Because they violated the old standards. It is one thing to say that we are making our standards more lenient for people going forward. But to use taxpayer money to bring back people who were previously deported because they aren’t such bad criminals is pretty crazy, really.
Should they get first class airfare as well? Maybe a week at a nice hotel to give them time to get set up?
Is coming into the nation illegally a deportable offense in and of itself? If so, wouldn’t it be odd to have a law saying you can’t be deported for being here illegally *and *having a low-level drug offense?
I’m confused about something:
The deported people who would get flown back to face a new trial (or whatever) were deported in full accordance to the law. Or am I not understanding something?
Since when do we have “ex post facto”-style* laws that apply retroactively?
If a criminal is sent to jail for possession of marijuana, and then later the state legalizes pot,they don’t release the prisoner.
*yes,I know that ex-post-facto is not the right legal term. I used the phrase because it describes the general intent which I am asking about: retroactive laws.
I believe we should right wrongs of the past. If someone should have not been deported we should bring them back. I do have two problems with this proposal:
We should have good reason to believe that if returned and retried they would be allowed to stay. I didn’t read all the details of the act but I’d think a new deportation trial in the US should be fairly perfunctory after investigating all of the circumstances first in most cases.
Affecting the above, I think the standard based on the length of the sentence is absurd. We know sentences can vary in length for the same crimes, and dumps both violent and non-violent crimes in the same pot. Whether we are talking about new deportees or previous ones the standard is not right.
But someone who should have been allowed to stay in this country under a reasonable standard should be brought back at our expense since we forced them out unreasonably.
Correct. It is very rare that we look back when the law changes. Caryl Chessman Caryl Chessman - Wikipedia was executed after the law for which he was convicted had been amended to no longer allow for the death penalty for the crime.
It would be like if they lowered the drinking age to 18 tomorrow and the state, at its own expense, looked through all of the old records to expunge all underage drinking convictions so long as the person was at least 18. It doesn’t happen.
They were deported under the current standard. The new law would not only raise the standard (require a more severe crime) for deportation, but the taxpayers would fly anyone back who was deported under the old (current) standard!
There is no “righting of wrongs” or being “unreasonable.” It is a change in the standard for deportation. As noted above, U.S. citizens typically don’t get this benefit. These people had no enforceable right to be in the United States to begin with.
For what benefit is there to the United States to bring back, at taxpayers’ expense, former immigrants with criminal records? Please tell me one tangible benefit to that.
You have two sides: One that believes “people shouldn’t be allowed in unless there is a good reason to,” and one that says “people shouldn’t be kept out unless there is a good reason to.”
US citizens can’t be legally deported but if one was wouldn’t it be right to bring them back? They were entitled to be in the US to begin with, they were legal immigrants, and the law was changed to deport them, wrongly in the view of others.
We are supposed to believe in justice. You don’t seem to merely disagree with the standard here but don’t seem to believe justice matters if the context is distasteful to you. We either correct the mistakes we make or we don’t, if we do it is a matter of the standards we use, not the basic principle. And like the rest of life, the cost of unrighted wrongs accrue interest over time.