[ldrews]

hrothgar, on 2018-June-20, 18:26, said:

And here we see a perfect example of Drews' style of debate

Drews made a pair of incredible stupid posts

• In the first, he cited an article that showed that Senator Flake was misrepresenting facts to back his position
  
• In the second, he demonstrated that he completely misunderstands the definition of torture

And, rather than dealing with the actual critiques of his position, he prefers to invent yet another new strawman to argue against...

SAD!

So back to the original topic here. It seems to me that there are only 3 choices:

• Arrest the illegal immigrants and separate them from the children
  
• Arrest the illegal immigrants and put the children in jail with the parents
  
• Arrest the illegal immigrants but if they have children release them and hope they show up at court

To me there are no good choices, just bad ones. But the long term consequences of releasing the family is to make a huge incentive for an increase in the number of illegal immigrants who bring children, not necessarily their own. A byproduct of that increase is a probable increase in child trafficking.

To me the choice is family separation or child trafficking. Which do you prefer? If you see another alternative, please describe it.

[Winstonm]

Womp, Womp

[hrothgar]

ldrews, on 2018-June-20, 21:14, said:

So back to the original topic here. It seems to me that there are only 3 choices:

• Arrest the illegal immigrants and separate them from the children
  
• Arrest the illegal immigrants and put the children in jail with the parents
  
• Arrest the illegal immigrants but if they have children release them and hope they show up at court

To me there are no good choices, just bad ones. But the long term consequences of releasing the family is to make a huge incentive for an increase in the number of illegal immigrants who bring children, not necessarily their own. A byproduct of that increase is a probable increase in child trafficking.

To me the choice is family separation or child trafficking. Which do you prefer? If you see another alternative, please describe it.

First and foremost, I reject your framing...

The Trump wasn't using these tactics against illegal immigrants. The overwhelming majority of the cases involved asylum seekers.
And, asylum seekers are, by definition, not illegal immigrants.

Second, for years, the Obama administration and the Bush administration followed policies in which you

1. Provide the asylum seekers with shelter
2. Conduct preliminary interviews
3. Release them into the US until their application can be reviewed

And, guess what... The asylum seekers came back for their hearings.

There's no reason why this policy had to be changed in such a horrific manner.

As to your argument about long term increases in the number of asylum seekers who bring children.
I suspect that your evidence is as dubious as ever, and even if this is true I don't really care cause I don't consider this "child trafficking".

And, of course, people who favor torturing children don't get to use "Oh! But the poor children" as a line of argument

[andrei]

hrothgar, on 2018-June-20, 23:45, said:

And, guess what... The asylum seekers came back for their hearings.

Still waiting to see the studies that show that 90% rate you claim.

[hrothgar]

andrei, on 2018-June-21, 06:39, said:

Still waiting to see the studies that show that 90% rate you claim.

I posted one with 85%. Round up, a$$hole

Also several of the ones I pointed to have values of 98% (assuming that the individual had access to legal representation)

[kenberg]

The separation of families was repugnant to many. And so there was a rare moment of fairly broad agreement. Now it's back to the hard stuff.

The combined population of Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador is a bit over 30 million (I looked it up). I can easily believe that a large portion of these people have good reason to fear violence. And certainly there are other good reasons for people to want to come here, there always have been. A woman in our book club left Hungary, with her children, in 1956 pretty much with bullets flying around her. Similarlly for a guy I know from Lebanon. And there are a lot of Syrians. And there are various places in Africa. My father came here from somewhere, he was not clear on just where, because it was awful there.

What are we to do? Some people find the answer clear. I don't.
Saying what the law is doesn't suffice. Laws can be interpreted, laws can be changed. And they can be enforced in various ways. On PBS last night they did a story on a woman with her granddaughter coming into the US through the proper checkpoint at El Paso. After a delay, they were allowed to enter. But now there will be an evaluation. Can she prove she has legal custody of the granddaughter? Can she prove she has a credible fear of returning?

