Tuesday, June 26, 2018

The US-Mexico Border / Anti-Trump Hysteria Story is Largely Nonsense

Michael Lumish

{Also published at Jews Down Under.}

Here is why.

There are nine US consulates in Mexico and one US embassy.

Anyone looking to emigrate into the United States from Mexico does not need to do so by crossing the border illegally. They can, instead, apply for access, resident status, and citizenship through normal legal channels.

The US consulates in Mexico include those in Ciudad Juárez, Guadalajara, Hermosillo, Matamoros, Merida, Monterrey, Nogales, Nuevo Laredo and Tijuana. The US embassy, naturally, is in Ciudad de Mexico.

Thus anyone who lives in Mexico who wishes to move into the United States can go through normal channels of application.

I recognize, of course, that this is not necessarily easy but, in truth, it should not be easy.  The United States has not only the right, but the obligation, to do what it can do to make sure that criminals and jihadis are not given carte-blanche access to American citizens or their children. As an American Jew, I resent the glib way in which "progressives" are perfectly happy in releasing theocratically-fascistic jihadis into a country that prides itself on being a haven for Jewish people.

Furthermore, I resent the way that American concerns over illegal immigrant violence is shrugged-off.

I feel reasonably certain that the family of recently murdered Kate Steinle would agree.

I have referred to this before but will do so again.

My father came through Ellis Island in the early 1920s in the arms of my grandmother, Sarah.

They fled the pogroms and ran from my father's birthplace in the town of Medzhybizh in the western Ukraine. Despite having relatives in Brooklyn, NY, they failed to gain visas into the United States and escaped to Argentina where my grandfather died.

Shortly thereafter the visas came through and my father and grandmother arrived in New York Harbor with nothing. They had nothing. My father even stayed at the Jewish Orphans Asylum in that borough for awhile.

But they did it legally and it worked and the family thrived.

In a certain kind of way, it is a classic American story.

This is the Great Twentieth-Century Immigrant American Story, so beloved by historians. My family was a poor immigrant family. My dad, Harry, ran in the streets of New York during the Depression and he once told me that he never met any adult who had not voted for Franklyn Roosevelt until he was into his twenties. He received a year of study at St. John's College at its original Bedford–Stuyvesant location in Brooklyn before drafted by the U.S. Army and dragged off to the central Pacific.

Kwajalein The Marshall Islands. Anawetok.

{Were it not for Harry Truman, Albert Einstein, and Julius Robert Oppenheimer, there is an excellent chance that I would not be here today.}

In any case, he was twenty-years-old, 135 pounds, and a corporal with a rifle slung over his shoulder. He ducked his head in fox-holes as Japanese snipers took potshots at the Americans from trees... knowing that they would die in the response. Like many old soldiers my father never really talked about the war and as far as I know, he never killed anybody in it... but they certainly tried to kill him.

When he came back home he finished his college education through the G.I. Bill of Rights and became a nice, middle-class accountant who moved into the suburbs while raising four kids... me being the youngest.

None of this was easy, but the system worked and it can still work for pretty much anyone from anywhere who wishes to honestly become a US citizen or simply a working resident.

Look at the current experience of Far East Asians or those from the Indian subcontinent. These are people that are exceeding both professionals of European descent, as well as Jews, in terms of income in this country. They are coming into the United States through regular legal channels and often do so carrying employment skills that help themselves, their families, and their newly adopted country.

The point, however, is that there is no good reason for Mexican nationals who wish to immigrate into the United States to merely show up at the border carrying babies. I am sorry, but that is against US law. If you break the law, as everyone knows, there is an excellent chance that you will be separated from other people, including your children, when they cart you off to prison or, in these circumstances, into a border detention facility.

In recent days, the Trump Administration - unlike the Obama Administration - put forth an executive order for the purpose of stopping that practice. Whether this will work out better or worse for the children themselves is open to debate.

It is often claimed that those seeking entrance into the United States are not so much economic migrants as they are asylum seekers. In some circumstances, this may very well be the case. There are any number of people under political persecution throughout Latin America that would much prefer to live outside of their home countries. Anyone in the Western Hemisphere fleeing political persecution should, in my opinion, be allowed to seek a safe-haven in the United States.

Presumably, however, the best way to do this is not through the breaking of the legal procedures of our country. The best way to become a US resident or citizen is through ordinary legal means. That is, introducing oneself into the country through breaking the law does not give your potential fellow citizens much faith in your intentions.

And it could get you separated from your kids.

I very much recommend against.

L.E.G.A.L.

19 comments:

  1. Every 6 weeks or so the left erupts in fury over a fake issue they beat Trump over the head with. The immigration circus is already abating. Before this was tax crumbs or atomic war with North Korea or Russia or gun control or Stormy Daniels or racism. Every 6 weeks. The media is drunk on their own self praise. But it's key to remember that it DOESN'T MATTER WHAT THE PURPORTED ISSUE OF THE DAY OR WEEK APPEARS TO BE. It's noise for noise' sake.

    I've met people like him before. They have very thick skins even if they appear to take things very personally. They're alley brawlers and knife fighters. They like fighting. The left doesn't like fighting they like complaining. They can't maintain it. Trump can, probably. You don't build hotels and casinos without an inherent understanding of people and what makes them tick. Construction, hospitality, gambling, retail, service industries, unions, the Mafia. That's tough game to play well.

