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Posted by Michichael on Wednesday May 19, 2010 5:07 pm
So, I'm browsing digg when I come across this salicious little snipe about illegal immigration. I wanted to leave a short comment about how it's laughable to compare today's immigration issues with the Native American displacement, and it ran a little long. It actually became a nice rant, so I figured I'd share:
There's a lot of comments out there about how illegals are just like the settlers that stole the land from the natives. I'd like to point out some flaws in that argument. I don't endorse what happened but it won't change anything regardles, the past is the past. Anyway, here goes!
The
argument that illegal immigration = settlers from England has so many
fallacies it's laughable. Firstly, settlers, as another person stated,
migrated to a land without any existing social infrastructure. This is
different than persons migrating to an existing social system that has
been built up through community contributions (taxes) and taking
advantage of the system without ever having put any effort into said
system, which is what goes on right now.
This was also centuries
ago, where social existence isn't even comparable to today's standards
and infrastructure. Sure, comparing it to the stealing of land from the
Natives is a useful, polarizing hyperbole, however it doesn't have any
actual basis other than to elicit an emotional response, as the social
situations, infrastructure, etc are completely different. It's a non
squitur, and contains loaded language. Essentially, if the situations
are connected only by the vaguest similarity, you can't draw conclusions
from one and apply it to the other, for those of you that aren't
familiar with the term.
There's a lot of outrage about "illegal"
immigrants but the term is never strictly defined in these kind of
newscasts, which I feel is a bit sad, because people have differing
opinions over types of illegals. Let's define some terms then:
The
first type of illegal, and one people usually do NOT think of, occurs
if a person obtains a student or work visa, establishes themselves in
the US, and overstays their Visa for any number of reasons: they forgot
they had a Visa because they're so well adapted to life here, the
renewal was declined for whatever reason, or it just expired and they
didn't realize it.
Most people are actually sympathetic to this
type of illegal immigrant, because they've contributed to society. Visa
holders are subject to taxes and given an individual tax number, much
like a social security number. They're also not allowed access to some
social programs. These are the folks people are often using as the "face
of immigrants" when opposing legislation cracking down on illegal
immigrants. We'll call these Type A illegals.
The next type of
illegal migrant is the one that people dislike - the traditional "snuck
into the country" type. These folks are often heavily exploited at slave
wages, used for sexual services in human trafficking, or are otherwise
abused for trying to get a better life. Others sneak in and attempt to
do day labor, and other tasks that Arizona is targeting with their laws
against migrants, because it essentially removes funds from the economy,
as those individuals are the type to send money back to their country,
don't pay into the system (though they often do contribute via sales
taxes and other general use taxes). We'll call these Type B illegals.
The
final type of illegal migrant is a mixture - family members etc that
have come to visit visa holders and ended up staying, or illegal
immigrants that have been residing with legal citizens even though they
are here illegally. We'll call them Type C illegals.
There are of
course other types but we'll leave it at that for now.
The
outrage, in my opinion, against illegal immigrants specifically targets
Type B migrants, and possibly Type C migrants as well.
It's hard
to collect exact statistics on what each type of illegal migrant's
impact on society is, though the general opinion is that the the Type B
and Type C illegals provide the greatest harm to society, either through
an added burden to the social services provided to a region, like
welfare, public services such as parks, utilities, food kitchens, etc;
economic impacts such as driving wages down, engaging in under the table
employment [ZING!], etc; and even social impacts, such as an increase
in the crime rate, introduction of gang related incidences, robbery,
prostitution, etc. The degree's of these impacts that American citizens,
including legal migrants, interpret are subject to a lot of study, but
exact statistics are hard to verify due to the nature of illegal
migrants attempting to blend in and stay below the radar. There are
conflicting studies to the accuracy of this perception.
Arizona's
law, as I understand it (I haven't read the entire text of the law) is a
direct port of federal immigration law, and the spirit of the law is to
crack down on Type A, B, and C illegal migrants. The "reasonable
suspicion" clause is stipulation for a lot of the racial profiling
outrage, despite the subsequent clauses requiring that contact resulting
in reasonable suspicion be for a reason unrelated to the reasonable
suspicion. In lay-man's terms, you can't be stopped just because the
officer thinks you're an illegal, at least according to the law.
But
as anyone who's interacted with law enforcement can tell you, they
don't need a reason to detain you because there are so many obscure
clauses in state laws that they can fall back on to provide that reason.
This, in my opinion, is a flaw in the system, not the immigration law,
but I still disagree vehemently with the "Paper's please" implications
that Arizona's law entails.
Arizona's law sparks an outrage, not
against illegal immigrants, but against the implications this has on
citizens specifically due to the reasonable search protections under the
US Constitution, which is considered the law of the land - you don't
have to be a citizen to be protected by the constitution; you just have
to be on US soil or property. There's good reason for this, but I won't
delve into why our civil rights are so essential to be protected.
That
is both sides of the argument, essentially. Everyone can agree with the
basic premise of the position that illegal immigrants are just that,
illegal, and should not enjoy the benefits of the society that America
has built through taxes and social services over the years without
contributing to it in the form of legal migration or visas. However
everyone can also agree that throwing out the constitutional rights we
are guaranteed as denizens, legal or not, of America is a horrible idea
and a violation of everything the founding fathers stood for.
I
feel that there is good opportunities for compromise between both
parties, if they'd just stop being outraged and start working on
comprehensive reform. Here, I'll toss an idea out there: If a person is
legitimately accused of a crime with enough evidence to detain them,
then their citizenship must be validated during the process. If they are
illegal, federal migration law violations are also added onto the
charges, and they can be deported as necessary, as well as blacklisted
from legal migration, depending on the severity of the crime. Type A
migrants' visas should be reviewed for renewal if they have no criminal
record and have an established financial presence in America, e.g. we
don't want to just deport a successful businessman who overstayed his
visa, but a person on a student visa who dropped out and is running the
streets will not be protected.
Type B migrants, if found, will be
deported immediately and added to a blacklist for 5 years on the first
offense, prohibiting legal migration for at least 5 years. Second
offenses would be a permanent ban from citizenship.
Type C
migrants are a special case that are likely to elicit a lot of emotional
response because of the chance of splitting up a family. I feel that
they should be reviewed for their ability to contribute to society and
be given provisional visas, be forced to pay a fine, and have a 2 year
waiting period on top of current immigration queues.
This is
just an idea to get the ball rolling, but it's better than standing on
either side yelling about how outraged you are at the problem. Quit
bitching and propose a solution.
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