Who gets in, who doesn't, how do we decide?
I recently saw some figure that there are now 70 million refugees worldwide. See https://www.rescue.o.../refugee-crisis for example. Perhaps it is only 50 million? And surely there are many more ho would like to leave from where they are but lack any means to do so. What are we to do about this?
As I say, I am very skeptical of anyone, of any persuasion, who thinks that the answer is obvious. Opposing the separation of families was the easy part.

[hrothgar]

kenberg, on 2018-June-21, 06:53, said:

As I say, I am very skeptical of anyone, of any persuasion, who thinks that the answer is obvious.

I don't consider this to be a particularly difficult problem.

1. An awful lot of the problems that are happening in Central and South America have their roots in the behavior of the US

Its our drug consumption and drug laws that are funding the gangs
Its our guns that folks are using to kill one another
Its our carbon output that is fueling climate change

The US has a moral responsibility to help clean up the problems that we created

2. Historically, the US has been extremely good at assimilating minorities. I doubt that this new wave will be any different than

the Germans
the Irish
the Italians
The Jews
The Vietnamese and Chinese

3. I understand that there are a bunch of good American citizens who are very concerned with changing Demographics.

***** em all.

I see no reason why I should be more concerned about the opinions of bunch of racist whites in flyover country than I am about a bunch of South American immigrants.

[y66]

Guest post by Matt Yglesias at Vox:

Quote

Donald Trump has largely skated by as president, deferring to the policy consensus in Republican Party circles. He’s served as a rubber-stamp signatory of tax legislation he wasn’t involved in crafting and judicial nominations in which he had little say.

But sometimes things happen — like a surge of families with children arriving at the border to press asylum claims — that require leadership in the executive branch and don’t have obvious solutions.

Trump’s response to the crisis at the US-Mexico border — where toddlers are in internment camps and older kids are in tent cities at frightening expense while children sob, health deteriorates, and the long-term damage of toxic stress accumulates — reminds us that he does not know anything about public policy, diplomacy, constitutional law, or legislative strategy.

So you get instead what he’s delivered over the past two weeks — aggressive hostage-taking, lying, trolling, chaos, dissembling, and cruelty — none of which is going to advance Trump’s legislative goals or address the underlying issue of the northward flow of asylum seekers. Even the executive order he signed on Wednesday raises more questions than it will probably solve.

All presidents are tested now and again, and Trump is failing massively. It’s not quite the first time, and it certainly won’t be the last. Being president of the United States is a difficult job, and Donald Trump has no idea how to do it.

The origins of this crisis are in Central America

The fundamental reality of the situation that Trump has no idea how to grapple with is that the families showing up at the border aren’t faking it.

Whether or not one deems the asylum claims being made as meeting the formal legal bar, it should be obvious that nobody takes their children on the perilous route through Mexico with dim prospects of an ultimately successful asylum application without being seriously distressed back in their home country. By the same token, it’s not a coincidence that the family migrants are coming specifically from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador rather than the more stable countries to the north or south of that triad.

It’s not obvious that there was actually anything especially terrible about the status quo as it existed in 2016 — a lot of people came, they were typically released into the interior pending asylum hearings, most claims were rejected, and a certain number of people skipped their appointed court dates. In the Trump administration’s mind, the fact that crossings are occurring at a much higher rate in 2018 than they were in 2017 is a big problem, but the reality is that it’s simply a return to the level we were living with before Inauguration Day.

But while reasonable people can disagree about which problems are important, there’s simply no denying that the origin of this problem is in Central America. If Trump wants to make solving the problem a major priority, he needs to make Central America a major policy priority. Instead, he’s picked a secretary of state with no experience in the region, made himself politically toxic by calling El Salvador a “shithole country,” embroiled the country in pointless fights with Mexico over NAFTA and a border wall, repeatedly threatened to end aid to Honduras for no reason, and decided not to show up at the Summit of the Americas.

