Evidently Obama is acting under the discretion granted by our immigration law. How will this next Republican, and evidently monumentally politically suicidal person, justify not undertaking such prosecutions?
Are you talking about the number of kids in orphanages and foster care? Over 408,000 as of 2010.
Orphans living in group homes hoping to be adopted. It looks like 127,000 in 1999. Couldn’t find great numbers because we don’t have “orphanages” like most other countries any more, as they have been replaced with several versions of group homes.
I think you miss my point. If you would take in an illegal immigrant who didn’t have parents, wouldn’t you also take in an American child in the same situation?
It’s their choice. Just like the one they made to come here illegal.
That’s not right. Horrible for the parents and ten times worse for the kids, particularly the young ones. The parents should be allowed to leave the country with them, or place them with a relative. Their choice. But you have to accept that it is their parents’ decision that allowed this to happen in the first place.
Wait, you’re talking about a bunch of other things here that have little to do with illegal immigration specifically. Your talking about the problem of kids growing up in unsupportive homes, regardless of citizenship or immigration status.
My heart goes out to you. I always bring up the situations of people like you in these types of threads and people just hand wave it away. I think it’s unfair and immoral that people like you who have been waiting in line, with great patience and frustration, have to see others accommodated. They break the law and things work out the way they wanted. You follow the law and you’re just told to wait longer…while time, effort and resources have to be spent making accommodations for the lawbreakers and their families. The pisses me off mightily. It’s so blatantly unfair. I can only imagine how much angrier I would be if I were in your shoes.
All right. I read Russello. I don’t know how to interpret this:
“Moreover, where Congress includes particular language in one section of a statute but omits it in another section of the same Act, it is generally presumed that Congress acts intentionally and purposely in the disparate inclusion or exclusion. The fact that Congress specifically included any reference to specific intent simply suggests the obvious-that Congress intended “arrest” to be an element of the criminal offense but did not choose for “specific intent” to be so.”
First, I don’t know which specific law would apply to an illegal immigrant, therefore, I don’t know how someone would infer “intent.” Isn’t the simple knowledge that one is in the country illegally evidence of mens rea?
Second, since you mention it, which parts of which law/statute/whatever did congress state a penalty for illegal immigration but ignores an ongoing residency–is it the Section 8 of 1325?
I really hope you understand what I mean. I don’t know how to ask it better.
And what did Rincon and Dean have to do with it? Indian gambling and discharging a firearm during a robbery…?
Magellan01, you (and others) are talking about fairness and morality. Think of it this way: if a child’s parents committed a murder together when the kid was 7 or 8, how much should the child have to suffer for it when he’s an adult?
Another thought: I am the child of one illegal immigrant (and one US citizen who, though married, did not bother to sponsor my mother for legal residency until she had been in the US nearly 30 years). She was deported once when I was a child, and re-entered illegally. Because she was white, educated, securely employed, and a native English speaker, this was all a minor inconvenience for her, while to a poorly educated native Spanish speaker, it would be disastrous. How is THAT fair? If she had been kept out, I would have had to leave the country, too, or else grow up without a mother. How is THAT fair?
And, of course, as a gay man I’m not allowed to sponsor my spouse for immigration at all, which means all that public money spent on MY education, K through PhD, is now benefitting Canada and not the USA at all. From other threads I suspect that’s a net gain in your book.
The point is, the system is so byzantine and backlogged and biased that there is no way to use terms like “fair” or “moral” in description of the status quo. Iggy’s point is quite reasonable, but there are a thousand other aspects to the prioritization process in place that he could (and should) object to just as much.
When did living in your own country equate to suffering? Why is waiting to immigrate according to the law suffering? The President of Mexico wants us to hold his citizens to a different standard than their own.
Well, it’s beside the point, but for vast swathes of humanity, living in their own country IS suffering, due to poverty, violence, ethnic / gender / linguistic / gender minority status, corruption, and instability. I’m not saying that gives them a free pass to sneak into the US, but I think their suffering is objectively real. Obviously, that’s on a case-by-case basis and neither you nor I are qualified to judge.
But we weren’t talking about the people who made the decision to immigrate illegally, we were talking about their children. Children who don’t have a choice about the culture they grow up in, or the language they learn to speak. If your immigrant parents keep you from speaking Spanish, what happens to you when you turn 18 and are deported to El Salvador? You can blame your parents for your troubles, but it still sucks to be you.
How is it not besides the point? If there are people from other countries deserving of US citizenship why are we allowing one country to dominate and overload our system?
It’s beside the point because you were talking about people’s decision to come to the US illegally, and the subject under discussion is about children who had that decision made for them by others.
I looked for a cite that one country is in fact dominating and overloading the system, because that seemed unlikely. I found that according to Homeland Security, somewhere in the 50–60% range of so-called “unauthorized immigrants” are from Mexico (data from 2000–2008), more than ten times the amount for any other country in that period. I was surprised by the numbers, and it makes me think a better solution to the issue would take that into account somehow.
After reading this thread I can only add one comment: I sincerely hope that Mitt Romney decides to take the exact position (and make exactly the same arguments) that magellan01 and company has laid out. Particularly the parts about the unfairness of not deporting someone that was brought here as a young child.
A nice GOP-supported lawsuit to force said deportations would be even better.
Barring that (because I don’t think Romney or the GOP is that stupid), I’m looking forward to a debate where Romney is forced to agree with the content of the policy and that he wouldn’t overturn it if elected. That should make his base eager to support him.
It is not strawmanning at all, to attribute to immigration-opponents such positions as “Illegal immigrants cause crime” or “Illegal immigrants are the source of many communicable diseases” or “Immigrants take jobs and opportunity away from Americans.” I encounter bullshit like that all the time on the Intertubes, sometimes on this Board.
I’ll ask you the same thing I asked Iggy, stressing once again that I don’t know the answer to my question: how do you know that the Obama administration’s new policies discussed here will result in later processing of other applications? Iggy’s family members have presumably submitted applications, as will those who are covered in the new policy. How do you know who will be processed first?
It’s not that I’m without sympathy and I can see how it’s an emotional issue. The line in the sand doesn’t move because there is emotional angle to it. The President referred to it as a temporary fix. A temporary fix to what? The only answer to that is citizenship. If you want to apply an emotional angle to it then consider the inequity of jumping to the head of the line. This is just wrong.
I’ve been through economic hell the last 5 years as have many others. I have to prove my citizenship when applying for a job and I see no reason why this isn’t uniformly enforced. I’ve also done the work people claim nobody else will do. If nobody will truly do it then work visa’s are the answer. That’s always been an option.
Or, he could address the graduating class of the University of Colorado and say something like, “Congratulations graduates. Good luck getting a job now that there are tens of thousands of formerly ineligible illegal aliens that are now qualified to take the positions that you just spent four years studying and paying for.”
Anyone who says something like that better hope they’re speaking to a crowd of people dumb enough to believe that a smaller, less robust economy benefits them.
Perhaps it will work if the entire University of Colorado graduating class is hoping to become repo men.