this nation?
5
Simplistic solutions to complex problems always fail. Most people hate hard thinking. They prefer certainty, even when it's wrong.
First credible essay on immigration reform I've read yet. E-verify largely works. It's for that reason no one wants it, liberals would have to clean their own houses and pay a lot more for lawn mowing. 50$ entrees might cost $75. Republicans would lose leverage over workers. Good one Ross.
1
thank you for your honest take... I think the majority of Americans want immigration to be adjusted/fixed..whatever the political correct term might be. But both parties must agree to do this together... unfortunately the opposing party is always trying to trip up the current one running the show..and that doesn't serve immigrants or the country well at all..... Please try to come up with something that at least starts in the right direction.. The president at least tried but the negotiations were short and unproductive... free pass for everyone wanting to come here is untenable and unrealistic.. just understand that and we can begin the process.
1
Send them all home. We cannot support the billions of the world who want to come here. Illegal immigration has to stop. The law has to change where asylum has to be requested in their country, not here. America first.
3
No one is mentioning going after the coyotes: those networks of predators who lure the desperate with lies, charge exorbitant fees for their 'help', then vanish into thin air when their 'clients' are harshly treated.
No decent legislation on the subject should omit a strategy on punishing coyotes & the cartels. If Trump were actually serious & well-meaning, he would not be spending $25Bill on cheap slogans such as "build the wall!" but working with our neighbors -- instead of antagonizing them with insults -- to create a valid infrastructure, complete with effective, non-abusive law enforcement, to bring peace & order to the Southern border. It does not take a genius to comprehend that parking crowds of people on a sweltering bridge for weeks on end compounds a humanitarian catastrophe.
Sadly, underlying OCD views on the border are genuinely racist views. People who don't think they have a bias when they look at pictures of "Native Americans" such as Geronimo or Crazy Horse, lamenting the mass exterminations that unfolded over centuries, forget somehow that these brown-skinned Spanish-speakers are descendants of the same indigenous populations that were here long before our own ancestors came as immigrants requiring gentle processing, kindness, employment & acceptance.
The past is the present. Be better than your forebears. Our vast, still quite empty lands have room for these people. They have basic human rights. They are not a threat.
Create a safe, wholesome process
Tangential, but I think to the point: As I sit here reading this Op-ed about Trump’s immigration policy regarding child separation, which seems to be under condemnation by seemingly most? of the people in this country, staring me in the face is an embedded ad for “Trump International Hotel/Waikiki”.
So, the President can take some horrendous action, then potentially make money off me while I read about it. So maybe that is the reason he does these things?
Maybe if we all just agreed to book rooms at his hotels he would change his direction on this and his other provocative activities.
Sigh. Ross, the USA struggles to live into its ideals especially towards People of Color. I wish you would visit some of the places people are fleeing from and live there a minute to see what you would do as a person or as a parent. I also wish you would consider doing a couple days of work that an average undocumented worker does, work that most American workers refuse to do. while everify has merit the fact is America needs a grunt workforce that citizen refuse or dont have skill sets or interest to do. And then perhaps a little work on your own family tree to find out why and how your own people came into United States
1
These policies are directed at people who are here illegally- not based on the color of their skin but on their conduct.
Citizens 'refuse to do' this work because it is exploitative. You go ahead and let 'those people' be slaves- I am not interested in 'helping' people by exploiting them.
3
The Texas Civil Rights Project has documented cases of parents who said they were told their children were being taken for a bath at the processing center.
Lead them for a shower at the processing center. Where have I heard this deception before?
5
A relative of mine is a surgeon. He is not an American citizen. He just spent two years working in a US hospital as a fellow, after his 7 year Israeli surgical residency.
His fellowship is coming to and. He and his family must return home.
What if he decided that life is great in the US and he wants to stay as a surgeon? He could not and would not be hired. The hospital and he would be breaking US law. So here is an MD with almost 10 years of training and the US rules say: out. You've finished go home, which is just fine with him and his family but perhaps not with the other foreign doctors in the same position.
Should he want to come back to work in the US, he would have to go through immigration channels. He would have to follow the rules. Somebody has to, after all.
3
Traumatizing children and their parents who are Asylum Seekers is just plain abhorrent. This is a humanitarian issue not a partisan issue. Wake up Russ. Let's not forget that Don Trump cut off medical care to his deceased brother's grandson who has CP. If Don has no heart for his grand nephew, his own genes and blood, what makes anyone think he has any heart for brown skin families looking for a better life.
6
Remember the quote from the Vietnam War, "We had to destroy the village in order to save it?" Now it's "We have to separate these little children from their parents in order to discourage more people from coming."
3
E-verify makes sense, but what makes more sense is punishing employers. Fines won’t work, because they're just the cost of doing business. We need something like the night in jail that is dished out to drunk drivers. Not a long sentence, just something that deters the construction contractors, farmers, and slaughterhouse owners who actually profit from slave labor while the rest of us pick up the costs.
2
"We don't want immigrants. They compete with our citizens for jobs, drive down wages, use up resources for programs that our citizens need, overpopulate areas and drive up the cost of housing."
"We want immigrants. They provide cheap, easily controlled labor for businesses so that businesses can keep their prices low and we can buy more goods and services, and we relish their behavior as consumers so businesses can make more profit from their buying of said goods and services. And they help revitalize areas population has been fleeing."
"We don't want immigrants. They are loud, they are scary looking, they pray differently, and their cooking smells funny."
"We want immigrants. They are spirited, hard working, and bring diverse cultural and culinary experiences that we haven't experienced before, but which we then like to appropriate."
American schizophrenia 101. Therapy is needed.
3
Ross, Ross, Ross.
Outrage doesn't arise "because Trump is hated" but rather he is hated because he does outrageous, cruel, inhuman things and then lies about it.
It is misleading and false to draw a comparison between ICE raids in the Trump administration and during Obama's two terms. You imply that this activity is getting attention now but was not reported or focused on under Obama. The difference is well known. Nonviolent people with no criminal records, with American citizen children and spouses were low priority during the Obama years. They are hunted with no scruple now.
Today passengers boarding a bus were asked to prove citizenship. Pizza delivery guys supporting their families are being arrested. ICE agents stalk courtrooms, schools, highways and workplaces. They arrest small business owners who actually employ citizens. The notion that these immigrants are taking American jobs is largely false. In NYC they deliver food, do landscaping, do low-skill contracting work, run nail salons, work in restaurant kitchens, etc., none of which are coveted jobs.
The lesser cruelty? Is that our choice? I accept that you honestly do understand the evil that this current family separation policy represents. But when you write about "religion" and dogma, you don't accept these false choices. If I said "Ross, you have to advocate that the church allows birth control because that is a "less cruel" option than abortion, you would trumpet all the reasons why that is not an option.
1
I understand what Mr. Douthat is trying to accomplish here, but he comes awfully close to blaming the Democratic Party and thus expressing a false equivalency. Immigrants are not entering the US due to liberal policies for children that linger from the Obama Administration. Immigrants are coming to the US because their home countries are in horrible shape and they fear for their lives. They are left with few choices and taking children makes a horrible problem worse.
3
Separating small children from their families as a "deterrent" to future illegal immigrants? Surely there must be a better way more consistent with our American values and the teachings of the Bible, the lodestar of the evangelicals who unwaveringly support Trump. Funny how collectively quiet they have been about all of this.
1
Your rationale assessment in the hyper emotional tenor that typifies our political conversation is appreciated. Finding a workable compromise will prove impossible until the name calling, outrage, and cruelty that Trump, Roger Stone, and their ilk mine for profit and personal gain is truly tempered. So too the unthinking reactions that the excessive cruelty at the boarder.
1
"So even if you hope to move gradually toward open borders, as much of the Democratic Party seems to want...."
I don't know of a single Democrat who wants this, so Mr. Douthat is once again making up his own facts. The people who seem most interested in open boarders around my neck of the woods are the big businesses who continue to seek and hire undocumented workers so they can keep payrolls and benefits to an absolute minimum.
9
The total lack of realism is what is destroying the Left. Douthat is entirely right in this piece. I have addressed some of these matters in my recent analysis “From List to Weber” where I discuss the inter-national conflict to which global capital leads.
1
Mr. Douthat,
Really? You condemn the treatment of families and children BUT launch into all the reasons liberals and Obama brought this on the nation. Even in the face of the abject cruelty to families and children still the liberals and Obama get the most attention from you.
Trump, Sessions, and Kelly and their cult, clan, cabal, are responsible. This crisis of cruelty to families and children was created by the administration and is being used as a bargaining chip for even more oppressive immigration policies.
I have a simple question for you Mr. Douthat.
WHAT WOULD JESUS DO?
1
Everyone keeps talking about all these different solutions to the immigration problem when there is one very simple solution, end the war on drugs. From gangs in El Salvador to the cartels in Mexico they all rely on one thing for their survival and that is the drug trade. The drug trade inspires American citizens to illegally cross into Mexico with a trunk full of guns. Where do you think these violent entities are getting their guns? The drug trade inspires gangs to take enourmous risks, to threaten families as they increasingly need more foot soldiers. The drug trade would end tomorrow if the United States would just take a different approach to addiction and legalize marijuana throughout the country. When the cartels and the gangs finances dried up, without money for the massive amounts of guns they need to operate there would be no more motivation to join a gang and the violence would stop, people would go home and we wouldn’t have this problem anymore. But instead we continue to talk about how to put a band-aid on a broken limb.
Here it is, Ross Douthat’s “Choose a Cruelty” column. In order to maintain our borders, we must be cruel. Just not tear away a breastfeeding child cruel.
Yes, and to maintain our security we must waterboard but not dismember. Choose a Torture.
The fact is, Ross, our Attorney General has already explicitly stated that tearing children from their parents is not only fine but sanctioned by the Bible. The Administration is NOT objecting to this policy. They are erecting circus tents on army bases to expand it.
Decent Americans are fighting the federal government on this one, make no mistake. I for one truly believe that Jeff Sessions would approve a shoot on sight policy for all border crossers.
You are right about one thing though, Ross. Being humane to a child is more complicated than killing the child. And a humane border policy would be more complicated than what we’re doing now.
Shoot on sight is even simpler, if simplicity is really your ultimate goal.
2
Just another thinly disguised attempt at shifting the blame for this atrocious act of cruelty to Obama. Unfortunately, Mr. Douthat's argument will resonate with those republicans who are desperately seeking for a way to divert the blame onto Democrats and reasonable independents. Ultimately, Mr. Douthat can't absolve Trump, Sessions, and the rest of the republicans for supporting this inhumane policy, or those cowards sitting on the fence. Just one final observation; Mr. Douthat conveniently "forgot"to mention the concentration camp-like compound in Texas, where these children are being housed in tents, exposed to extreme heat conditions.
2
I'm sorry. I don't think the President has any point-of-view about immigration at all. I think all he cares about is the Wall. And he cares about the Wall because he expects that he, and the Trump Organization and their affiliates will build the Wall themselves. Just one huge "pork-barrel" "public works" project, controlled by the President himself. This current action at the Border is little more than a hostage-taking of infants. You can expect the President to make the hostage situation worse and worse, until Congress finally caves in and pays the President with his "ransom money" -- the Wall. In your heart-of-hearts, you may think I have an overly hysterical view of the President. But in your head, you can not provide one fact to prove that I'm wrong.
1
Casuistry, Mr. Douthat, casuistry. You, I assume, were hired to deliver a Christian viewpoint. There is absolute right and absolute wrong. There is no middle way. Christians aren't practical. They live in spite of human law.
2
Trump is essentially taking innocent children hostage to gain leverage to fund his wall. The "deterrence policy" is a ruse. Any means to an end is Trump (and the GOP's) credo.
2
Totally agree that E-Verify is the least cruel solution.Business interests hate it because they want the pool of cheap and reliable labor that illegal immigration provides.The same angry men and women who call for a wall are the ones enjoying golf on a course tended by, you guessed it, men who are here illegally.I always wonder whether anyone has checked all of Mr.Trump's properties to be certain he does not employ immigrants without papers in any capacity even on a contract basis-no dishwashers, no cleaners, no yard or golf course worker?because he is so adamant he better have a perfect record!
2
Nowhere, Ross, do you mention prison time for the employers who hire immigrants who are not legally allowed to work. Why not? Why do we never hear that from Republicans? Please write your next article on this aspect of the issue.
We could take care of this problem in a heartbeat if we started punishing the employers.
Farmers would have to pay higher wages. That would mean higher prices at the grocery store, but we all need to acknowledge that the ridiculous cheapness of food in this country (so cheap, restaurants provide double or triple portions on single plates, just to be rid of the excess food) is a product of the cheap immigrant labor many of us (including you, Ross) pretend to be outraged about.
3
Instead of spending millions on right -wing political PACs and destroying American democracy, maybe right- wing billionaires like the Koch Brothers, Sheldon Adelson etc should spend their money to support real economic development and improve lives in Mexico and other impoverished areas - thereby reducing the number of immigrants desperate to come to the U.S
3
The Koch bros are pro-amnesty and open borders libertarians. From compassion, do you think? Or for the cheap labor?
When you began to use labels of liberal or Democratic politicians, I knew you would end up sounding just like Trump. "Obama started this."
You offer no true outrage. You dream of ways to pretend this issue can be solved rationally. With this administration, nothing is solved unless people are hurt, and in particular, children are placed in harm's way. Cruelty to young children, barbarity and laughter in the form of Stephen Miller and this President is the face of America now, Ross.
Happy Father's Day.
2
Since Mr. Douthat is always referencing Christian values, I find it odd that there is no mention of separating a child from its family is not discussed. Maybe that I'd indefensible.