Drastically improving living conditions in the Northern Triangle would, obviously, be difficult. But Trump isn’t even trying. Meanwhile, he exacerbates his problems with the fact that he can’t even remotely get his story straight on what he’s even trying to accomplish.

Trump has no idea how to legislate

After Chief of Staff John Kelly and Attorney General Jeff Sessions had both spent a considerable amount of time teasing a new policy of criminal prosecutions for asylum seekers as a deliberate means of separating parents from their children that would create a powerful deterrent, the White House’s communications strategy broke down immediately when the issue became controversial.

Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen repeatedly denied that there was any new policy at all, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar was nowhere to be seen even though his agency oversaw the children in detention, and Trump himself kept insisting that the new policy was somehow forced on him by some mysterious law that Democrats were allegedly responsible for. The one thing everyone could agree on was that the only possible solution was for Democrats to come to the table and agree to a broad series of sweeping changes to American immigration policy. Children were being held as literal hostages in a legislative negotiating strategy.

Not surprisingly, this didn’t work. On Wednesday, the administration admitted it had been lying all along and prepared to back away from family separation.

This combination of bluffing and hostage-taking would be a remarkable approach under any circumstances, but it’s particularly bizarre because Trump has repeatedly tried and failed to make this work. First he did it with the Affordable Care Act, where he spent months deliberately sabotaging the law and raising insurance premiums in the futile hope that this would bring Democrats to the table. He did it again with the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, canceling it and then immediately labeling the cancellation regrettable but demanding legislative concessions in exchange for a fix.

But even in its new form, Trump is still going to shift resources away from prosecuting criminals and toward prosecuting people — babies and all — for misdemeanor illegal entry violations.

This may succeed in extricating Trump from the public relations disaster he made for himself, but nothing about this is going to induce Democrats to want to make a deal with him. If anything, the fact that once again his administration has been caught lying about significant public policy issues confirms the suspicion that he’s not a negotiating partner one can work with in good faith.

Meanwhile, the new approach violates earlier court orders and will be the subject of immediate legal challenges that will likely strike it down. Trump, in other words, isn’t fixing anything. He’s just continuing to flail.

Trump doesn’t know what he’s doing

So far in his 500 days in office, Trump has benefited from a fairly benign set of objective circumstances. He inherited a strengthening economy from Barack Obama and made a reasonable selection to head up the Federal Reserve.

His tenure has been marked by an extraordinary level of drama, but on some level, relatively little has actually happened in reality. But when things have happened, Trump has been unequal to the task of handling them. Last year’s hurricane season created a catastrophe. The return of Central American asylum seekers to their pre-Trump level immediately devolved into a humanitarian crisis. America’s relationships with its traditional allies are in tatters for no real reason. China is relaxing its enforcement of sanctions on North Korea, and Iran is opening a new nuclear facility.

And even though Trump is remarkably skilled at taking advantage of the news cycle’s tendency to move on, reality is less forgiving. Another hurricane season is coming. None of Trump’s border antics are going to stop people from coming north. Some trouble or another — whether in the realm of the economy or foreign policy — is essentially inevitable. And when the trouble comes, America will be facing it isolated and discredited, led by a team with no credibility or integrity, headed up by a man who can’t be bothered to put in a moment’s thought or hard work on even the topics he proclaims himself to be focused on.

Nobody is suggesting this is an easy problem to solve. Trump's incompetence and mindless pursuit of a white nationalist agenda are not making it any easier.

[kenberg]

hrothgar, on 2018-June-21, 07:10, said:

I don't consider this to be a particularly difficult problem.