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  2. My father was a corporal in the old Army Air Corp. 1944-1945.
    Asylum seekers are supposed to pull up in the closest country they can. Most asylum seekers are ineligible for asylum in this country. The system is being overwhelmed. Most of those released never show up for their hearings.

    Manufactured crises and manufactured days of rage. We are all 'palestinians' now.

    It's a good piece of writing, Mike.

    P.S. I've been to Hermosillo. Met some lovely people there. Just don't get busted.


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  3. Look at the current experience of Far East Asians or those from the Indian subcontinent... They are coming into the United States through regular legal channels [emphasis added]

    That second part is not completely true. It is true that they enter legally. However, entering illegally for them would mean swimming across the Pacific. For many of them, legal entry means getting a tourist visa. Legally, this entitles the holder to stay in the US for a limited period of time. This does not mean that they all obey such legal niceties.

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  4. Regarding the case of Steinle, consider an alternate approach. Instead of setting low quotas for immigration we lifted all numeric restrictions on entry, but institute a one strike, for certain crimes, and you're out, meaning imprisoned then deported and blacklisted from reentry, policy for immigrants. Would such a policy result in sanctuary cities?

    In the Steinle case, such a policy would have gotten Zarate blacklisted. Further, by not stoking resistance in the form of sanctuary cities, Zarate would have had a tougher time evading that blacklist.

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    1. The reason Steinle died was not because of the undocumented, it is because of an oversupply of guns. The jury found that it Zarate found the gun and was reckless in its use. If we had fewer guns and more control of their access, Steinle would still be alive.

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    2. Apparently Joseph is for both open borders and the elimination of the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. This means that, whatever else he may be politically, he is not a liberal.

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    3. If the guy was not here, would it have happened?

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    4. Zarate was the REAL victim, not Kate Steinle. He was victimized by the mere presence of a gun, and that gun almost got him convicted of murder. Thank goodness he is free. And thank goodness the defense put that gun on the witness stand and got it to recant its perjurious testimony against poor Mr. Zarate.

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    5. The Supreme Court in Miller had a better analysis that Heller. In 1787, the Constitution was talking about smooth barrel muskets, not cannons. And cannons then were less lethal than the automatic guns legal today.

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    6. joseph:
      In the context of the case, your argument is complete nonsense. The gun that Zarate fired belonged to a law enforcement officer and was left unattended in said officer's car. The car was broken into and the gun was removed, I missed the rest of how it got to Zarate. There is no law, no matter how well enforced, that would have prevented that.

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    7. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  5. I know what you mean. First, Mike is stupid, and second, the whole concept of law itself is probably just some white supremacist scheme.

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  6. And you too have no problem with the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 or excluding Jews in the 1930s because that was the law. I suppose you had no problem with the Fugitive Slave laws or indeed with slavery itself because that was the law. I guess patriotism is not the last refuge of a scoundrel.

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  7. Joseph, please get a grip on yourself.

    No one here is opposed to legal immigration and I actually taught the Chinese Exclusion Act to Chinese-Americans on the university level.

    The question is concerned with legal versus illegal immigration into the US in the 21st century.

    Legal is good... unless you honestly believe in open borders.

    <"The real problem with Trump is that he has normalized bigotry and hatred.">

    Such over-the-top hysteria.

    The truth, of course, is that the progressive-left is the most racist and reactionary political movement in the West, today, outside of political Islam.

    Antisemitism and hatred toward Israel is pretty much standard on today's Left.

    But the point is that anyone seeking political asylum in the United States can do so through legal means.

    L.E.G.A.L.

    It is not a difficult concept.

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  8. But, in any case, I take this to mean that you actually do believe in open borders.

    So, what would you replace the system of nation-states with?

    Communism, with a single international government?

    Anarchism, as a matter of an international system of small, semi-self-sustaining local communities?

    Or, what I am calling "corporatism" wherein we live under a system of capitalist-corporate control?

    Or, maybe, you can think of a fourth option.

    In any case, try not to get so hysterical. It does not reflect well upon you.

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  9. Jews as a group were refugees, end wrongly denied the opportunity to escape persecution.

    This is much different than today's migrants.

    The fact that some people go by the book and wait 20 years is just more reason why illegals should not be rewarded.

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  10. I should get a grip? You want people to wait in line 20 years and think that is reasonable as the only alternative is open borders? How about reducing the wait time to two years and one year for family reunification? How about increasing legal immigration to a more reasonable number. Bret Stephens had a column calling for more immigration https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/21/opinion/trump-immigration-reform.html

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  11. Prefer they wait rather than walk in. That does not mean the waiting period is reasonable, but the alternative is more unreasonable. Not to mention unfair to those that go by the book.

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  12. Joseph,
    There are good laws and bad laws, but we are a nation of laws. When we don't like the laws we have we change them, beginning with civil discourse rather than decontextualized hysterical rhetoric. We don't call perfectly reasonable people Nazis because they believe, rightly, that illegal immigration is illegal, and therefore ought not to be condoned. And, of course there are other reasons not to call them Nazis, chief among them is the fact that they aren't Nazis. Add to it that it belittles those who were the Nazi's victims and those who fought the Nazis.
    There is a reason that when Congress meets, members are addressed as "the honorable gentleman from" or the honorable lady from." It is to keep debate rational and keep things from overheating.
    So please don't give me examples discriminatory laws from the past and tell me how much I like them. No one here discriminates against people simply because of race or ethnic group. No one here lacks empathy for those in need. To imply otherwise is obnoxious. It's as obnoxious as believing that no one in this country illegally is responsible for their actions.

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