First off, as a DEM I do not want open boarders and Ross is the first person I recall mentioning it. Second, this immigration problem is caused in part and supported by the American people. As an example a house on my block was recently flipped by two typical white middle class Americans. Not one worker on the project could speak much English while some none, much of the work was done at night while the windows were blacked out. I don't fault these very hard working people for getting a tax free income, however I believe people like these two flippers are the reason we have a problem. I believe we need a E Verifier system
2
This is a judicious treatment of a difficult issue. What complicates this question is that we seem to be living at a time when bigotry directed at Hispanics is simply acceptable. Last night I watched the second season of Goliath on Amazon. Attempting to avoid spoiling the plot twists I am still amazed to see conspiracy thinking taken to a degree that not even Trump could imagine. An illegal alien connected from with a profoundly evil Mexican drug cartel takes over the city of Los Angeles. This character's slogan is "forward together", reminiscent of Clinton's "stronger together", but even Trump never described Hilary in these lights. By the end of the show lets just say that every non-Hispanic character finds some degree of redemption or at least begrudging compassion, while every Hispanic character is beyond evil. There is even a suggestion that the Mexican drug cartels control not only the Democratic Party, but the Catholic Church and are somehow in league with the Hasidim. The fact that no one seems to be even talking about this aspect of the series demonstrates the degree to which Trump has taken control of the debate. The message of the series load and clear seems to be "build the wall"and send every Hispanic American, even those form Puerto Rico, to the other side. No other group would stand for this.
2
Aside from the dig at Obama, who increased deportations and worked for a comprehensive immigration policy only to hit the brick Republican wall of resistance, this is a reasonable proposal. What's questionable is whether American workers will do the kind of labor most illegal immigrants now do--cleaning homes, doing yard work, taking care of small children, working as dishwashers in the back rooms of restaurants, hard manual labor in the agricultural industry, etc. Of course the wages for these jobs might rise to the point where American workers will do them--in which case consumer prices would increase. Just sayin...
2
As an employer of illegal immigrants himself, our Supreme Leader will never have ICE raid and close businesses that choose to employ non citizens. And what about all the homes that pay illegals cash to clean their houses, cut their lawns and care for their children? As usual, like our President, Americans refuse to take responsibility for a problem that they have created. Yes Mr. Douthat is correct to say enforcement must concentrate on the employers and not the employees. Putting children in detention camps does nothing to deter them.
9
The issue of migration is the issue of our times. It's a global issue. Not only are children being separated from parents on the border with Mexico but thousands are killed trying to cross the Mediterranean into Europe.
This is an abolitionist moment. It's time we recognize that the migrants are not taking advantage of us, we are taking advantage of them. We should recognize they are a resource not a burden. It's time we declare that all human being should be free to live legally wherever they wish. How did we come to believe we can tell anyone where they can or can't live?
Abolition would also resolve many global conflicts. There would be no Assad in Syria if people could just leave. There would be no North Korean problem if people could just leave. Letting them leave requires that we let them enter. It's what freedom means.
8
OK, just to be clear. The policy of busting up families and traumatizing already traumatized children is not the fault of Democrats. We don't need ten Democrats to vote with the GOP to stop it, as the Trump has lied.
Giving Dreamers a path to citizenship was Obama's policy and most people agree with it - Congress just is so afraid that the ones in their gerrymandered districts are the one who don't that they have ossified. No one is willing to lose a seat for an immigrant child.
We are not going to stop migration unless we stop employing people who are not here legally, and unless we look realistically at the reasons they are fleeing their own homes. Desperate people flee, whether it is violence in Guatemala and central America driving people here, or starvation in eastern Africa driving people into Europe. So E-verify might be a good first step; huge fines that fund immigrant healthcare and food at the border might be another. But mostly we need to get our heads out of the sand and figure out how to encourage peace and some level of prosperity in the homelasnds.
21
Trump's policies are a far cry from JFK's, Jimmy Carters, and Reagan's and Douthat would do well to do more research. Here's just one example:
"Cubans fleeing Castro: In early 1961, at a time when thousands of Cubans were trying to escape the new Castro government, President Kennedy directed Health, Education and Welfare Secretary Abraham Ribicoff to set up a “Cuban Refugee Program” to provide federal assistance to Cuban refugees, including medical care, financial aid, help with education and resettlement, and child welfare services. That program was formalized the following year by the Migration and Refugee Assistance Act, and by subsequent legislation. By 1971, 600,000 Cuban refugees had entered the U.S.; as of 2012 there were more than 1 million Cubans living in the U.S. who had immigrated since 1959 (representing 97% of all Cuban immigrants), according to the 2012 American Community Survey."
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/11/21/executive-actions-on-imm...
14
Every country has the right to control its international borders, if only to protect its citizens from the influx of potentially dangerous aliens and the spread of infectious disease. In practice, however, politics rather than concern for public welfare shaped the policies of both the Obama and Trump administrations.
The struggle for political advantage led to an approach which exceeded in harshness the requirements of protecting Americans from disease or violence. We have known for more than a century how to exclude carriers of infectious disease, and most studies show that immigrants commit fewer crimes than native-born citizens. The issue of economic competition remains contentious, but even the most extreme interpretation of that threat could not possibly justify current treatment of illegal aliens.
Zero tolerance policies almost never work, because they ignore the complexity of the problems we face. In this case, they overlook the enormous risks and terrible suffering migrants face to make it from CA to here. Only desperation and fear could motivate such a trek. Cruel policies will not deter these refugees, who pose no threat that could justify such actions, even if they proved effective.
We need to find a more humane approach, but we also need to recognize that we face far more serious problems than the influx of refugees. Toning down the rhetoric about national security might make it possible to achieve a compromise that most people would find acceptable.
12
The strongest deterrent to illegal immigration is strong workplace controls. This was the purpose of the i9! If we still have to complete it, then lets make it work.
As cruel as separating parents and children is, I am against catch and release. If you cross the border illegally, then you broke the law. There has to be a sanction. I would be comfortable detaining whole families until their case was adjudicated with either A. Work Permit, release, and fine or B. deportation.
That said, every person who presents themselves at the border seeking asylum through the legal mechanism should be treated with respect and support until the courts decide their case.
13
It is not illegal to seek asylum. Most of the folks were talking about here are asylum seekers.
Years ago, many folks from south of the border came to primarily agricultural areas of the United States to do seasonal work in the fields and orchards and then would return home for the winter. I was young at the time and don't know if the process was legal, but it seemed to be wide-spread and accepted by those in authority. Ultimately the United Farmworkers was formed to improve working and living conditions for these migrant workers. At some point in time it became more difficult for these workers to cross the border and they began to stay in the United States year-around and send money home to their families. A large percentage still follow that practice today (I see many sending money when I am at the store in my rural town). Many have told me that they would prefer to go home during the off-season, but their families need the money and they can't take the chance that they could not return to their jobs. Under these conditions, some brought their wives and children here and single men have married here. A comprehensive immigration policy would recognize the need for these temporary workers and create a permit system to fill it (obviously not leading to citizenship). Those already here with families could choose between remaining here (perhaps with a path to citizenship) or revert to temporary permits. Of course, this plan does not address the case of people seeking asylum from dangers in their home country. This is a different situation and must be addressed separately.
18
Thank you for writing about this. These workers have contributed $50 billion or more to the U.S. economy in less than a decade, and $3 billion to California's economy in 2016. They are also contributing essential support to their home countries' economies. Under Trump's regressive policies, what will happen when the monies they send home are reduced or dry up? How will people survive and their countries remain stable? If the U.S. doesn't help we can expect more instability south of our borders unless a more powerful country like China steps in with aid?
8
In the 1950's Eisenhower instituted the bracero (strong arms) program which accomplished exactly what you recommend: granting temporary work permits to men who were able to return to their families in Mexico at will. I believe it was very beneficial for workers and their American employers.
11
Douthat lives in the United States of Amnesia. Let US remember recent history.
President Obama promised comprehensive immigration reform, but he did not get it done while he had Democratic majorities in both the House and Senate. He was busy saving the economy from falling into a Great Depression and passing the ACA in the face of a GOP conspiracy to block EVERYTHING he proposed. This was agreed to by Paul Ryan and others at the 2009 inauguration night conspiracy.
President Obama increased deportations to appease Republicans who argued they would not pass comprehensive immigration reform without tighter border security. After 2010, the Senate passed a comprehensive immigration reform bill that included DACA. There were enough votes in the House of Representatives for the bill to pass with the Democrats and some moderate Republicans. John Boehner would not bring the bill to the House floor because there was not a majority of the majority. This rule is not found in the Constitution.
Boehner could have brought the hill to the floor on his way out of the door, but he did not. Trump rode the birther and immigration train straight to the White House and the hostile takeover of the GOP. So, here we are.
58
President Obama did NOT have a majority in both Houses. In the first 2 years, the House had a Democratic majority - which had little power because the Senate used the filibuster to kill any legislation that might make Obama look good (including some that Republicans had suggested first).
During Obama's last 6 years as president, Republicans held majorities in both houses - as they have since 1960 except for the House those two Obama years and both Houses during Pres. Clinton's first two years.
And to think - Trump fans voted for a change ...
The immigrant problem is being solved on the wrong side. Obviously there's a never-ending supply of poor hungry people who want to come here and work. Just as obviously, there's places for them to work, or else they wouldn't come.
If it were up to me (which it obviously isn't - I wouldn't touch that job with a ten foot pole) I'd make it easy for migrant workers to get permits, so long as they weren't known criminals. I'd then make it too expensive for businesses to hire the illegal ones - undocumented labor at a farm/factory/road crew whatever? Jail time and a stiff fine (say, large enough to hire a regular person at minimum wage with benefits for ten years - per worker) for owner and management.
I always figured what was really going on is some sort of tacit agreement between companies that hire undocumented labor and state and local governments: we know these people shouldn't be here, but we want cheap products.
I really think that making authorized workers available at similar rates to unauthorized ones, then harshly penalizing the people who would hire the unauthorized ones, would go a long way toward solving the problem, without the buttheadedness we're seeing now.
26
Great column, though I presume that your comment that Democrats want open borders was intended as a tongue in cheek jab, not an actual statement of policy.
Because you were, of course, right when you noted the opposition to E-Verfy comes from the alliance of businesses who want cheap labor (R) and immigrant activists who DO want open borders (D).
I grew up in Queens, which is like living in the vestibule of the US... find yourself in the high country of the Hindu Khush and you will find a villager whose brother spent some time at a hookah bar in Astoria.
So I have seen the good and bad of massive immigration up close, and on balance I would say it is good.
But it’s not cost free.
Immigration should be legal, on our terms, and in ways and numbers that make sense for Americans already here.
Is this different than Emma Lazarus’ promise?
Yes.
But there is a big difference between our country then and our country now, which can’t seem to manage a job market with increasing real wages for anyone under the median income. We don’t need more competition in that category for now.
To be clear, it should also be obvious that we don’t need to act like kidnapping barbarians. But if it’s in the Bible, I guess it’s ok for some folks.
Sad.
5
Ross, I have to say that the idea that all Democrats want open borders is hyperbole. It’s what the right says to its base to rile them up. I don’t know a single Democrat who wants open borders, and I’m one of those so-called educated urban elites who lives amongst mostly Democrats.
196
All Democrats?
Well, DEFINITELY all media and government Democrats. It will take a long time for the Obama administration's recruiting effort to get people to come up here are forgotten in the worst places of the world.
2
If you were from California, you’d know countless Democrats who indeed want open borders. And not for profit, but because it’s another ‘human right’. I can only assume you’re a very conservative Democrat, not a progressive. You just haven’t been woke yet.
2
I agree with Mr Douthat that E-Verify would be a much better way to manage illegal immigration than the inhuman practice of separating parents from their minor children. It would also be preferable to many of the other harsh and ineffectual policies applied along the borders. However, to say “neither party wants these mandates, because both immigration activists and business interests hate them”, is to muddy the waters. Immigration activists have very little sway compared to business interests, which want cheap labor. Let’s be honest, the problem the country faces is that businesses run the shop and they don’t want unions or minimum wage and they certainly don’t want E-Verify, because all of these practices mean that they’d have to pay more for labor. The constant push for cheap labor is what has eroded the working and middle classes. Making businesses take responsibility for fair and legal hiring practices across the board would solve many of the country’s issues, including this constant pointing of fingers at illegal immigrants and minorities.
18
I hope folks know that immigration judges are processing up to 1000 cases a day and, according to Vox, the average case takes 3 weeks, after which families are reunited and deported.
Lots of parents send their kids off to camps for the whole summer. Sure, the conditions are different and someone is dying to call this a false equivalence. But i’ve worked at a couple of those camps and some kids cry every night for weeks. They survive and I suspect the Central American kids will survive, too, even though the situations aren’t equivalent.
13
Children sent off to camp are not babies or toddlers. They are generally around the age of ten or so.
By the way I was one of those children sent off to camp at the age of 11. I was sent, for eight weeks, to a beautiful New England campground with jolly counselors and other children my age playing lots of fun games and swimming and hiking in gorgeous lakes, eating hot dogs and (weirdly)square dancing.
I was not a 2 year old torn away from her sobbing mother. Or even an 11 year old put into a home with a family that did not speak my language, having no idea what was going to happen next.
And yet, despite the obvious delight I should have taken in those circumstances, camp was extremely traumatic for me. I was miserable,homesick and lonely, and to this day remember those camp years with sadness.
It may make YOU feel better to somehow couch this as just, you know, the kind of thing kids get over. But its not. It’s psychologically destructive trauma and these children may very well suffer serious mental anguish for the rest of their lives.
11
At first, I thought this was sarcasm. On second reading, it's clear that it is serious. How sad that we try to comfort ourselves by making up stories to justify the heinous actions of the Trump administration.
You left out one thing in your unbelievably false equivilence "argument," it's a choice on the part of American families to send their children to summer camp. Both the parents and children know when camp ends; parents often visit during a longer stay summer camp; there is often times communication between the parents and children, and finally, how many infants go to summer camp. How many of the children in overnight camps fall within the age category of pre-school and kindergarten.