1. An awful lot of the problems that are happening in Central and South America have their roots in the behavior of the US

Its our drug consumption and drug laws that are funding the gangs
Its our guns that folks are using to kill one another
Its our carbon output that is fueling climate change

The US has a moral responsibility to help clean up the problems that we created

2. Historically, the US has been extremely good at assimilating minorities. I doubt that this new wave will be any different than

the Germans
the Irish
the Italians
The Jews
The Vietnamese and Chinese

3. I understand that there are a bunch of good American citizens who are very concerned with changing Demographics.

***** em all.

I see no reason why I should be more concerned about the opinions of bunch of racist whites in flyover country than I am about a bunch of South American immigrants.

But to cut to the chase, do you think that the answer to what should we do is obvious? An extreme possibility: If someone arrives at our border and says that they wish to enter and live here, should that be enough? Or, even more extreme, if someone in Honduras says they would like to come to the US but they lack the means to get here, should we provide transportation? I am not trying to put words in your mouth or anything like that. I am trying to address the following: Assuming that most people reject both the idea of completely open borders and the idea of completely closed borders, how do we decide what we actually should do?

If you think that borders should be completely open then that is one answer. If you put this idea to a vote it will not be only the people in flyover country (I grew up in flyover country but never mind) who will reject it. There is no chance that this view will become the majority view. A person can of course still hold that view but it will never become policy. Call us names if you like, that's what passes for argument these days, but it will never become policy.

[diana_eva]

kenberg, on 2018-June-21, 07:36, said:

But to cut to the chase, do you think that the answer to what should we do is obvious? An extreme possibility: If someone arrives at our border and says that they wish to enter and live here, should that be enough? Or, even more extreme, if someone in Honduras says they would like to come to the US but they lack the means to get here, should we provide transportation? I am not trying to put words in your mouth or anything like that. I am trying to address the following: Assuming that most people reject both the idea of completely open borders and the idea of completely closed borders, how do we decide what we actually should do?

If you think that borders should be completely open then that is one answer. If you put this idea to a vote it will not be only the people in flyover country (I grew up in flyover country but never mind) who will reject it. There is no chance that this view will become the majority view. A person can of course still hold that view but it will never become policy. Call us names if you like, that's what passes for argument these days, but it will never become policy.

Coming from a country that used to be eligible for political asylum, I'm shocked at the discussions. People who come knock at the door asking to be let in, do so because living in their own country is too dangerous and they fear for their life and for the life of their loved ones, not because they like to take a hike with their small kids over mountains and seas.

[Winstonm]

diana_eva, on 2018-June-21, 07:59, said:

Coming from a country that used to be eligible for political asylum, I'm shocked at the discussions. People who come knock at the door asking to be let in, do so because living in their own country is too dangerous and they fear for their life and for the life of their loved ones, not because they like to take a hike with their small kids over mountains and seas.

As long as the United States is being led by a demagogue, preaching a message of isolationism, fear, nationalism, and white privilege, and as long as the United States has a governing body who is in allegiance with that demagogue, there can be no solution, either nationally or internationally.

Build the wall is not a policy - it is a slogan. Lock her up is not a policy - it is sloganeering. That brown-skinned people from Latin countries will "infest" the United States unless criminalized and deported is not a policy - it is propaganda.

That we, as a country, continue to fall for this demagoguery is a stain on ourselves and our history that can never be removed.

[barmar]

kenberg, on 2018-June-21, 07:36, said:

Assuming that most people reject both the idea of completely open borders and the idea of completely closed borders, how do we decide what we actually should do?

You consider each case on its merits. It's hard work, but trying to set a blanket policy is unreasonable.

[barmar]

ldrews, on 2018-June-20, 21:14, said:

So back to the original topic here. It seems to me that there are only 3 choices:

• Arrest the illegal immigrants and separate them from the children
  
• Arrest the illegal immigrants and put the children in jail with the parents
  
• Arrest the illegal immigrants but if they have children release them and hope they show up at court

You do realize that illegal entry is just a misdemeanor, not a felony, don't you? We don't arrest people for most other misdemeanors, why do we have to take such a hard line on this one? They're not endangering anyone just by being here. We got by for years without this "zero tolerance" policy, and nothing has changed to make them more of a problem. The only thing that's changed is that POTUS is a racist.

