If Trump's administration seriously plans on "rounding up" millions of people for deportation, they'll have to be lodged somewhere while they are tried (assuming they're granted trials, who knows anymore) and travel arrangements are made.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/08/magazine/the-shame-of-amer...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Guadalupe_Hidalgo
Mexicans in those annexed areas had the choice of relocating to within Mexico's new boundaries or receiving American citizenship with full civil rights. Over 90% chose to become U.S. citizens.
But I thought my other point was more important. Most Americans are newcomers to the Americas, a few generations tops. Most Mexicans are not, and nobody really asked them before erecting new borders on their lands.
The entire scope of this discussion involves more that simply arresting and deporting people who sneak into the US illegally - it also includes a movement to redefine American citizenship in terms of generational purity.
"Illegal alien" encompasses everyone from the murderous narcotic kingpin, whom I think we can all generally agree should have little more than a jail cell for a home, to grown adults who immigrated as a toddler, and have only found out when they were much older that it was done without their parents having the right paperwork. It encompasses the queue cutting asshole, and it encompasses the panicked refuge fleeing certain death.
As our application of 'justice' is not perfect, I imagine mass deportation has ended up prosecuting - and even deporting - a few perfectly upstanding, legal citizens. Mistaken identity, misleading evidence, a little racism preventing people from digging a bit deeper... shit happens, and our institutions are made up of fallible people. We're already deporting millions a year - can you tell me with a straight face that not a single mistake will be made? That not a single mistake has been made?
I would be very surprised if you could.
Then: just how strange is it, really?
It would be strange, but that never really happened in substantial way. Most of what gets framed that way by one side of the debate is not controversy over the idea of "enforcing borders", but rather:
1. Controversy over whether the particular preferences, limitations, and exclusions of current immigration policy are desirable, and
2. Controversy over whether current and proposed mechanisms for enforcing the current preferences, limitations, and exclusions in immigration policy (which, in the case of proposed mechanisms, often involve creating additional limitations and exclusions, and more rarely additional preferences) are desirable.
This gets generalized into claims that "enforcing borders" has become controversial as a means of avoiding debate over the specific details that are actually controversial.
Separately, if you believe the process is bad, or borders should be open, or whatever -- by all means, fight for that using the frameworks we have.
I mean, I guess your view is consistent and makes some kind of sense. Selective enforcement of the law is a bad thing in many ways, and in an ideal world there would perhaps be no difference between "technically illegal" and an actually enforced crime. Perhaps disastrous policies like rounding up medical marijuana users, longtime undocumented residents, jaywalkers, "sodomites" before Lawrence v. Texas, miscegenators before Loving v Virginia, etc., etc., would "heighten the contradictions" and force civil society to legislate what it actually wanted to punish.
I'm confused how you could be confused by the opposite viewpoint though. The opposite viewpoint is informed by millenia of the reality of law, which is that laws are often not enforced because they don't make sense, and a zealous enforcement of an existing law can be a radical, destructive break with an informal rule. For those of us who see this as simply part of reality, a given proposal to increase or decrease the enforcement of existing laws must be weighed against its practical effects.
The proposal to enforce the immigration laws is controversial because it will cause an enormous amount of suffering, it solves no real problems, it will weaken the US economy, and it is motivated by racial animus and xenophobia.
What is legal is not necessarily moral or ethical.
I am guessing you did many times. If you had paid the fine, you'll be too broke to own a device to post this comment.
It also means you circumvented the process and you are a criminal. It takes one to know one.
So yes, we all got financial benefits out of it. Now, suddenly turning around to punish people who we benefited from strikes as hypocritical, to put it politely.
If were are just enforcing the laws now, it would be only fair to write a big fat check to each deportee before sending them on their way.
However, I think looking at it as a basic human right is more appropriate. Restricting people crossing borders is simply institutional racism. Countries are granting permission to enter/not enter based on the person's race. If this were any other context, people would be screaming racism. But because it's become so typical over the past 150 years, nobody calls it for what it is anymore.
Because it isn't. What about the DMZ between the Koreas, the Berlin wall, the Taiwan strait? If a country leaves the Schengen area, does their citizens' race change? And which race can stroll into the US without a visa?
Some countries make it easier for people of the right ancestry to apply for citizenship, but it's more complicated than plain racism.
Passport-based travel was introduced in most of Europe as a 'temporary' measure, for the purposes of fighting WW I.
Maybe the whole idea of national borders is the strange thing.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/19/us/photos-show-conditions-...
Your statement raises two distinct questions:
Q1) Why are these individuals being detained? Are they visitors to the United States, with a valid visa, merely subject to detention by a bigoted law enforcement agency...or are have they broken one or more existing U.S. laws by overstaying their visa or illegally entering the country?
If the former, then yes, it is shameful and should be addressed immediately.
If the latter, then they are being detained as any anyone would be if they had been accused of a crime and considered a flight risk.
Q2) How are they being detained? Are the conditions considered acceptable by third-party organizations such as the ICRC? Are detainees being provided with adequate food, water, shelter, and medical care? Is there an official timetable for the resolution of their detention? Are the reason(s) for their detention documented and available to advocates?
If any of the above questions have a "no" answer, then again it is shameful and should be corrected immediately.
Beyond that, the United States is not conducting itself in a manner inconsistent with most other nations in the world.
As for Trump and the mythical "rounding up" plans: just stop it.
Seriously.
This kind of hysterical fearmongering is just as absurd as Glenn Beck's "Obama's gonna round up conservatives and put them into FEMA camps" bullshit from a couple of years ago. It is just as unsubstantiated, just as inflammatory, and just as likely to be fought tooth and nail by average Americans.
Any social advocate will tell you that this ain't the 1940s.