When I started a new job, I was asked to bring my passport with me when I arrived. It was all very pleasant and no one really questioned by citizenship but they had to do it. Immigrants who have gone through the appropriate channels must present their green cards or similar documentation. I see no problem with requiring such verification. The key to this problem is not to do away with a quick for of checking status but rather to start jailing the CEOs and owners of corporations who use undocumented workers. If we are serious about this as the Trump administration claims to the length of putting children in detention centers I suggest they put a few CEOs in jail if they are breaking the law. Stop punishing the poor for being poor!
85
People who hire illegals are seldom CEO’s. Mostly, they’re farmers. Putting farmers in jail would be great. All the grapes and lettuce and blueberries would go unpicked and all the undocumented would be out of work. And all the blueberry CEO’s would be in jail.
Totally agree. With one amendment. Please add to enforcement of employers as a policy the issue of six-month guest worker visas on demand. This would be automatically renewed for the worker for the following year if employer and worker both abide by the visa's conditions.
15
"'So even if you hope to move gradually toward open borders, as much of the Democratic Party seems to want"
There are still lots of democrats who want to limit immigration and it has absolutely nothing to do with race. Many of us are environmentalists.
Since 1950 the population of the US has more than doubled. Even though birth rates are declining we are still projected to be at 420 million by 2060 due to immigration and close to a billion in the next 100 years. There are over a million immigrants a year now as it is and many democrats (and republicans) want to increase that number.
Gaylord Nelson the founder of Earth Day said: In this country, it's phony to say "I'm for the environment but not for limiting immigration."
27
Over-population will still affect the environment, whether immigrants are here or "there."
Spucky50 You are wrong on so many levels.
We have five percent of the world's population and consume 25% of it's energy.
On average, one American consumes as much energy as 2 Japanese 6 Mexicans 13 Chinese 31 Indians 128 Bangladeshis 307 Tanzanians 370 Ethiopians.
Each American will produce about 60 tons of garbage ...Fifty percent of the wetlands, 90% of the northwestern old-growth forests, and 99% of the tall-grass prairie have been destroyed in the last 200 years. And we lose 9 miles of rural land a day to development.
Americans are far worse for the environment than those in less developed countries.
And once again the false equivalency raises its faulty and ugly head in a conservative pundit's piece. Yes, the Obama Administration separated children from parents; but only to protect the children when their parent(s) were charged with violent or other true crimes that required their incarceration thereby placing their children in danger. There were no Walmart concentration-like camps or tent cities as there are with the current Administration's policies. And the mere act of crossing the border did not immediately bring a criminal charge as it does under Commandant Sessions' facile legal and Biblical interpretations. Instead of expressing sympathy for the Trumpians in their efforts to stamp out all immigration except of course those foreigners temporarily allowed to enter and work in Trump enterprises (or is that "sweatshops"), how about just condemning what he's doing and how he's doing it? Make him wear heavily the consequences of his actions for a change.
115
Thanks again for a provocative piece. I appreciate having my long held intuitions challenged.
9
The entire immigration debate has become so distorted by the Republicans and especially Trump that people fail to see the simple truths of the history of this country. We are a nation of immigrants. Immigrants make America stronger, not weaker. Immigrants are the lifeblood of our democracy.
We have a job for every person trying to enter America from our southern border. Welcome them, open our arms to them, help them find work and given them citizenship. And give every other person who has been living in the shadows illegally and making huge contributions to this country amnesty and citizenship as well. Anything less is racism, pure and simple, and by granting amnesty and citizenship to millions of people who have risked their lives to get here, we would reestablish once again what Reagan saw so clearly when he wrote that "our strength comes from our own immigrant heritage and our capacity to welcome those from other lands."
Stop the fighting and make America great again!
14
We are a nation of legal immigrants..like my fathers were.... and they were always welcomed. If all of Central America and the Carib were allowed o come to the US, this would cause mass disruption in our county,,and theirs as well.. no country in the world would allow unabated immigration..so please start with reality and then accommodate as many as we can handle for their benefit and ours.
3
"(E-Verify has fallen out of the proposed House immigration compromise), because both immigration activists and business interests hate them. But morally, E-Verify seems vastly preferable".
Since when has Trump and his team been influenced by activists and business? If the profoundly cruel and despicable practice of separating children from parents doesn't raise ire of activists and business, then (on that basis) it's the best option.
Maybe a plan to help certain Latin American countries develop their economies would be helpful. Maybe stimulating more trade between US and these countries. Tackle the root of the immigration problem, not a symptom.
13
There are even greater cruelties lurking in this mess.
If ever the US were to have an open border with Mexico, then the US would soon find itself "forced" to take over and govern the place. That would be a complete disaster.
Meanwhile in its desire to keep apart from Mexico, and at the same time to remain in denial about the Drug War disaster, the US is helping Mexico to become an ungoverned and ungovernable disaster.
That disaster on our border will resemble other failed states, and their consequences for neighbors. "Failed state" is a well established thing, existing in the real world, not a fear invented.
What the US is now doing to Mexican kids on the border is awful, but it does not begin to compare to the suffering that is spinning out of control with Mexico. Kids grab headlines. They should. But the really big disaster is unfolding as we ignore it.
13
Most of these kids are from Central American countries like El Salvador and Guatemala. They are not "Mexicans," unless that is your catch-all term for Hispanics arriving at our southern border. Unlike traditional economic migrants, most of whom were Mexicans, this new wave of immigration that appeared around 2013-2014 includes a large contingent of families trying to escape gangs, drugs, and death.
1
"In denial about the Drug War disaster" ?
I don't think so. Even as its story is exaggerated, the drug war's current impact and potential dangers take a back seat in public news, commentary and awareness to the new nightmares for the hard-working paid-under-the-table immigrants and of course for the Dreamers.
Unmentioned here is the fact that more Mexicans are leaving than are coming and that past policies and enforcement have made it harder for migratory labor to return to their countries. Also, that we are facing a labor shortage in the near future, that we’re dependent on mostly undocumented immigrants for most of our food. Also, that we’re facing a crisis for Social Security if we don’t get more working people paying into the system. Also that undocumented immigrants pay billions in taxes, but can’t take many of the benefits, like unemployment or Social Security. Also, placed that experience an influx of immigration, documented and undocumented, experience a drop in crime and revitalized economies.
And how many immigrants are really coming here anyway? Isn’t this a distraction and easy group to target instead of financial institutions that have sunk the world’s economy but continue to operate after receiving bailouts and seeing the current administration lifting the rules intended to prevent a repeat.
39
I haven't seen anyone speak of the lack of logistical planning for this policy.
You'd think that the administration would get a building program up and running, gather beds, clothing, and caring adults to cushion the negative impacts on the separated children, who are innocent, after all. A well planned out and prepared policy initiative would have a chance at properly and effectively reuniting parents with their children.
Instead , the policy in practice looks fly-by-night, throwing up tent cities here, shacks there. Because of this, I do not have confidence that these children will be properly reunited with their parents, and my heart cries out, what then?
28
Our immigration 'policies' previously were a mockery - one could be admitted for almost any made-up reason, and those with children didn't even need to do that. Somebody had to stop this nonsense - too bad it wasn't done decades ago.
24
I’ll believe it when I see it. We were promised effective immigration in 1986 with the guarantee that amnesty would be a one time thing followed by strict enforcement. The continued crossing of our borders without a successful effort to control them is always coupled with calls for empathy and humanitarian efforts but lacking any true changes.
22
Ross, a discerning voice in the rabble of denial from both sides.
We need the Goodlatte Bill with e-Verify but neither the Democrats nor the Republican landowners want this; we will not solve this dilemma until some one can get the Supremes involved.
18
Upon reading the below thoughtful comments, and other discussions on immigration, I've noted it is rarely mentioned why people leave their home countries, and how much our advanced capitalist consumer and militaristic economies have to do with this. Countries like Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador have been for a few centuries exploited by the economies of the north using their labor and resources to profit, destroying indigenous economies, and importing repressive regimes to make sure the imperialist profit is not disrupted. In another part of this paper, I read how the gangs in these countries began in the US, and were exported back there, where civil governments set up after years of colonization, on the so called "western democracy" model, cannot enforce the law to contain them. A similar situation appears to exist in the middle east, where Russia, the US, China, and Europe are fighting proxy wars and destroying the cultures, lands and economies that have previously existed there. (I realize this has also gone on for a long time.) I am no middle East expert, but it seems that the US Arms Industry (larger than the next 7 countries combined), seems to be a huge beneficiary. In other words, Americans and other northern economies need to ask ourselves how we have benefited economically (and still do), off the conditions which force people to leave their homes in hopes of better lives for themselves and their families. (Bananas 29 cents a lb., etc, etc).
115
It's all politics. The immigrants are being demonized; Americans are being pandered to but won't work for the wages that require people to live in make-shift shelters or three families in two bedroom apartments. When mandatory e-verify, stiff fines for violations, and prison sentences for repeat offenders, are supported by immigrant bashing Iowa Congressman Steve Peace, whose district includes meat packing plants where immigrants are paid the same exact wage -- $17/hr. -- that was paid to union workers 40 years ago, something real might happen.
16
Ross, I disagree with you more often than not and have done so sometimes vehemently. Here, I very much agree with you.
First off, yes separation of children from their parents is absolutely cruel and I have trouble getting some of these images out of my mind. But, we do need to address the issue at hand from a policy level.
I often wondered what I would say to the American people if I were running as a Democrat. I would run on mandatory eVerify with allotment for more temporary visas/programs for areas where it is needed. Also, corporations would absolutely have to chip in to pay for healthcare for its workers at the very least. Why not? This would disarm the GOP's weapon against the Democratic Party. Also, holding corporations accountable would satisfy many from both sides who are increasingly sick of the imperviousness of big businesses.
Notice no one is running on mandatory eVerify? Isn't that an opportunity for a politician who wants to ensure a reasonable and humane policy going forward? I think those Dems who truly want to move the party more left should absolutely do this. Say DACA is a must as well as eVerify. Absolute no to horrendous practices at the border but also assurances to the American public that we control our borders.
65
The immigration problem will be solved the day, we punish those who hire illegal immigrants, not the immigrants. Use E-Verify; and make ICE's job to check on hiring practices; if a company is not using E-Verify, fine the company. People come for work, if there is none to be found, they will not come. On the other hand we need to accept we do not have enough people in the US who want to do certain jobs, that there are some citizens that rather be unemployed than working on a field, or cleaning hotel rooms, so a more efficient system of guest workers is needed. Also we have to accept that those who have been here for years working with the current system, paying taxes, and building community should get legal status to stay. Finally we need to realize that a country of 325MM people that is getting older, needs new blood, so a immigration system should be implemented to bring young, educated, and entrepreneurial people to live and thrive in the US. We can probably absorb an immigrant population of 0.5% of our total population per year. Make it a little easier to come legally, and much more difficult to find a job if you come illegally, and the issue will be solved.
135
Well said. Any Democratic politicians listening? Can anyone pick the above platform on immigration apart and let us know what would be unreasonable?
1
Maybe we should hold off on guest worker programs until we exhaust incentivizing people with money. You know those people who deliver and pump out porta potties are Americans. They are paid just a little bit more than if they were driving a local truck. Field work and cleaning hotels are done by many Americans, and if we paid people anything like what they should be getting given the gains in productivity over the past few decades the hotel maids could support a family instead of living in poverty.
2
You are absolutely correct. Unfortunately, the business community and wealthy elites LOVE illegals and will do nothing to change the current (non) system.
I think the image of children ripped from the arms of their parents will become the indelible, iconic image of this Republican administration. This will be in history books alongside internment camps and the exclusion of Chinese.
18
Don't forget fire hoses and dogs unleashed on children
"....even if you hope to move gradually toward open borders, as much of the Democratic Party seems to want"
Douthat would be far more convincing, and much more likely to be taken seriously, if he would stop with the straw men.
47
Douthat wants to restrain the very worst (and most likely to look bad) aspect of the system. However, his goal is to keep the system, which is based on the premise "IMMIGRANTS BAD!" I disagree with that premise.
Douthat has many times written about how he's a Christian. He has several times written columns maintaining that he is master of Catholic Doctrine and the Pope is not. If he's seriously interested in Christianity, he should get a Bible and read it. He will find dozens and dozens of passages dealing directly with Republican immigration policy. Many of them give specific easily understood orders.
How about it Douthat? If you want to claim to be a Christian, you
should GET WITH THE PROGRAM.
11
If the separation is temporary, which seems to be the case, no problem.
5
Unfortunately, for children this kind of trauma is carried long after the fact of the separation. Only imagine if it were your own child.
Do you have children? Imagine a government agent arrived at your home one day and said it needed to place your kids in a facility. Its location is unspecified and might be thousands of miles away. You will not be allowed to communicate with them beyond perhaps an occasional Skype message or phone call. The government also cannot tell you how long this separation will last. Would you be as cavalier as your comment suggests?
There is a scene in the movie Sophie's Choice where the children arrive at the concentration camp and are separated from their parents by SS guards, and that scene replays time and time again when I think of what is happening in my own country. What have we become? are we on the way to perdition, to the punishment such evil acts invite? are we insane, or have we lost all sense of morality, or right and wrong? are there any leaders left in our nation?
25
Separating parents from their kids is just one more example that Trump will use whatever leverage is available to enact his policies, no matter the consequence. He did this in his private business. This is one form of his great "dealmaking".
I also wonder if we are now going to justify administration actions and edicts by quoting scripture, as did our attorney general. Doesn't Iran do that with the Koran? Just sayin...
10
Trump "won" his election and don't let anyone tell you different on the immigration and illegal immigration issue. That's the cold bitter truth and I'm a lifetime Democrat. As for the the inhumane, despicable events now happening on the southern border...the Trump voters love it and he knows it and that's why it will continue and with a little deplorable imagination by this administration it can and will only get worse. Ask Marco Rubio what happens when he had the momentary ethics to try to work with President Obama on a comprehensive immigration bill.