[Winstonm]

kenberg, on 2018-June-21, 07:36, said:

But to cut to the chase, do you think that the answer to what should we do is obvious? An extreme possibility: If someone arrives at our border and says that they wish to enter and live here, should that be enough? Or, even more extreme, if someone in Honduras says they would like to come to the US but they lack the means to get here, should we provide transportation? I am not trying to put words in your mouth or anything like that. I am trying to address the following: Assuming that most people reject both the idea of completely open borders and the idea of completely closed borders, how do we decide what we actually should do?

If you think that borders should be completely open then that is one answer. If you put this idea to a vote it will not be only the people in flyover country (I grew up in flyover country but never mind) who will reject it. There is no chance that this view will become the majority view. A person can of course still hold that view but it will never become policy. Call us names if you like, that's what passes for argument these days, but it will never become policy.

Actually, I think I do have an answer.

One of the complaints from the Dennison camp is that the influx of asylum seekers and immigrants is too poorly skilled to be of benefit to the U.S. At the same time, one has to wonder why the simple fact of geographic location of birth determines so much national favor or disapproval, regardless of education, skills, or intelligence - or as Richard so succinctly put it - why we should give a "shi*" about what some Americans think compared to non-Americans.

Here is what I propose: The U.S. establishes a baseline model of acceptable intelligence quotient and skill set - and we test everyone of working age and younger in the U.S., building up a swap list from those who fail to surpass that baseline, regardless of whether or not it breaks up families or marriages or nationalities or races.

In honor of Corey Lewandowski, we would name this the "Womp, Womp Wish List".

Then, for every immigrant or asylum seeker who surpasses the base model we let in, we deport a stupid, lazy, uneducated, poor, unskilled, worthless American, regardless of race, religion, or political affiliation who is not smart enough or productive enough or wealthy enough to use up valuable space in the "Motherland".

Then, of course, we register all the new "Americans" as Democrats..... which, by my calculations, would make the U.S. voting population 67% Democrat by 2020.

[kenberg]

barmar, on 2018-June-21, 08:40, said:

You consider each case on its merits. It's hard work, but trying to set a blanket policy is unreasonable.

Agreed, but still there is a problem. My guess is that most all of the 70 or so million refugees have compelling reasons for being refugees, and I would further guess that a large number of people who are not officially classified as refugees simply have no way of leaving getting away from their awful circumstances. They do not even have the opportunity to become refugees.

Do we not have to have a discussion of just what it means to "consider each case on its merits"? Quoting form the (pro-refugee) source I mentioned: "More people have been forced to flee their homes by conflict and crisis than at any time since World War II.".

So we have a problem. I think the stuff with the families diverted attention from this more difficult problem, just about everyone agreed that had to stop. To get back to the PBS story about the grandmother, I fully accept that she has serious reason to flee. Family members have been killed, as i understood it. There was no doubt a reason it was just her and the granddaughter. Others who might have come with her are buried. So, speaking of her individually, we could pay her way from her country of origin, skip the tough trip. Fine by me. Except there are some 70 million of her.

Not an easy problem. Right. But we do what?
It would be nice if the world stopped acting as it is acting. But no sign of that. So refugees are coming.

[Winstonm]

The irony is almost unimaginable.

[Winstonm]

kenberg, on 2018-June-21, 09:44, said:

Agreed, but still there is a problem. My guess is that most all of the 70 or so million refugees have compelling reasons for being refugees, and I would further guess that a large number of people who are not officially classified as refugees simply have no way of leaving getting away from their awful circumstances. They do not even have the opportunity to become refugees.

Do we not have to have a discussion of just what it means to "consider each case on its merits"? Quoting form the (pro-refugee) source I mentioned: "More people have been forced to flee their homes by conflict and crisis than at any time since World War II.".

