Nationhood and Immigration - Part Two: Come One, Come All
While living on the east coast, I visited the Statue of Liberty several times. On each visit, I read a passage that was inscribed on a plaque near the statue. As you likely know, the inscription reads as:
Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
How can these proclamations, noble and inspiring as they are, to be reconciled with reality? How can they be squared with common sense?
Let us be clear about this matter. An open border between Mexico to that of California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas — one that some pro-immigration factions favor — would result in denigration of the rule of law in America and the abnegation of this nation’s responsibility to its citizens.
Yet it appears to this writer that the marchers (or their sponsors?) from Central America to Tijuana started this trek with the expectation they would gain entrance into America.
These migrants are aware of the implications of their actions, but they are desperate and some are in fear of their well-being. At the risk of my friend labeling me xenophobic again, America cannot let these people into the country unless they go through an established process.
I recognize the thoughts in this paragraph may come across as harsh and judgmental. Nonetheless, no foreigner is entitled to U.S. citizenship. Yet by their actions of uprooting themselves and trekking across another country, they appear to believe they are somehow entitled to gain entry to this country. Else, why would they risk such a perilous journey?
If they are granted entrance ahead of those who have been waiting in the legitimate immigrants’ queue; if they violate America’s rules of law, this news will get back to Central America. The result? Form a caravan, trek your way northward, and come on in.
To my friend in D.C. who labeled me as xenophobic: Gradual immigration into another culture allows time for acculturation, for assimilation, for accommodation to dissimilar ways of life. Mass immigration leads to the balkanization of a nation. Thus, I respond to my friend: Read up on history — the current strife in Europe as the most recent example — then get back to me about your characterization of my character.
A Surreal Judgment
On a related matter, last week a Federal judge ruled that the policy of the administration forbidding asylum to immigrants who have entered the country illegally to be illegal. Judge Jon Tigar declared President Trump’s approach to keep illegal immigrants from entering the country runs “afoul of U.S. law that specifically allows them to do so.” (quote from New York Times).
Red or Blue, Pink or Chartreuse, take a deep breath if you re-read the previous paragraph. I am not well-versed in law. Before retirement, my specialty was computer networks. But I venture to risk stating that you and I, versed in fairness and common sense, find the judge’s ruling strange.
Perhaps the ruling was taken out of context or perhaps it came from laws to protect people who were fleeing for their lives and seeking sanctuary. But the question remains. What is the logic and good sense of a law that prevents Uncle Sam from denying illegal migrants from crossing the border, essentially making illegal entry legal?
Postscript
A survey (Time Magazine, Nov. 26 – Dec. 3, 2018) claims that 47 percent of the migrants who pass a credible-fear interview and are granted entry into the U.S. do not later to submit an application for asylum. They enter the population and disappear into the populace.
Border patrol officials claim their numbers are growing and creating incentives for more aliens to attempt to pursue asylums. These officials favor keeping the migrants out of the country until their papers (yes or no) have been processed.
But that translates into months of delay. To speed the process: the pro-immigration side suggests adding more immigration/asylum courts, more review panels, more tents in Tijuana. That is putting band-aids on a large wound, with the wound growing larger with each passing month.
It is agreed by most parties that the solution is to re-vamp the political, social, and financial infrastructures of the Central American countries. Clearly, that is an impossible task, from both the United States’ political and financial standpoint and the viewpoints of the Central American countries.
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As of this writing, Uyless and his wife, Holly, are immigrants. Last week, they began their migration from Hayden to Coeur d’Alene, with the expectation of having a better view of the fireworks across Lake Coeur d’Alene. Being newcomers, they are not sure if the lake’s name of these waters should be Coeur d’Alene Lake or Lake Coeur d’Alene. They say that advice on this delicate subject is most welcome as they do not want to offend any incumbent native.