23
Marco Rubio remains a Senator from Florida and was not thrown out of office for working on the immigration bill in 2013. Your point?
You have one thing right: Trump and his cultists do love cruelty.
I hope that the Dems rapidly embrace the mantra of 'open borders' - no single policy will doom a major political party to rump status faster than - let all who want to enter freely enter the good ol' USA.
This is exactly how progressives snatch failure from the jaws of victory every time.
21
I don't believe there are any Democratic politicians calling for "open borders." I note that neither you nor Mr. Douthat named any. I take it that he believes the concept is implicit in the actual stances some Democrats have taken.
Another possibility is that they really don't know what to do, torn between empathy for the immigrants & knowing that we can't actually let everyone in.
2
It should ne obvious by now that immigrants are doing jobs that Americans do not want like crab picking in Maryland, horticulture in Ohio, horse care in Kentucky and picking fruits and vegetables and cleaning houses everywhere. So go ahead Ross, let those businesses dry up and die or just face the reality that we need people willing to work, have children, and pay taxes and it really doesn't mtter where they're from.
15
David, what you are describing is some sort of indentured servitude aka, new American slavery; we are not going back to those old days.
Goodlatte Bill with E-Verify is fair for the sake of the American people.
We can get grapes, peaches, Kiwis and any other fruit from Chili, Argentina, Italy etc. but no indentured servitude at taxpayers expense.
7
Businesses that do not pay decent wages should “dry up and die”. Low wages erode the tax base - which mean that the schools suffer, the neighborhoods suffer, law enforcement becomes less effective. Continuing developments in robotics and automation will eliminate many of the jobs undocumented immigrants now hold. Bringing people here to do the jobs “Americans do not want to do” when those jobs are gone is not a solution to the immigration problem.
7
Robots do not now nor will they ever make beds, pick fruit, clean airports, provide semi skilled nursing care.
2
It is not only that children are being separated from their parents. Children, being treated that way, are being damaged psychologically for their whole life. Such a treatment is cruel and Trump and Sessions should be punished.
38
Damaging and scarring children in this way, we could raise up a whole new crop of kids vulnerable to gang recruitment--our own, home-grown MS-13 members.
The point of the cruelty is obvious and it has zero to do with effective immigration policy. It is there to gratify the political base Trump uses as personal Praetorians against the GOP center, such as that is.
If there is a Republican left with the character to even think about keeping his word to defend the Constitution, Trump wants them to see this: cruelty to children used as leverage; his reptilian minion Stephen Miller calling it "a simple decision"; his faithful voters openly celebrating the suffering of people whom they see as less; and the likes of Paul Manafort doing the perp walk.
The message is obvious: the Trump voters put Trump above decency, or integrity, or compassion, or common sense. Cruelty is Trump's hammer now. He's scared of the Mueller investigation and he's lashing out with it. He'll use cruelty regardless of the bounds of decency. Against kids, against due process, against the FBI..this is his element. Mark Sanford, brown children, anybody in his way; they'll be heads on pikes to show the GOP who's in charge. The Trump base will love it. And they'll draw blood before they let Trump follow Manafort.
21
Sure Ross, progress on Dreamers really is cruelty because all those kids fleeing gangs in Central America actually are doing it because they follow U.S. immigration policy toward a completely separate class of people, and it's an act of cruelty to encourage them. That "cruelty" is comparable to ripping babies out of their mama's arms, so there's a really a close parallel between how cruel Democrats and Republicans are. That's a good reason we'd better not ever come to a favorable resolution for the Dreamers. Think of the cruelty!
And sure Ross, we liberals are only objecting to separating the kids from their parents because we hate Trump. Really we were all hoping Obama would do it, and we were all set to cheer him on if he did.
I'm glad I could offer some comfort and support for your world-view.
26
It will not come as a surprise if there will be first-time Americans, some Republican, who opt not to vote this coming November. The lack of confidence in an ineffectual and weak Congress; our loss of faith in our Constitution, while inciting us to arm ourselves, and all in the face of a sordid Presidency.
9
I wondered how far I would get before the moral outrage turned to a "yeah, but Obama did as bad or worse. It took just five paragraphs and then I was treated to a typical Obama bash for the rest of the piece.
Happy Father's Day Russ. Those of us who've earned the right to be with our fathers tomorrow, or have our children with us, have . . . yes, earned that right by not being immigrants. Thank God that we are not as other men are, brown skinned and homeless.
40
The US does not seem to have a policy on what to do with the people that show up at your border. You should have a discussion to decide what you want to do:
1. Admit everyone
2. Admit no one, or
3. Admit some
If you choose 3 you then have to spell out what the criterion will be for choosing who gets in and who does not.
The current debate is all emotion with little rationality.
80
Alan, its #3. Thats clear. Have you ever been stopped at the border enroute to Orlando?
1
Well, gratuitously ripping tiny children, unable to speak or understand or look out out for themselves, away from their loving parents, and housing them among overburdened strangers in cages and unlicensed overcrowded facilities with no parental contact...yeah, that's an emotional issue for most human beings. Holding parents indefinitely with no contact, never knowing where their children are, whether they are ok, or if they will ever see them again -- yeah, that's an emotional issue for anyone with an ounce of empathy. Save your rational debate for when we stop inflicting permanent, unnecessary trauma on innocent children.
Good column.
The easiest solution is stop accommodating immigrants who just show up at or after illegally crossing the border.
Enforce a zero tolerance policy that immigration admission will be determined only while the person remains outside the country and any situation to the contrary leads to immediate deportation. Apply for asylum at a local embassy.
23
Those immigrants who volunteer to serve in our military and do so with honor and bravery ought to be given a guaranteed path to citizenship for themselves and their children!
15
We need to fight our own wars using our own children.
1
Ross,
Romans 13.
God bless the United States of America.
Immigration from many countries has been declining for decades. One cause was economics. In Mexico, for instance, there was more economic opportunity precisely because of NAFTA--which this president has now cancelled.
Ross, please actually take a moment and put yourself in the shoes of those families who are fleeing Honduras. If they stay, their daughters will choose between death and becoming a gang sex slave. If they stay, their sons will choose between death and becoming a member of a violent criminal gang.
Ross, do you really agree with Mr. Sessions who has just announced a new policy according to which such circumstances will no longer qualify those desperate families for asylum?
Finally, let's get the Trump Fox Republican lies out of the way. One always wants to jump right in on the lies. But if one does that one never has time to say anything else.
Lie number 1: "Now because Trump is hated ..." Based on publicly available evidence, a bipartisan majority of Americans find Trump deplorable. Surely, Ross, you know that hate is different. For instance, saying Mexicans are rapists.
Lie 2: "So even if you hope to move gradually toward open borders, as much of the Democratic Party seems to want ..." I do not know a single Democrat who wants open borders. Were open borders on Sec. Clinton's web site? No.
24
Robert, 50,000 people per month are traveling thru Mexico to get to the USA because they know that there are Americans with signs that say "All Immigrants Welcome" when they turn on their tv and there are organizations as well as Telemundo tv with Jose Villard (aka known as the Anderson Cooper look a like) on tv telling them to come to America.
Remember the caravan with hundreds of people organized by those who wish to import more people from Central America.
Those people could have stopped at any Spanish speaking country but they want to come to America due to our generous welfare and citizenship benefits.
2
Underlying all of the administration's attempts to justify its actions is the claim that it is compelled to do what it is doing. Setting aside the obvious response that this claim is obviously false - the zero-tolerance policy can be rescinded as easily and as quickly as it was implemented - it is reasonable to ask whether preventing illegal immigration (or even just deterring it) justifies appalling and willful cruelty. The administration's position seems to be that the end justifies the means. If all that matters is reaching a goal then anything at all can be used to reach it but no-one, I think, really believes this. If they did, they would have no way of objecting to any number of (even more) horrific practices. If anything goes to reduce illegal immigration then we could, for example, execute mothers and children and hang their bodies along the border, or threaten Mexico with nuclear annihilation if it fails to stop people reaching the border, or wipe out the entire population of Central and South America. Or, indeed, of the whole world. If there was no-one at all then there'd be no-one to be an illegal alien. The ultimate (final) solution.
If these means are unacceptable to the administration then it has abandoned its reliance on the end/means argument, and it now has to explain to us why, if it would not take those actions, it will engage in the lesser but still morally abhorrent practices it is indulging in at border crossings.
5
All I can say about E-Verify is I hope it works a ton better than it did when my payroll processor suggested I use it for every new hire. It was a while ago -- 2004-2005 -- so E-Verify may well have been greatly improved. But what I remember was logging in, entering the requested information and then NEVER getting an answer as to whether my hires were cool with the gov or not. I just quit bothering with it after a couple of years.
10
Ross, Ross, Ross....
You write a pretty good column but you still have to stick in a zinger at Democrats, Progressives..
No, we don't want open borders but only an immigration system that works. Much like the old Bracero program, or the ebb and flow immigration of the 1960's and '70's. People came, worked, went home.
President Clinton ended that with Operation Gatekeeper and its been a mess since.
Come to Arizona and you will find countless construction projects either cancelled or in slow motion because contractors can't find labor. It's a blow to a recovering economy. With an E-Verify that works or temporary work visas the problem is mitigated.
Hire 5,000 more immigration workers to process applications rather than 5,000 border patrol agents and you will find a solution.
29
John Bowlby's famous studies carried out on hospitalized children in the 1940s found that young children that were separated from their mothers produced permanent negative attachment behaviors in the child. Back then hospital policy prohibited mothers from visiting their children because there was an idea that a parent caused the child more distress by their mere presence.
When a mother left the child in the hospital, Bowlby and his team observed the child whither over the course of days until the child no longer related to his mother when he was finally reunited.
Bowlby's heartbreaking observations changed adoption and hospitalization procedures for children.
This is more than a one-time cruel event occurring in the life of these families. We have known for nearly 70 years that Separating young children from their primary caretaker causes permanent brain changes in the child which adversely affect their ability to cope and form relationships.
39
Someone should share this information with those 'parents' who are illegally entering our nation so they choose not to break the law and subject their children to that fate.
1
First step, Ross, path to citizenship for those who have been here and worked for five years. Immediate Second step, full enforcement of E-Verify especially in rural America that misuse those who heroically cross the border to feed their families living back in their home countries.
11
No matter what you thibnk of a particular law, sometimes the costs of enforcing it vastly exceed the benefits.
12
E-Verify is to undocumented labor what a revenue-neutral carbon tax is to our over-reliance on fossil fuels--a problem's natural, obvious solution that can't go anywhere because it inflicts pain on some vested interests and doesn't advantage other vested interests such that they have a reason to champion it. And so, on immigration, both parties look the other way, and every generation or so we're lucky to get some ungainly bill that claims to be immigration reform but just kicks the can down the road.
But of course, there's a simple rule of politics: what goes around comes around. And I would say, if there's one Democratic failure that led to the rise of Donald Trump and Trumpism, it is on immigration, with Dems' tacit embrace of post-citizenship open borders, their conflation of legal and illegal immigration (and the accompanying insinuation that it is racist to enforce the law), and their willingness let the legal immigration system be abused to flood the labor market with cheap, inferior talent.
With Obamacare and raising the minimum wage, we've seen signs that the Democrats are still looking out for the interests of workers. They're still far better for labor than the Republicans are. And yet, when it comes to immigration, instead of learning the painful lesson of Trump, the Dems have doubled down on their mistake and become the mirror image of the GOP: a party that exists to serve its elites while feeding scraps of identity politics and social issues to the masses.
74
I agree completely with your analysis. The roots of the rise (and current popularity) of Trump lie in the previous administration's lax attitude on the topic of immigration. I am a Democrat and on this one issue the party does not represent me. In fact, I find its doubling down on its pro-illegals stance to be tone deaf and I worry that they will lose in 2018 and in 2020.
29
I'm bracing now for someone to respond to the above comment, "Don't you know that undocumented workers do the sorts of jobs Americans won't do anymore? If it weren't for them, our food would be way more expensive and there'd be no one to clean our homes." Actually, I'm reading much the same point being made again and again in response to Ross Douthat's own case for E-Verify.
I look at that as a misuse of the facts to defend the status quo.
Either you have the rule of law or you don't. But that doesn't rule out adapting the law to changing circumstances. E-Verify is not a solution by itself. It has to be combined with some kind of seasonal guest worker program that can be tuned to meet the demand, plus an expansion of year-round work visas to do the jobs Americans truly don't want to do once we've finally given Americans a chance to do those jobs. A path to citizenship can and should be part of the deal.
Maybe I'm just not paying close enough attention, but I just don't hear any Democratic leaders with a national stage making the case for that kind of real (and painful) reform. Instead, I just hear Democrats reactively defending illegal immigrants against the Trump administration's crackdown, and that means I just hear Democrats defending illegal immigration itself.
By the way, among Democrats, I at least give the Obama administration credit for trying to enforce immigration law. Unlike Trump's crackdown, Obama's crackdown was done judicially and in good faith.
38
I don't know what happened to pragmatic politicians who governed in the real world--folks like Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neill. I wonder if they could get elected in 2018.
1
It is difficult to look at these children being separated from their parents and being held in detention centers but they were given fair warning to not come here illegally. They broke our laws and now we are seeing the results of their not listening. If we allow these families to enter, droves more of illegals will see we are not serous at protecting our borders. They will flood our country and we will have even bigger problems.
President Trump inherited this problem and he promised Americans he would fix it. He is trying to do this but is being unjustly criticized for a problem not of his making. Children were sent here alone from Central America by parents but it has grown to now include whole families. The brakes must be put on this widespread program and sooner rather than later.
What other countries would allow an influx of illegal immigrants to just cross over their borders without any limits? Not many and neither should we. We are a nation of laws that must be enforced.
24
Trump is hardly the person to use as a model for the enforcement of laws. One law he is currently breaking the law which says presidents cannot use their office for profit for themselves or their families. There are many other laws he believes he is entitled to break.