So we have a problem. I think the stuff with the families diverted attention from this more difficult problem, just about everyone agreed that had to stop. To get back to the PBS story about the grandmother, I fully accept that she has serious reason to flee. Family members have been killed, as i understood it. There was no doubt a reason it was just her and the granddaughter. Others who might have come with her are buried. So, speaking of her individually, we could pay her way from her country of origin, skip the tough trip. Fine by me. Except there are some 70 million of her.

Not an easy problem. Right. But we do what?
It would be nice if the world stopped acting as it is acting. But no sign of that. So refugees are coming.

Well, it seems to me that a reasonable start would be with our allies, discussing the problems and coming to some kind of group plan to assist asylum seekers worldwide, with each country taking in some number of refugees and responsible for transporting families among countries.

Of course, these are no longer "reasonable" times. When you no longer share the same values as your allies, when humans beings fighting for their lives are considered sub-human "infestations", what you have left are some previous non-allies and newbie strongmen in previous allied countries, and the prospects of getting China, Poland, Russia, North Korea, Turkey, the Philippines, and now Italy to take in these refugees to either start or help bolster a national enslaved workforce - or perhaps as target practice.

Seems a straight 50/50 decision to me, help fellow humans/ enslaved workforce. Perhaps we should look to the Bible for guidance, or simply give it over into God's hands - after all, isn't he culpable, didn't he ultimately create the problem?

Let's see....Genesis....Leviticus....here it is...Exodus....Asylum seekers....I've got some bad news for you...

[StevenG]

Winstonm, on 2018-June-21, 10:00, said:

Well, it seems to me that a reasonable start would be with our allies, discussing the problems and coming to some kind of group plan to assist asylum seekers worldwide, with each country taking in some number of refugees and responsible for transporting families among countries.

This is working wonderfully well within the EU.

[hrothgar]

andrei, on 2018-June-20, 21:09, said:

Apparently hrothgar heard of studies saying that 90% goes to court.

The linked linked states the most recent estimate is that 46% skip court.

So I was asking if hrothgar was making up his "90% goes to court" number.

If *****-for-brains has actually bother to read my post, he would have seen that I cited two different links

The first was the link that Larry originally provide and misrepresented.
(This is te one where you state that the point current point estimate for the number of asylum seeker that don't show up is 46%, however, the long term average tends to fluctuate between 20 and 40%

I also provided the following link
https://www.humanrig...migration-court which states

Quote

The majority of immigrant families—at least 60 percent or higher—appear for their immigration court hearings. For immigrant families who have legal counsel, 98 percent are in compliance with their obligations to appear for court hearings.

The 90% number was a figure that I had heard on NPR earlier in the week.
I will try to run it down

[ldrews]

hrothgar, on 2018-June-20, 23:45, said:

First and foremost, I reject your framing...

The Trump wasn't using these tactics against illegal immigrants. The overwhelming majority of the cases involved asylum seekers.
And, asylum seekers are, by definition, not illegal immigrants.

Second, for years, the Obama administration and the Bush administration followed policies in which you

1. Provide the asylum seekers with shelter
2. Conduct preliminary interviews
3. Release them into the US until their application can be reviewed

And, guess what... The asylum seekers came back for their hearings.

There's no reason why this policy had to be changed in such a horrific manner.

As to your argument about long term increases in the number of asylum seekers who bring children.
I suspect that your evidence is as dubious as ever, and even if this is true I don't really care cause I don't consider this "child trafficking".

And, of course, people who favor torturing children don't get to use "Oh! But the poor children" as a line of argument

And I reject your framing of the illegal immigrants being asylum seekers. Legitimate asylum seekers present themselves at a port of entry and request asylum. Illegal immigrants, those crossing the border at other than ports of entry, and then claiming to be asylum seekers are simply using a subterfuge. Crossing the border at other than ports of entry is a crime in the US. Therefore those who do so are criminals.