We speak of compromise. If we are to give the president his $5.7 billion for a wall, is there something we could get in return that is worth the price of the wall and worth letting him build the wall? There is: Justice. Demand that in exchange for the $5.7 billion and in exchange for building the wall, the U.S. provides a judicial system that processes the cases in a Constitutionally timely manner. If we are asking for nothing more than justice of our president, and he is getting his $5.7 billion for a wall, he will not be in position to say no. And, if the immigrants are getting a way to enter the country legally, they will not be stopped if the wall is built anyway. So build it.
At the San Ysidro Port of Entry, alone, only 40-100 asylum applications a day are opened. This though there have been thousands arriving at the border, just wanting to come in legally, just asking for their day in court. By comparison, maybe 100,000 people (wikipedia reports 70,000 vehicles plus 20,000 pedestrians) a day pour northward into America at that same border crossing. The funny thing is, the illegal drugs flow in with the legal crossings. Few illegal drugs come across with immigrants crossing illegally. When President Trump went to McAllen, Texas, weeks ago, they presented him with a pile of illegal drugs they had confiscated -- and the whole pile had been collected at the ports of entry.
So, if we find the manpower to process 100,000 people passing back into the U.S. each day, why cannot we find the manpower to process more than 40-100 asylum seekers? That's a thousand-to-one ratio! One possibility is that we do not want to process them. We do not want them here, so we circumvent the justice that would allow them to be here. We purposefully under staff the process because we purposefully want to undermine their coming here.
These are people wanting to come legally, mind you. And, this is in a country where the Sixth Amendment calls for a speedy and fair legal system. What, do we not believe in our own Constitution? Doe our desire to keep them out exceed our desire to provide justice?
If we can process 100,000 people entering America at the San Ysidro Port of entry each day, it seems we should be able to start -- in some fashion -- a hundredth of that in asylum applications. Just 1000 a day. Maybe do no more than ask them the six credible fear questions. Do it in automated fashion, with computer automation translating and asking the questions in their own languages. You cannot expect to staff an office with those who speak such little-known languages as the Quiche Mayan language. Nor can you provide justice by asking those who speak primarily only Quiche to answer questions in Spanish.
Now, in our compromise with President Trump, he will need to provide justice not just at the border with the asylum seekers, but justice will need to be instituted in all our immigration courts throughout the land. Is it justice when they go in for an initial hearing and their cases are scheduled six months down the road? No, justice deferred is justice denied. There cases can -- and do -- take years to wind their way through the courts. Why cannot we settle these cases in a matter of weeks? We speak of catch-and-release, and to avoid it, we ship them to detention centers -- prisons, if you will. Is this justice? We are going to put you in prison while we decide if you are worthy of the freedoms America offers? We are going to make that last as long as we can because we really don't want you to have those freedoms. And, if we don't have you in these detention centers, but allow you to go back into the communities, we are not going to understand that sometimes you are just so frustrated with the long and drawn out process, that you simply fade away and do not come back because that is easier than trying to get through our system.
One of the qualifiers for asylum is that you are persecuted for your political beliefs. I do not know that the law uses any word than than persecution. Legally, then, that covers a lot of distance. If a person's vote is taken away, or if they are intimidated to vote for someone, is that not a form of persecution? I think of Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela, and how the word is that the election wasn't fair. Does that, then, qualify as persecution? Is not taking away the freedoms of a nation a form of persecution? But, if we do not concede that that is enough to qualify as a group persecuted for political beliefs, consider that some have been killed for there climate change beliefs in Honduras. If they will kill you for that belief, can they not kill you for another belief? Do you not have right and reason to fear?
A wall and the $5.7 billion it takes to build it is a small price for the justice we should demand in return.
No comments:
Post a Comment