The people who are being separated from their children are those who are seeking asylum in the US. They are being put in jail while their cases are being decided; if they are accompanied by children, those children are separated from them and put in detainment as well. Apparently some children are placed with so-called foster families of which there is a severe shortage for US children so the quality of vetting of foster families for foreign children is unknown. We hope it is more thorough than the vetting Trump does for who he hires for his administration.
The US has room and programs set up to help those who are fleeing natural disasters and violence in their countries. We as a country do not need to take immoral action to protect our country from women and children fleeing violence and asking for asylum. The need to reduce immigration to zero and to "secure our borders" is a false crisis which depends on lies and the fear of people from foreign countries to encourage extreme measures which are contrary to human decency.
The US has room and jobs for those who seek respite from disasters and violence. We do not need to torture families seeking asylum to show we are "a nation of laws".
16
I thought you were "pro- life."
1
Please be reminded that your argument is the very one that was used against the Irish coming here, and if they made it, to make their lives miserable.
Here's the thing - Obama was trying to problem solve with the tools he had in the absence of Congress doing anything...(again). Were there some unintended consequences? Maybe. Did he try to be compassionate and problem solve at the same time? Absolutely. Can the same be said of Trump? No, not when you are ripping away young vulnerable children from the arms of their parents. Until this country/businesses can stop the need for cheap, undocumented labor - people will continue to cross the border knowing jobs await them. E-Verify is a good start, huge fines on business that ignore it would be even better.
167
Are undocumented immigrants detained at ports of entry other than those along the Southern border receiving the same treatment as Hispanic families? I don’t know of any journalist reports about this, but I suspect not. If there is different treatment for white undocumented persons, we should know about it, and question our government about it.
15
Except that the administration has already admitted that it has implemented this policy as means of deterrence. They said it. We all know it. It is deliberately cruel to try to make escape to the United States seem less appealing.
This is already abominable.
This is the other thing they have admitted. They implemented this policy to have a bargaining chip to try to get Democrats to fund the president's wall and accept huge cuts in legal immigration, the diversity lottery in particular. Yes, the executive branch decided to tear children from their parents specifically to be so cruel that the leaders of the Democratic Party in Congress will accept policies they disagree with just to get it to stop. It is the moral equivalent of a mugging with a gun pointed at your companions head - his head wasn't going to explode just a second ago, but now you have to had over your purse or it will, there is nothing the guy with the gun can do about it. Yeah, right. Pull the other one.
Honestly, I think that the courts are going to have to jump in on this one. It is unlikely that the arrangements that have been made for the separated children pass any kind of legal muster. A judge will have to order them to stop incarcerating the parents until they have someplace to put their children that is better for the children than civil detention with their families. And then let the Constitutional crisis begin. Because this administration will refuse to obey the order.
21
Polly, this is one I wish I could recommend a thousand times. These ARE the tactics of criminals and terrorists, not politicians trying to persuade, and we must oppose and defeat these atrocities being committed in our names and with our tax dollars.
We Dems are yet again committing political suicide by tossing aside common sense, ignoring the reality of this issue, and insisting on arms-wide-open borders and amnesty for illegal immigrants, while doing nothing to help our own citizens. Why do you think all of those working class people who used to vote Democrat changed allegiance? It's because Dems stopped representing their interests, which allowed Republicans to influence them with their lies and propaganda.
In our current social, economic, political reality, it is absolutely untenable to continue our current immigration and amnesty practices. Please temper the passionate reactions and emotionally charged thinking with common sense /reality. We can still be humanitarian and help people of third worlds. But Democrats must be willing to examine this free of emotional reasoning. Republicans in turn must be willing to temper their authoritarian anger (ie, cruel human rights abuses). Why can't we use common sense?
Going after employers who hire illegals is a great first step. Stopping and deporting illegals immediately is also necessary. No other nation on earth - not even the wonderful Canadians - allows people to enter and stay in their countries illegally.
Mark my words, if Dems continue to demand amnesty and open borders, if they continue to ignore reality, the November "Blue Wave" will run red with the boiling blood of voters who, if not for this kind of issue, would otherwise vote Democrat.
45
Reader ,X the problem with your claim is that no Democrat has ever supported open borders. Quite to the contrary, democrats repeatedly appropriated billions of dollars for border security and, as a result, the southern border is safer than it has ever been. The problems with immigration policy stem from what to do about the eleven million or more who came here years ago since reporting all of them is impossible and how to deal with all these Central Americans leaving violence there who are legally requesting asylum?
7
@jonathan, actually, just read the comments here. Many are proposing open borders. And even if they weren't, Democrats are proposing immigration policies that are unsustainable and do not represent the interests of American citizens. And the Democrats insistence on making this issue (giving amnesty and continuing to allow illegal immigrants into America) their biggest and, frankly, only fight -- by making this their central issue, they are pushing middle America away from voting Democrat. Unfortunately, the only alternative to the Democratic party is the self-serving plutocracy called Republican, a party that pretends to represent America but really only represents the 1%. But people would rather have that than what the Democrats offer. If Democrats don't start representing Americans, formerly Democratic voters will either not vote or vote for a third party or vote Republican. If we want to help people in third worlds, force our government to support international humanitarian and aid organizations. Allowing thousands upon millions of immigrants into any nation is just not sustainable.
9
And a well administered guest worker program would help, too.
2
I don’t hate Trump and support this policy. He’s doing what needs to be done. Hopefully he can see it through.
American parents are separated from their parents when they’re in jail so I’m not seeing what the fuss is all about. These are individually illegally crossing our borders. We have no idea who they are and you liberals and anti-Trump conservatives want what exactly the kids to be housed with adults?
I don’t support the Dems refusing to enforce our immigration laws and declaring they want to ban ICE. I don’t support the Dems refusing to work with Republicans to find a solution.
16
Asylum-seekers are not acting illegally. Sessions and Trump are deliberately confusing people by referring to asylum-seekers as lawbreakers. They are not.
12
Ed, your inability to see the difference between the custody of a American citizen for criminal conduct & the separation and detention of entire families while their immigration appeals are reviewed is typical of the myopic view of the Trump true believer. The equivalent would be the forced removal and incarceration of the children of American citizens because their parents may be guilty of something. It’s not law enforcement, its terrorism in the service of tyranny and an act of extortion against Democrats because they won’t support Trumps stupid wall. You forget that a comprehensive immigration deal was almost reached not long ago and Trump the ever deceitful trashed it for not deferring enough to his obsession with bigotry and the wall. Smoke and mirrors, lies and deceit, the Trump way and that is worth hating. Trump himself ain’t worth the energy or time.
2
The hysteria around "illegal" immigration that has been whipped up as a tool for right wing demagogues to use to get votes and to prevent any actual progress in fixing our immgration system (because that would mean raising taxes, compromising with, ugh, Democrats and liberals, and conceding that government is good for something) is totally disproportionate to the problem.
The ginned up anti-immigrant obsession has never been about preserving "law and order;" it has always been about scapegoating immigrants for political gain.
I don't know which meme is more bogus, that we have to use extreme, inhumane measures to prevent refugees from coming to America because they're violent criminals, they're going to take our jobs, or they deserve to be punished with jailing or deportation, even having their children taken away, because of the heinous crime of walking across our border with no papers.
Oh, and then there's the "those horrible liberal Democrats will throw open the borders to everyone who wants to come to the United States no matter who they are!" meme.
Yes, there are people who support open borders.
And the prospect that Congress, even with a Democratiic majority, would ever pass an open borders law is precisely zero.
Give up the contrived hysteria over "illegal" immigrants, Republicans. Then, we might get somewhere in putting together a well-funded, efficient, security aware immigration system that deals with immigrants and refugees fairly, calmly, and humanely.
26
There is a HUGE difference between deterring immigrants and inflicting cruelty.
Separating children from their parents who are fleeing violence, civil unrest and persecution is simply EVIL writ large. It is completely the opposite of what Jesus taught.
And they way blame is shifted to Democrats and any other political opposition is shameful beyond reproach.
253
If they were legitimately fleeing violence in Central America then they would have stooped in Mexico - the fact that they did not simply brands them as Economic Refugees
14
Every nation needs to enforce its borders. I agree, E-Verify would solve a lot of our problem, with visiting work passes for other farming and agricultural jobs. Now, if the right wants more "white" immigration, it needs to offer what Europe does -- year-long paid vacation for parenthood and a guarantee to re-hire Moms and Dads who take parental leave, minimum 5 weeks vacation for all, and universal health care. Sounds like a win-win for all Americans! :)
31
Have we any idea of the number of refugees from specific countries? I've read Honduras, Guatemala, perhaps Columbia, but how many and truly why are they fleeing?
I know there been programs in other eras to help stabilize governments and improve economies, but is it too naive to think we might create something that would work this time? Probably so, but why not task some folks with an understanding of the local situations to find solutions. We are more than willing to spend trillions to foster 'regime change' half way around the world.
I say we look to improve conditions in their home countries rather than locking them up here and inflicting life long injuries upon their children.
"What you sow, so shall ye reap." and that's a scary picture.
11
Ross, you state that immigrant children were "sent north without their parents". The implication is that the parents were left behind and the children were the vanguard. From what I've read, in many if not most cases, the parents were already here and the children were rejoining their families. Show me the facts that prove this wrong.
13
Realities: (1) We wouldn't have food to buy in our markets without the work of illegal immigrants. Thousands of them work hard planting, picking, packing, and transporting it to our stores. (2) Many manual-labor jobs are done by illegal immigrants which legal American workers can't be hired to do for any price. My own little personal challenge in the back garden: No one to pull weeds while learning to landscape, plant, and install irrigation. So I hired the bright, hard-working South American woman with no papers.
30
Read the Jungle by Upton Sinclair......written in 1906.
2
Realities: (1) We would have to pay more for food if we did not use slave wage labor in the fields. (2) Most manual labor jobs could be automated if employers realized that labor costs were higher than the costs of machinery.
I see why you support illegal economic migrants: you get benefits. Their misery and poverty allows you to have an easier life.
But you shouldn't be patting yourself on the back for that.
2
What if:
1. We just opened our borders and allowed anyone to come and go at will providing they registered and obeyed the laws of the land.
2. Citizenship would be available upon completion of satisfying certain criteria such as military service, being gainfully employed for some period of time, starting a business, or basically fulfilling the responsibilities and obligations any of us are expected to fulfill as citizens including the paying of taxes and social security.
What do we really think would happen that is so horrible to contemplate? Are we really so vain as to think that every one in the world would rush to be Americans? I don't think so. Most people don't want to leave the land in which they were born unless conditions are so horrible that they feel they have no other alternative. I strongly suspect that most that do come would only come for a time and then go back home. certainly this is likely to be true of many from Mexico. I suspect that after an initial influx of perhaps a few million individuals (making up less than 10% of the population) we'd reach a dynamic equilibrium with as many leaving as coming.
The benefits could be huge. The economy would surge as new workers and consumers created wealth. The energy and dynamics of youth would be captured. The issues with social security and medicare would be solved with new sources of taxes.
Why not try just opening the borders and seeing what happens?
15
Why not just try? And if it doesn't work, what do you propose as a remedy?
I understand the concepts of international trade, free-flow of labor, etc. etc. and so your theories don't escape me. Except that they're theories because ultimately it boils down to humans.
You have 8 recommends as I see. I bet if I come back to read this article tomorrow, it will have like 30. The more of you there are in the Democratic Party, the more I move away from it. That can be said for any Libertarians as well as cheap-labor needing Republicans.
Let's just throw the borders wide open. Sure, and are you going to make sure that we teach ESL to children of how many different countries? That you'll be giving classes to young men as to what is appropriate behavior to those of the opposite sex (look at Europe), that housing and health care issues won't be affected for US citizens?
The free-market and equilibrium principles don't help ease frictions on a day-to-day personal level just automatically.
6
So many failed states, so many humans. Eight billion now. A billion people would show up. Ready for that?
On another note, we've had huge immigration over the past 30 years, legal and illegal. Yes, the economy is bigger and yes, wages have stagnated for many American workers.
I favor a stable population that respects Nature. Don't the real natives--all the flora and fauna that have been here before our grandparents showed up, deserve some breathing space?
11
GM, from an emotional idealized perspective this is a wonderful idea. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we in America had unlimited taxpayer and natural resources available for the entire world, including our own citizens. Wouldn't it be beautiful if the entire world could have open borders, if all of humanity were mentally stable, crime-free, enlightened, disease-free, healthy, educated, rational, calm, equal, free of war and famine, happy.... I dream of such a world.
But I don't think it's possible. The world is desperate and overpopulation. We are all in deep trouble. Take a look at what's happening in the EU for an answer to your question. Yes, everyone all over the world would indeed rush to get here. It's unsustainable, and probably niave to think otherwise. This worldwide humanitarian crisis must find a different resolution than open borders. It's just not sustainable.
7
Trump and Sessions keep talking about the law - it’sagainst the law to hire undocumented workers. Do we see any business owners separated from their children and going to jail? NO! Do we see hotel owners who exploit illegal immigrants going to jail? NO! Do we see private individuals hiring illegals going to jail? NO! A guest worker program is reasonable and shipping illegal migrants directly across the border is reasonable. What do we do - build jails at outrageous tax payer expense. People are getting rich by creating an industry of misery. Just like Kim Jong Un’s and Putin’s gulags. A find legacy for the Republicans and the country. Vote against atrocity in November.
244
Trump is one who has hired undocumented labor.
3
We have sub-4% unemployment. There is a shortage of some million workers expected in the construction industry in the coming years. We need people in service industries and everywhere. For God’s sake, release these people. Give them work visas and let them in. What we are doing is a moral abomination.
83
We also have a kind of dire shortage of affordable housing, and related transportation issues, especially in urban areas where these service jobs are. Any solutions that these work visas would solve, instead of exacerbate?
