In the U.S., refugee means something different than asylum-seeker. Refugees are classes of people the President has identified as meeting the criteria to be pre-cleared for admission. The President sets a quota for refugees. For example, people fleeing violence in Ukraine.
~Max
Illegally crossing the border is a misdemeanor. That’s why i compared it to overstaying your time at the parking meter, and others compared it to jaywalking.
There probably are some actual criminals trying to cross the border. There are also some actual criminals who jaywalk and shop at McDonald’s. Most of those who cross illegally have done nothing illegal other than cross illegally, and aren’t any great threat to anyone else.
When North Korea sends invaders to our borders, I’ll be happy that the US greets them with deadly force. That’s quite different from a bunch of Guatemalans and Mexicans seeking a better place to live.
Okay I didn’t realize there were distinctions So the program is not helping at the southern border or maybe just for those from particular countries. Like Haitians Cubans el Salvadorans?
Agreed, but it sounds as though private citizens as represented by human-rights and immigrant-advocacy organizations are on board with this initiative.
What I hope, off the top of my naive head, is that among other things it can provide a pathway for successfully settled immigrant families to help rescue refugees who weren’t so lucky. Requiring five or more people to pool enough resources to provide a couple thousand bucks per refugee is a reasonable-sized ask. And most of those support groups trying to help family members are probably already signed on for assisting them with initially obtaining housing, employment and school enrollment.
I mean, AFAICT at present there’s a fair bit of hard-earned immigrant-worker wages going into the pockets of coyotes to illegally smuggle desperate friends and relatives across the border, resulting in danger and legal liability for everyone involved. If an initiative like this can redirect some of that expenditure towards a more safe and constructive means of bringing in refugees, that’s not a bad thing.
Why? It’s been reported they’re poorly trained and suffering from malnutrition and state sponsored abuse and once here will probably want to defect to the USA.
Yeah, the refugee and asylum programs are separated in the U.S. You can read President Biden’s refugee determination here, which also includes an overview of the law and such:
Those sponsorships are probably what are formally called priority referrals, for example,
Persons in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras : In El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, UNHCR refers to the USRAP cases of vulnerable individuals identified by a consortium of NGOs. Cases with the most extreme protection needs may be transferred to Costa Rica for refugee processing under a tripartite Memorandum of Understanding between the Government of Costa Rica, UNHCR, and IOM; all other cases are eligible for in-country processing for resettlement to the United States.
Or maybe it’s to take advantage of the new private sponsorship pilot program for priority-4 referrals:
Priority 4 (P-4) – Privately sponsored refugees
The Department of State, in coordination with the Department of Health and Human Services, is developing a private sponsorship pilot program for refugees admitted through the USRAP that it anticipates launching in late calendar year 2022 as part of efforts to expand community participation in refugee resettlement.
See also,
In private sponsorship, the sponsors directly engage in the efforts to admit displaced persons in their country. They are the ones identifying, selecting, and supporting the entry and stay of people in need of international protection, who are not referred by UNHCR.
The key difference is that refugees are admitted before actually entering the United States, while asylum-seekers enter the United States first in order to seek asylum.
~Max
To be fair, yeah, much of N. Korea’s active military would probably qualify for refugee status at the US border right off the bat.
That’s a good point. Even in war, there are intentionally recognized ways for soldiers to surrender, and killing soldiers who surrender is a violation of international law.
So much the worse that we attack non-invading border-crossers with deadly force.
Just in case someone doesn’t understand what razor wire is, here is the Wiki entry on concertina wire and another Wiki entry on razor wire.
…BREAKING:
We have live coverage of The_Other_Waldo_Pepper on the frontlines of the invasion.
So very very brave. An American hero. A patriot.
To be fair, his “if you get shot it’s your own fault” approach has pretty solid historical precedent.
Maybe the worst part of this anti-immigrant bullshit is how goddamned short-sighted it all is. In a decade or two we’re gonna have recruiting stations in Africa and Central America because we’ll need the help.
Same thing with the insistence on Christian “morality” when ever increasing numbers of Americans are moving away from traditionalism. Conservatives never met an unpopular cause they didn’t like (or enjoy perverting).
Conservatives would very much rather see the US destroyed than become a powerful nation no longer ruled by White men.
If TOWP’s horrific ideas ever became a reality–even once–it would be a galvanizing event in American history. The murdered child’s name would become famous alongside Emmett Till and Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. The conversation about immigration would be forever changed.
For now, we should see him in the same light as the murderers of those victims, except for the crucial difference that, as yet, his murderous fantasies remain only fantasies.
I don’t know. Quite a few children have died over the last few years through neglect by US authorities at the border (Border Patrol staff failed to review documents, refused ambulance before 8-year-old died , for example), and I didn’t know the name until I looked it up.
I don’t want to minimize how awful it’s been so far. But what TOWP is proposing is unbelievably far beyond that. He’s talking about snipers shooting children in the head, and his willingness to be one of those snipers.
I’m also willing to have them captured at gunpoint — and, by extension, to capture them at gunpoint — because my indifference works that way as well.
Indeed. Without it the Third Reich would have failed. (I see you just edited your post, but the facts also apply to your edit.)
They did fail.
Let’s hope that your monstrous ideas fail to gain the same traction before they fail.