Monday, July 1, 2019

Immigration Courts Should be Right in the Home Countries

  If you want a purer strain of justice, open immigration courts in Mexico, and Honduras, and every country where a large number of immigrants are coming from.
  Let them not only apply for their asylum there, but let the courts that decide their cases be located  right there in their home countries.
  These would be Americans serving as the judges -- Americans who had moved there -- but, they would be living more in the environment of the applicants. They would have first-hand knowledge of what is going on. You may say this would bias them. Experience does that. By the same token, when witnesses speak, a bias in favor of what they say can be created.
   Having first-hand knowledge is not a negative, but a positive.
   Our Constitution calls for being tried "in the state and district where in the crime shall have been committed." Immigration trials are not criminal matters, still -- the same -- these are trials and following the spirit of the Constitution suggests we should have these courts in their home countries.
   The Constitution says a person being tried shall  "have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor." Character witnesses are much easier to bring to the trial when they are right there in that country. And, if there are stains on the applicant's background, they are more likely to be known and found out by those living near the applicant.


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