13
There are plenty of people to work. They won't work for what is being paid. I made 5 dollars per hour doing construction as a union laborer in 1963 and that was union scale. And that was with health benefits. That has to be north of 50 dollars per hour now. Construction workers (general labor) are making 15 dollars per hour. You might say that US workers are lazy, dont show up for work, are unskilled and talk back and you would be right. Our educational system is poor and our parenting situation is terrible. But if an employer does not like the way US workers were brought up he can certainly move his business to El Salvador or Nigeria. There are plenty of jobless young men in the US who would gladly work for 50 per hour. It is the only long term solution to racism and poverty in the US. And while you are at it Joshua take a look at the Jungle by Upton Sinclair......and think about the meatpackers......once a good job with benefits.
3
Who do you think is going to build new housing?
There are low paying jobs available across WI. It is impossible to drive across the Central and Northern parts of the state and go to a chain restaurant, grocery store, movie theater etc without seeing help wanted ads. The jobs are there, no immigrants are competing for them but the young populations who have not fled to university and better jobs in the big cities and remain here are not interested in working at slave wages.Most of the people filling those jobs are older retired folks tying to survive on SS.
Douthat has fallen into the Senator Cotten lies that immigrants drive down wages and steal jobs for worthy US citizens. That is simply another Republican lie.
And to even mention the "harsher Obama immigration policies" in this essay with what is happening today at our border today is a disgusting canard.
Trump and Sessions are truly surprised at the disgust across the political spectrum that their forced seperation of children from their parents has caused. Surprised because in their life's experience these Brown people are not humans.
150
Just take one look at the bio of that human weasel Stephen Miller and you can see how this cruel right-wing GOP policy is being implemented.
Miller has been a single on the margins social player is whole life. Unmarried with zero sense of compassion, he cherishes a life of "zero close friends" like his hero Trump.
28
Ross, your first paragraph was all that was necessary. No need to go further, what the Administration is doing is criminal.
When they stop separating children from their families, then we can continue the discussion with the illegal immigrants and what to do.
And all responsible for this travesty should be prosecuted for crimes against humanity.
64
While I disagree with the administration, what they are doing is not criminal. Its full enforcement of the law without discretion. Change the law.
2
"Now because Trump is hated and because he’s added extra cruelties, the persistence of that problem — the kids living in converted Walmarts or passed off to relatives or foster families and unaccounted for thereafter — has suddenly become a source of outrage for liberals. "
Really? Suddenly? I thought it might have more to do with the ongoing Trump crime wave disguised as a presidency.
50
I can't fathom why Ross would think outrage over this crime against parents and children would be limited to "liberals." Even conservative religious groups have spoken out against it. If "conservatives" aren't outraged, they're bigoted psychopaths. We know about this abomination; we have seen it. There is no excuse for looking away or justifying it. None.
Oh, now I understand. Trump is showing us what greater cruelty is all about, so we can be a bit less cruel on immigration policy and at the end of the day pat ourselves on the back and feel proud to be Americans. This logic is akin to hitting yourself on the head with a hammer to cure a headache. The problem is the pain doesn't go away. A slightly less cruel person does not necessarily make you a better person.
Using children as pawns for immigration "reform" is just despicable. Mr. Douthat should have ended his piece with that thought. By continuing he just repeats the familiar "blame the liberals" chant which propelled right-wingers through the last election cycle. Let's hope Americans see cruelty for what it is and vote accordingly in the next election.
47
Advocating for dishonest economic migrants, who game our immigration system for access to employment and taxpayer funded social welfare, will virtually guarantee Trump a second term. Few cases are valid. That's not my opinion, it's fact.
Pictures of poor, dependant families and kids don't fool anyone. If anything, it undermines core arguments that immigration adds to America. Yes, it's sad. But it's also transparent virtue signaling. Immigration is killing the Democratic party.
26
This is the perfect Trumpian system: allow wealthy employers to game the system and never so much as pay a fine, while employing undocumented workers. Workplace raids only round up workers,and incidentally break up families and harm surrounding communities; they never seem to result in companies being fined or owners or management bein arrested. Those same employers just run out and hire a while new batch of people to work illegally and round and round it goes.
The second half of this right-wing insanity is arresting LEGAL asylum seekers and subjecting them to the horrendous cruelty of kidnapping their children with no information given as to their whereabouts, ability to contact them or how long it will be until they can get them back. Or even IF they will get them back. It has been reported that a significant number of those people have been deported while their children remain in the US. How on earth are they going to be reunited when no one knows where they are and small children don't even know their parents names of their own surnames? Cruelty cannot even begin to describe it.
So here we are; more money and no penalties to wealthy owners and maximum cruelty to impoverished asylum-seekers and their precious children. MACA! (Make America Cruel Again)
184
I partly agree with Ross. We separate indigent criminals going off to prison from their children, and I don’t see an enormous difference between that and detention for crossing our border illegally. However, we’ve become inured to what we do to our own criminals because alternate means of imposing incarceration or even temporary detention simply are not practicable; but Republicans haven’t even TRIED seriously to counter the images of a woman breast-feeding an infant having that infant ripped from her, images cherry-picked by ideologues dedicated to “open borders” and willing to use any demon-image to support it.
You’d think Republicans could buy a clue. It was this inability on the part of Dems to see in a political 360-degrees, and simple but monumental ideological hubris in imposing their will regardless of the optics that brought on the Democratic destruction of the 2010 midterms. It wasn’t that long ago that Republicans have a legitimate excuse to forget the lesson.
But in determining the “humane” way to tell hordes of people who simply want to abandon their cultures and societies because they’ve been domestically abused – something that unfortunately happens EVERYWHERE on Earth with depressing regularity – that this and the other reasons they give are insufficient pretexts for jumping lines and seeking to transplant themselves here illegally, while disincentivizing them from trying it again (and again and again), I’m at a bit of a loss. Obviously, ICE is, as well.
15
Ross’s alternatives aren’t any more practical than those that have been tried so many times before – those business people who won’t let Congress impose an effective e-Verify are Democrats as well as Republicans; and some of them are the SAME alternatives that have so clearly failed in the teeth of this immense GLOBAL desire to abandon failing and failed societies for more successful ones.
6
The hypocricy is so thick you can cut it with a knife.
The R's won't pass e-verify because their business owner base likes cheap labor who can't organize or complain about low or withheld wages.
The D's won't agree to ANY restriction on illegal immigration because they are pandering to the Hispanic vote, and they see the immigrants as future democratic voters.
This is why blue collar Americans don't trust either party. They shouldn't.
21
Someone who comes here illegally cannot vote. If you immigrate legally, it will take you about ten years to earn that right. Democrats aren’t hoping to get immigrant votes, because that’s not a vote pool that exists.
14
But their kids can, if they are born here.
Of course the Democrats are hoping to get illegal immigrants' votes. That's why they advocate a "path to citizenship" for them - so they can vote.
Douthat is right: mandatory E-verify for all new hires is the way to go.
An extra bonus for liberals: the enforcement focus can be on employers, rather than workers. Big fines for businesses that break the law, with jail time for repeat offenders
191
You expect punishment to go to any employer in this political climate? I just want to ask, what was it like growing up in Disneyland?
7
Do you think those employers don't donate to Democrats as well?
As a deterrent to hiring illegal immigrants, CEOs and executives of the companies that hire them should have their children taken away and sent to live in an old WalMart store. Sauce for the goose...
2
The idea of Open Borders is idealistic, that anyone on Earth should be able to live anywhere they want to. But as a practical matter, it would mean that hundreds of millions of people would move into the U.S. Our population could easily double in just a few years. There needs to be much more work done on reducing global inequality before we can have totally open borders. In the meantime we need immigration restrictions and unfortunately that means deportations.
18
What about addressing the point of Douhat's article?
He proposed e-verify.
1
Please tell us which individuals are leaders of the Open Borders move. Is there an organization we can refer to? Can you be specific about what the policies of Open Borders are? Can you be specific about who the political leaders are who support these policies?
Meaningless slurs unsupported by anyone capable of making Open Borders law is just that a slur.
5
Ronald Reagan kicking off his bid for the Presidency calling for the creation of a "North American accord" ... "in which the peoples and commerce of its three strong countries flow more freely across their present borders than they do today." One of the reasons we had a porous border was for cheap labor to pick crops during the harvesting season. With an impermeable border transient labor is stuck here. Then there is our fellow citizen's unquenchable desire for drugs {and a drug war that was lost 30 years ago} consolidating the drug cartels and turning much of Latin America into failed narco-states in which people flee for their lives. We keep claiming to want things both ways and come up with stupid choices to accomplish neither.
29
I would like to see an open discussion by the Democrats and by (unauthorized) immigration advocates of their desire for open borders, rather than the dishonest discussion of it we're having now. If, as is sometimes said, we're turning away too many people, how many should we turn away? If the answer is zero, let's talk about that. If enforcement is too strict, what standards should we write into law for those who violate the immigration laws, if any? If an individual case of deportation is too harsh, who should be deported, if anybody? What is being proposed generally, rather than just what is being opposed in specific cases, will get us a lot further toward addressing the issue.
17
You want find one because Democrats do not, as a party, support open borders. Democrats support immigration reform.
7
It must be tough writing for a newspaper that goes out of its way to publish negative reports about whites and Christians. The paper really resents the fact that whites and Christians are the majority. The paper goes crazy knowing that Christian ideals played a big part in the success of this country. It can’t bring itself to show the same respect its shows other races and religions.
Just know some of us appreciate your insights and analysis. Keep up the great work.
7
I'm white and I'm a practicing Christian and I do not think that the Times goes out of its way to be negative toward us. I think many Trump supporters are claiming to be Christian, but are lying to themselves and others.
Trump himself is not honest, not humane, not decent, and definitely not Christian. But all he had to do was say he was anti-abortion and insult his opponents - and people bought everything he was selling. Trump has some pseudo-Christian advisers and Evangelicals don't care what he does, as long as he builds a wall.
Let's hope God never gives children to Stephen Miller.
43
@NDtKA
I can appreciate you would use a rather broad statement (without examples or links) to try and pursue your ideological point of view, but let's break it down, shall we ?
Race (the multitude of colors) is a human construct and does not matter in any argument, because we are all human beings.
Religions do not matter (for the purposes of the U.S.) since the founding fathers went to great pains (expressly in the Constitution no less) to separate church and state. Furthermore if you do want to bring religion into the argument, then hypocritical stances abound. Are you sure you want to do that?
Mr. Douthat is a good writer and I enjoy his columns (if not to poke giant holes in his ideas), but to just ''rah rah'' all the time for no other purpose does none of us any good.
Getting back to the topic at hand, what is happening at the border (and overall for immigration policy, let alone internationally recognized refugee law) is abhorrent.
I think we all can agree, and whatever God (or not) we may worship to, to lend a hand to our common brothers and sisters (since we are ALL related if you go back far enough) is a universal idea that transcends.
Have a wonderful Father's day.
9
@NDtKA
I can appreciate you would use a rather broad statement (without examples or links) to try and pursue your ideological point of view, but let's break it down, shall we ?
Race (the multitude of colors) is a human construct and does not matter in any argument, because we are all human beings.
Religions do not matter (for the purposes of the U.S.) since the founding fathers went to great pains (expressly in the Constitution no less) to separate church and state. Furthermore if you do want to bring religion into the argument, then hypocritical stances abound. Are you sure you want to do that?
Mr. Douthat is a good writer and I enjoy his columns (if not to poke giant holes in his ideas), but to just ''rah rah'' all the time for no other purpose does none of us any good.
Getting back to the topic at hand, what is happening at the border (and overall for immigration policy, let alone internationally recognized refugee law) is abhorrent.
I think we all can agree, and whatever God (or not) we may worship to, to lend a hand to our common brothers and sisters (since we are ALL related if you go back far enough) is a universal idea that transcends.
Have a wonderful Father's day.
1
Ivanka Trump is reputed to be an excellent business woman and
professional manager as well as a devoted mother, so I
-- for one -- would feel greatly reassured if she would now assume personal charge of her father's new camps for migrant children which of late have been heavily subjected to a great deal of very legitimate criticism.
I believe these children's mothers would gladly welcome this change, especially if it could be accompanied by the offer of a free handbag, summer dress, summer hat and matching shoes for each of them. And perhaps also one item of simple jewelry. All bearing the famous Ivanka trademark -- the one recently approved by China -- and all to be paid for through voluntary public contributions to one of Ivanka’s many fine charities.
There’s no reason why a humane program for migrant children can’t also be a highly profitable business.
What say you, Mr. President?
30
What if that caravan of refugees that traveled up through Mexico didn't stop at the U.S. border but continued on up to Canada? And what if these refugees could find jobs along the way that most Americans simply refuse to do? Albuquerque, New Mexico restaurants currently need 94 dishwashers. Denver needs 224 and Colorado Springs could use 107. Wyoming needs 49 and Montana 70. And that's just dishwashers.
The American economy needs these refugees for our businesses to operate at peak efficiency. I'm sure Canada has similar needs. If our political leaders would just exercise a wee bit imagination, this immigration "problem" could be turned into a massive win-win deal.
3
@WDG
On the surface, it seems like a great idea, however, a refugee is fleeing persecution, the horror of violence and wars (drug fueled), and the incompetence of police forces and governments to just basically protect all of its citizens.
They are not to be ''used'' as an under the table workforce working all day for little pay, no protections and no benefit. (in security or possible citizenship) Furthermore, much of the violence and persecution they fled from is rife in this underground economy.
Clear procedures need to be in place and clear understanding as to the rules of possible citizenship. In the meantime, they need to be treated as equals as in rights and protections under the law, (working or not)
They are all human beings.
7
Adam Smith would be the first to say - in fact, was the first to say -- that the solution to a labor shortage is to raise the wage. To put a slightly finer point on it, the employer has to pay enough to attract labor of the quality they need, and many, many employers are unwilling to do that. We don't need to import an entire new labor force to make skinflint employers happy.
35
But higher wages would absolutely result in more incentives for immigration.
1
Republicans have been in charge of Congress since 2010. Republicans did nothing about immigration in all that time. Oh, sure, they came close in 2013 only to blow it up at the end because the Tea Party, today's Trumpists, would hear the word amnesty.
God forbid we pass anything even close to some lenience to immigrants who have been in the US for decades.
So, for ideological purity, we have nothing except this putrid policy of cruelty designed to "scare" immigrants to stop coming.
Try telling that to a woman who's raped every week and whose kids face the fear of being kidnapped by the drug cartels.
I guess for them, "family separation" is still preferable, but I have a question for Republicans: why have you been deliberately avoiding a reasonable immigration overhaul?
Could it be that it's easier to gin up your (Trump's) base if the boarders remain unsecured until Trump can force Democrats into funding his benighted wall?
The other issue is businesses who clearly are Republican leaning--they profit from cheap labor and hate e-Verify, since it lessens their control over their (cheap, as in "slave) workforce.
I think the GOP is totally disingenuous on all this: it's their problem to fix, since they wouldn't vote on the very good 2013 bill because it meant voting for something Obama supported.
311
Actually, Attorney General Sessions did admit the purpose of the policy of separating children from their parents was to discourage families from entering the US illegally, right before he smugly quoted Paul in the book of Romans, where the apostle admonishes Christians to obey government decrees. Paul's astonishing declaration directly links human authority to its divine source, threatening those who disobey with eternal damnation.
Apparently, Mr. Sessions didn't take the course in law school which teaches students that the Constitution, not the Bible, governs the American republic. His comment, which many evangelicals would enthusiastically endorse (except when liberals hold the reins of power in Washington), serves Trump's interest because it implies that anyone who resists the administration's vicious policy defies God's will.
We may now have to put up with presidential tweets citing Romans approvingly. But will Trump realize that Paul is dead?
19
Paul the Apostle would have been the first one to condemn Sessions' use of his words.
7
I understand that Paul is a remarkable person who’s been doing a very good job.
5
I like Douthat's recommendation to implement an e-verify workplace program so that people are not allowed to work here illegally and fewer people would be motivated to come here. However, that would be less cruel than separating children from their parents and cruelty and inflicting maximum pain on chosen scapegoats is a major hallmark of Trumpism and delights his supporters (at least some of them). So Trump chooses the cruelest method of enforcing immigration laws.
7
Your partisan pot-shots aside, this is at least a step in the right direction. We have to start with the reality we live in, not with one based on long-ignored laws, or worse, on Trump's racist fantasies. Undocumented immigrant labor is a cornerstone of many sections of our economy. It has been so, in some parts of the country, since there was such a thing as documented immigration. Reducing it to a problem of border controls makes no more practical sense (& less moral sense) than reducing it to a problem of consumers buying the cheap meat or vegetables that migrants process & pick. If there is a problem (and there is obviously a huge problem for those working without fundamental labor or residency rights), then the practical and moral solution must fall on those who can afford it. If employers actually paid living wages and benefits, and offered tolerable conditions, more Americans might want those jobs. It would be interesting to find out. We would pay a lot more for the goods & services in affected industries, but if some people think that the rule of law is worth it, I'd be willing to say that the decency is worth it.
27
The treatment of illegal immigrants worldwide is shameful. In Germany they’re held in prisons, rather than detention centers. In Europe as a whole, however they deal with minors, a third have mental health problems. And many children are held in closed centers and are not allowed outdoors. The European policy is to prioritize the best interests of the child. There is policy and reality.
Trump’s policy is to make conditions bad for children, which is despicable. But some of America’s centers have classes and outdoor playgrounds. I don’t know how much a bunch of teens in that kind of center are pining for their parents. The very young are different of course and those in the middle are surely affected on an individual basis. On the whole, I suspect Trump’s cruel policy is not as cruel for as he’d like.
Harsh family detention, unfit for children, is the general rule the world over and separation for young children is inhumane but might be preferred by a good number of older kids. Trump can separate them but he can’t assure they’re miserable.
First of all Mr. Douthat, liberals are reacting against a cruel act by this administration. Infants are literally being pulled out of the arms of their mothers, and children are being separated from parents. The parents and children may never see one another again, and that is a fact. The wealthier countries of this world are all wrestling with immigration. Solutions are not easy to enforce.
However, The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 offered a solution that was at least fair. A Democrat (Romano Mazzoli) and a Republican (Alan Simpson) actually co-sponsered that act (imagine that). The Act passed with 34 Democrats and 29 Republicans voting for the bill, Ronald Reagan signed the Bill into law. The Bill did the following:
"Required employers to attest to their employees immigration status"
"Made it illegal to hire or recruit illegal immigrants knowingly"
"Legalized certain seasonal agricultural illegal immigrants"
"Offered a path to illegal immigrants who had resided in the U.S. continuously since 1982 to stay, provided they pay a fine, back taxes due, admitted they had been in country illegally, were not convicted of any crime, and had a minimal knowledge of U.S. history, government, and the English language." (Paraphrasing)
Had the 1986 Act been properly enforced, it might have made a difference in the abomination which we are witnessing now. Jeff Sessions is disgusting in quoting the Bible to back up tearing families apart. Family values indeed!
14
Passing E-Verify without doing anything else the millions who have been living and working here for years would be cruelty on a scale WAY beyond what even Trump is doing currently. Cracking down on employers is a necessary part of the solution (assuming there is one), but the only way it could be done morally and sanely would be something like E-Verify plus a path to some form of legality for people who have been living here plus as much border security as possible, within reason. Trump could even have money for his wall for all the good it would do.
At one time it was possible to think that Democrats would go along with a deal like that. Now they are moving quickly towards open borders, but I still think they'd be willing to accept a lot of security, including E-Verify, for path to citizenship. The problem is I don't know of any deal beyond half measures that the GOP do that wouldn't cause itself to implode. That is a fact that Douthat understands perfectly well. He has always opposed any sort of enforcement-amnesty compromise precisely because he knows it would destroy that fragile balance of donors who want cheap labor and demagogues who can deliver the votes of racists.
But if there is one good thing that Trump has done it has been to blow up all the hypocrisies that American conservatism was built on.
2
The Trump administration is looking to be wantonly cruel, though, not to be pragmatic.
Trump's predecessors had been presented with the possibility of separating families and found that to be unthinkable. But nothing is too severe for Trump and his inner circle.
It was ridiculous for Jeff "I do not recall" Sessions to cite scripture about obeying the laws as justification for the policy. He knows that he works for, and helped elect, a lawless man. Sessions' sadistic smile gave away his glee at the harm being done and showed a blatant disregard for Christ's own teachings about mercy.
John Kelly has been an unapologetic hardliner on immigration and it is no coincidence how he consolidated his own power over Trump, who has become even more extreme than before (his lame try to have it both ways and blame the Democrats notwithstanding). It's not credible for Kelly to describe people as having a low chance of assimilation when he won't let them try.
Stephen Miller is proud of being a white nationalist; one needn't glorify his persuasion as being anything more than racism.
So looking to recruitment practices isn't going to help with an administration hellbent on hurting people who don't look like them.
9
Perhaps with some gentle prodding from congressional Republicans , Trump would be willing to offer alternative methods of deterrence. Something that would appeal to his cruelty and racism but would not have the poor optics of thousands of children warehoused in tent cities. Something that can be done in the privacy of a cell.
Perhaps something like … waterboarding. Offer parents the choice between being waterboarded to the point of near insanity or to have their children taken away.
Trump's a big fan. Sure, Haspel promised that the CIA wouldn't bring back waterboarding, but has anyone checked with the Border Patrol? They might be up for it. It would also give Trump some tough-guy cred with his buddies Putin, Duterte, and Kim Jong Un,.
Is there any doubt Sessions and Sanders would happily use passages in the Bible to support the use of torture on parents who don't want their children to be traumatized and taken? Or any doubt that Ms. Sanders would duck the inevitable question "Sarah, Sarah, you're a parent. Would you choose waterboarding to keep the government from taking you children?"
7
Ross Douthat doesn't make a convincing case that there's any kind of equivalency between the "cruelties" of Barack Obama and those of Donald Trump. In fact, Obama wasn't antagonistic or cruel towards immigrants at all. And Trump is using direct, willful cruelty towards real, individual children as a negotiating tactic. He is, in effect, holding anguished young hostages to get his border wall and other concessions. The man is so callous--so lacking in empathy--that he thinks he can blithely shift the blame to the Democrats for the unconscionable suffering he himself is deliberately inflicting on the most vulnerable of people. He's incapable of imagining or caring about the terrified screams of toddlers being ripped from the arms of their parents. But Americans of all political persuasions aren't as morally blind as he is. Even conservative Republicans who claim to favor torture don't want it inflicted on innocent children at our nation's borders.
106
Melania Trump would have been deported under Trump, but because of the value our country put on her nude modeling, she became legal.
Trump kidnaps children from their mothers' arms and deports business owners who employ workers, professors who research and teach, people working low-paying jobs that citizens don't want - keeping produce companies and manufacturing companies afloat. Illegal immigrants pay $7 billion a year in taxes and they are not eligible for government benefits, so they're a positive contribution to our economy.
I think the little girl with the laceless red sneakers - whose picture is all over the news today with Trump Is Callous headlines - would have a far more beneficial impact on our country than another nude model ridiculously made legal by the Einstein clause.
Let's ask Melania directly: is THIS Be Best?
41
I love how Douthat cites himself as an authority for the statement that Obama administration policies "helped drive a surge in children being sent north without their parents." Correlation does not equal causation. Perhaps it was the extreme violence in the countries from which these children were sent that drove the surge in children.
193
I also thought that was ridiculous, especially given that how responsive migrants are to incentives and deterrents is a hotly debated topic.
7
As he often does, Mr. Douthat has given a remarkably sober assessment of a horrible situation. Had we heeded Douthat's warnings and recommendations (for example, in his 2014 column linked in this column, as well as so many others), we might have avoided electing Trump, and therefore also avoided the cruelties Trump is now enacting. But too many liberals chose rather to shame the "deplorables" rather than address their concerns, and so they elected the man who promised to build the wall. I am not sure I agree with Douthat's suggestions (e.g., about E-verify), but I am loathe to criticize without offering a better alternative. Here's hoping other commenters will offer constructive alternatives.
19
I wouldn’t mind letting more immigrants stay if we could deport a few noteworthy Republicans. One of the reasons we’re in this mess is because they were so psychotically opposed to Mr. Obama’s every initiative that no cooperation, wise council or compromise on immigration reform was permitted.
Republicans led by not leading. They filibustered everything. Their strategy was to cause so much disharmony and unpleasantness in government that the knee-jerk response of the voters would be to vote for change.
This strategy ensured that reasonable immigration reforms and enforcement policies were impossible to achieve. When Obama took unilateral action, conservative pundits erupted, including Mr. Douthat (“The Making of an Imperial President,” New York Times, 11/22/2014).
Our current president is imperial in his own way, but it’s more Imperial, as in the margarine: slightly yellow, oily and a pale substitute for the real thing.
Under his beneficent leadership, the Republican outrage over letting people in has turned into nation-wide horror in the way people are being thrown out. Separating young children from their parents—while lying about the legal requirement to do so—is emblematic of every ham-fisted, heartless and dishonest strategy employed by this sham of an administration.
Not much has been said about the “wall” lately, but if it were ever built, I can give you a list of people who ought to be on the other side of it.
651
This cruelty was to be leverage to get the funding for the wall; it backfired when people understood what he was doing to families. Trump is never responsible for anything that goes wrong...so it must be the fault of Democrats.
1
This is a concise summary of how the USA finds itself in a complete mess with regards to immigration policy. If the black guy promoted it then for the GOP it must by definition be bad. Just one quibble with Gemli's comment re the 'wall'. I have no idea what Mexico's immigration policies allow but I'm pretty sure they could find a way to keep Trump and his supporters out. I'm more concerned that when you are finished with him he applies for a British passport courtesy of his mother's origins. Now that is too horrific to contemplate.
2
In 2013 (under President's Obama leadership) a consensus on immigration (dealing with security, the wall, funding, etc..) was overwhelmingly supported and passed with bipartisan support in the Senate.
The republicans in the house (led by Speaker Boehner) would not even allow it to come up for a vote. (much the same as President Obama's Constitutional pick for the Supreme Court)
So, anyone can logically infer that republicans do not want a ''solution'', but rather the issue kept around to demagogue (much like how the President used in his run up to being elected), just as much as they want to revisit the culture wars on everything. (to essentially go back to when America was great in the 1950's )
...or the 1850's if you are so inclined.
405
You are so right to talk about how derelict Congressional Republicans have been. They wanted to sue President Obama for picking up their slack on immigration. People like Marco Rubio, who once tried his hand at immigration reform, walked away after they ran into the hard political realities which their own Republican Party had made.
And now, the culmination of their failures is a president who has given an impossible choice of either breaking up families as glibly as what happened during the evils of slavery, or of funding a ridiculous wall.
Real lives are being wrecked for a nefarious far right agenda.
Thanks, as always, for writing.
10
@NM - No, thank you (for your great and direct contributions as well) :)
I have no problem letting Democracy run its course, in the sense there is going to be a plurality of ideas from all points on the political spectrum. A multitude of points of view, generally lets the best ideas rise to the top.
Having said that, the Congress is dysfunctional when there cannot be straight up or down votes. No one knows exactly where everyone stands, and furthermore, hide behind majorities when there actually is a vote. Sometimes they are even allowed to vote against, if the majority is large enough. (to help them back home)
Speaker Pelosi was one of the greatest Speakers of the House in history, because she got things done. She put things on the floor and let the debate go forth, resulting in one of the most productive (as in bills passed) Congresses in history.
I have a feeling she is going to get a chance to top that. (if not by the midterms, then by 2020)
Keep the faith.
Keep in mind that the center-right policies Pelosi (and Obama) got done lost the Dems 1000 seats across the country, along with the House, Senate, and Presidency over the course of the subsequent 4 elections. So no, i'm really not looking forward to her getting a chance to top that. Because unlike you, i actually have to live here.
1
Immigrants are not the problem here. Not even undocumented immigrants are the problem. The problem is a system that doesn't work and one that allows businesses to get away with hiring undocumented immigrants. If businesses were penalized rather than just inconvenienced the practice would end. Second, most undocumented immigrants are overstaying legal visas. This new practice of separating parents and children at the border, especially if they are requesting asylum, which IS legal, is unnecessarily cruel and inhuman. But America has a history of this and is intimately familiar with being cruel and inhumane to people who do not look or sound like white Americans.
Look at our reactions after 9/11/2001. Look at how we reacted when African Americans began to demand what the rest of America took for granted. Look at the reactions we've had to same sex marriage, to the LGBTQ community, to women when these groups began to demand that their civil rights be respected. Each time we've heard that these groups are asking to be special. As one African American put it, the Civil Rights Act wasn't needed for him to know his rights; it was necessary so whites would know he HAD rights, the same rights.
How many enemies are we creating with this new policy? How many missed chances are there? Why not treat these people humanely, give them a decent shelter, educate their children, etc. while they wait to learn if they will be admitted? A little kindness goes a long way.
404
When you're told God said so, you then become free to be as cruel as you want to be.
That's how they sold the idea of slavery and, later, Jim Crow. People used to take their kids to watch lynchings, dressed in their Sunday best.
381
I like the idea of going after businesses that hire, and in some cases financially thrive, by hiring undocumented workers, who would likely never complain about conditions in their workplace.
One way the world slowed Southeast Asia's slaveship fishing, or General unsustainable fishing practices, was the use of "fish safe" or "ocean wise" on the label to certify standards had been met in the process from catching to the market.
Maybe putting out, on American farm products, a label, easily recognized that would affirm no undocumented workers were involved in the preparation for market of this product. Farms would have to apply for the designation. Hopefully consumers would respond
39
@Rima Regas: Don't forget the Spanish Inquisition.
Separating families and using those it deemed inhuman or other is the wickedest thing America has done from practically its inception and to this very day, to one degree or another, at various times, to the present day.
The reason why we still have millions of Americans who still believe the lies and purposeful misinterpretation of the bible is because, hundreds of years later, we have yet to confront the truth, reconcile with those we enslaved, murdered and dehumanized, and repair our relationships with them.
Until we have truth, reconciliation, and reparations, as a conscious process, people like Trump, Sessions, the KKK, white supremacist groups, and religious leaders who preach false doctrine, racism will always be a part of what this nation stands for and, every so often, elects into power.
Until we have truth, reconciliation, and reparations, our capitalist system will continue to be one in which the only way one person gets ahead, is by trampling made up classes of other humans, because they're taught there is no other way.
Trump isn't an accident. Sessions isn't an accident. John Kelly (whose policy this is) isn't an accident. This is us.
We can change, but not by osmosis. First, we must do as Timothy Egan once wrote: apologize for slavery. That is where the root of our sin resides, still, and what allows us to continue perpetrating crimes against humanity.
---
www.rimaregas.com
212
Sadly I agree. I however have given up on the USA. It is hopeless.
2
The history of humanity has been a struggle for dominance, that is a inescapable truth. The logic that i have any duty to pay for the crimes of some long dead ancestor is as morally repugnant as any crimes they might have committed. You dismiss the bible- or want to rewrite it to fit your viewpoint, im not sure which it is- and then lecture your fellows about our sins. My sins are my own, borne of my actions, the same as any other persons.
You suggest we must embrace a certain 'truth' which seems to focus entirely on vilifying Western societies periods of Imperialism. That is definitely something that shaped the world as it exists today but it is also only a part of the 'truth' and not entirely negative in its consequences. With whom am i supposed to seek reconciliation when i have no animosity toward others, unless you are meaning until i agree with your viewpoint which i find overly simplistic and completely lacking in any sense of personal responsibility. As to reparations, for a hater of capitalism you seem to be an avid follower. Look at Germany between World War 1 and 2, that is all you should need to tell you reparations are not a path to peace, tolerance, and prosperity.
We CAN change, by realizing that the past is to be learned from not constantly used as an excuse to blame others.
1
Ryan,
rep·a·ra·tion
ˌrepəˈrāSH(ə)n/Submit
noun
the making of amends for a wrong one has done, by paying money to or otherwise helping those who have been wronged.
"the courts required a convicted offender to make financial reparation to his victim"
synonyms: amends, restitution, redress, compensation, recompense, repayment, atonement
"the victims are seeking reparation"
Your first thought was to defend a debunked, false religious trope and immediately hide your purse.
How sad.
3
Thank you President Trump for showing us what happens if Democrats and Republicans don't compromise. I suppose if separating parents and children doesn't get Democrats and Republicans together maybe slowly torturing 5 year olds to death will do it. "Hey, if you guys don't work something out, look how bad it gets! And we can think of worse."
And thank you Ross Douthat for pointing out the logic of the administration's position.
38
A compromise bill passed the Senate while Obama was president, but it wasn't brought to a vote in the House due to a Republican Rule named after a convicted Republican child molester, a rule which states a vote is only called for when a majority of Republicans support it. In this case, the bill would have passed with the bipartisan support you call for, but republicans blocked it.
REPUBLICANS BLOCKED IT.
So you can stuff your call for bipartisanship.
2
Ross Douthat is one of the worst Trump enablers.
He lightly chides while spending all his time explaining how it is all the Democrats' fault for not solving the problems of the world single handedly.
This is a pseudo-intellectual version of Trump's placing thousands of children in detention centers and blaming the Democrats for it. After all, Ross says there are problems to be solved and until they are solved he is sympathetic to Trump's dilemma. Even if he doesn't agree with the solution, Ross wants Americans to be fine with it because after all, there is a problem to be solved so detaining children is - to Ross - a normal reaction to this.
Mr. Douthat is exactly right on this one. The best way to stop people from coming here illegally to work is to remove the opportunity to work unless you come here legally. Of course employers hate that idea. They love having illegal workers that they can use and abuse at will. If we are successful at eliminating the flow of illegal immigrants into the country and deporting those that already are here, those same employers will be screaming bloody murder. So we will never solve this problem. Too many businesses depend on a steady supply of cheap, powerless labor.
202
Which brings us to another crux to the already complex issue. "They love having illegal workers that they can use and abuse at will." Not having information on scope/depth of "abuse", other than use of a cheap, moveable labor force, these "illegal/undocumented" workers are a integral part of the US economy. However, pointing to complexity in some ways provides a red herring to the central issue of the Trump administration going full-Fascist on to make an example of human beings that attempt to cross the border with their families. The point is not what "they" are doing, the point is what "WE" are doing, and our integrity as Americans with respect for human rights. All though this Republican administration literally does not have human rights, or environment, or really anything that doesn't make a buck or persecute brown people as a policy issue.
Many employers would love to have a legal immigrant workforce. They can't get them because we don't have a system to provide it. Farms and our relatively cheap food, for example, depend on guest workers.
If you regulate the market, enforce safety rules, require minimum wage and/or prevailing wage, make sure taxes and insurance are paid, then you could crack down on the shady operators.
If you don't do that UPFRONT, you're simply asking for American business owners to commit immigration crimes then punishing them for doing what they must to stay in business.
Actually, he's not. Employer sanctions can only be a part of a solution. It is especially difficult to identify unauthorized domestic workers who work in private households. There is no solution to importing foreign labor for farm work, and never has been for any significant period of time (barring the reinvention of slavery, that is). Other sectors have also relied heavily on immigrant labor throughout history.
In other words, without expanding and streamlining guest worker programs, unauthorized immigration will not be eliminated merely by raising employer sanctions.
I generally like reading Ross’s column for a rational often different perspective. This column seems aberrant in that it perpetuates deliberate hostile republican lies that democrats want open boarders, and democrats are responsible for all immigration evils. Never mind that all branches of government are controlled by Republicans now.
Unwittingly, he acknowledged the problem: businesses like to (maybe even need to) employ illegal immigrants. People running businesses overwhelming vote republican.
Ross, you and your party could have fixed this yesterday.
262
This will all backfire.
One day in the future we will be issuing an apology to the families who were separated at the border, and we'll pay reparations to US citizens who were mistakenly identified as undocumented aliens and were harassed and mistreated. There is already evidence of US citizens of Mexican descent being picked up and deported to Mexico - where they or their families had never lived, and without being able to speak much Spanish - during crackdowns or times of hysteria.
We should be rounding up business owners, executives and members of their HR teams who continue to green light the hiring of undocumented workers in order to maximize their company's profits. They should be fined and/or put on trial for perpetuating a system that benefits their companies while marginalizing workers. And maybe we should let crops rot in the fields while restaurants close and hotel rooms go uncleaned across the country for one summer while we sort out what we want to do about this ongoing situation.
125
Ross, you are almost at the truth and the crux of the matter. For decades, we as a nation have incentivized illegal immigration, and we now have 12 million people living in the shadows. While the Republicans are not blameless, it is the Democratic Party more than anyone else that has encouraged and propagated this dynamic. They have intentionally created an underclass of second-class residents in order to gain political advantage. And then they cry crocodile tears over their victims. If the Democrats believe we should have more immigrants from Latin America, then they should pass laws to create a legal process for doing so, but they are more interested in creating a class of people dependent on them than they are in creating a rational, fair, and humane system of legal immigration. Every time we provide any benefit to a person here illegally, we encourage more people to come here illegally and live in the shadows. Of course, this is exactly what the Democrats want. They are very willing to be cruel if it increases their power. The next time a Democrat says something like, "Undocumented immigrants should have driver medical coverage," remember what they are really saying is, "We want people to come to our country illegally and live in the shadows and endure countless cruelties as second-class human beings."
45
Sure blame the democrats who have not held control of both legislative houses since 2010 where the Republican majority could not get out of their own way on putting together and moving forward sensible immigration legislation. Also it is not all about the economy but about the conditions in Latin America. If you want illegal immigration to slow, the conditions there must improve. Don’t hold your breath on that happening anytime soon since this administration is bent on destroying the economy worldwide with its incoherent and illogical trade policies. So, Mr. Douthat is wrong again in his analysis of the issues at hand.
6
Maybe the Republicans, who hold a majority inCongress, could pass effective legislation that goes after those that employ the immigrants.
But, we all know that won’t happen.
3
If 100,000 people say a stupid thing it is still a stupid thing. Democrats are NOT for open borders, but there is a wide range of corrective policies between open borders and ripping babies away from mothers and fathers. Thoughtful politicians from John McCain to Barack Obama have proposed and supported guest worker permits, biometric identification and many other sane and safer initiatives. It is almost exclusively Republicans in Congress who have blocked all attempts to defend our borders while administering our immigration system in a humane and effective manner. The lawlessness, cruelty and inhumanity we are bearing witness to today is a direct result of those obstructionist acts. Which is the more honorable job: stooping in the hot sun to harvest the food we eat or violently separating children from their families and sending them to internment camps. There is no honor in the Trump administration and a broken, failed immigration system just got worse thanks to Republicans.
173
Another great irony is that though weaseling out of e-Verify is a bipartisan pastime, the preponderance of hypocrisy lies with the GOP.
Why? Because it is the GOP that self-righteously lays claim to be the unwavering torch bearer for "free markets." It's one of their greatest hits and, in the case of wages, one of their biggest lies.
How many times have we heard the following about the hiring of undocumented workers: "They're merely doing jobs that Americans won't do!"?
This is a lie by omission. They are omitting the reason; the wage is too low to attract American workers!
In a true market mechanism, hiring companies would keep raising the offered wage until it did indeed attract American workers. It's what economists call a "price equilibrium." The presence of undocumented workers and/or the non-enforcement of e-Verify allows companies to ignore the market and keep wages low. It's a form of corporate welfare!
129
There is a clear need for sober, dispassionate discussion of immigration and border issues which have confounded us for decades. But in today's hyper-partisan environment this is likely impossible, as this column illustrates.
"Now because Trump is hated and because he's added extra cruelty.." prefaces an attempt to minimize and "normalize" trump's behavior. We know trump was enraged by staff members who were dragging their feet on family separations, and that he now lies when says Democrats forced him to to it. Accepting his new lie is another example of trump normalization.
So too is perpetuating the myth that those who do not agree with trump favor open borders.
Sadly what we are seeing with the GOP's embrace of a president who is incapable of thoughtful policy development and the dreaded possibility of compromise, is that none of our serious problems will be solved during his tenure.
132
Searching for a job is one motivation but many are running for their lives. Until some order and security can be found in central America these folks will continue regardless of any obstacles. Yes reducing job opportunities might slow things down but the many others will come out of fear and desperation.
Trump is desperate to build the wall since that is what he promised to his base. The wall will slow things down but will not stop the flow. The idea of jobs being stolen by these immigrants is a false idea. They do all the many jobs our citizens will not do or are unable to do. How many young US women are nannies? Hotel maids? How many show up to pick fruit and vegetables? climb trees to prune them? Work long hours in restaurants? No, these are jobs that would not be filled without immigrants.
98
You really believe no American has lost a job to an immigrant?? Many young American women are nannies, and hotel maids, by the way. And many young American men worked in construction once. Living in one of the wealthiest counties in the US does not give you insight into the realities working class Americans face.
1
The late Anthony Bourdain pointed out that without undocumented workers there would be no restaurant industry. Other industries are in the same situation. What needs revamping is our immigration policy. Look around the graduate programs of our universities & you'll keep bumping into students from other countries who enrich our nation. Trump is trying to drive them away too and in many cases is succeeding.
The present administration despises all forms of immigration except when it applies to the President's wives.
174