Is the political situation in Mexico such that a person could actually seek and get political asylum in the US? Any idea how many Mexicans are living in the US under political asylum? I honestly don’t know, but if I had to bet money, I’d say zero.
I’d liken it to the push to re-classify vagrants as “homeless;” the gist of the linguistic sleight is to transform a person from one responsible for his own actions to a passive pawn of the fates, left “homeless” or “undocumented” by a bureaucratic technicality because the (evil/patriarchal/Reaganite/plutocratic/etc.) system didn’t supply him with a home or documents (as was his fundamental right).
Sympathy for vagrants and aliens is an issue distinct from intellectual dishonesty about how they got to where they are; I’ll avoid too much of a hijack by not going into the fact that most of the “homeless” made many, many bad, volitional choices (as opposed to, say, having Reagan come and steal their house); but on the alien side, the “undocumented” stuff is especially dishonest given that there is a U.S. system (question its limits, but it exists) for both legitimate immigration and legitimate asylum, and by definition, the “undocumented” are those who couldn’t be bothered to play by the system’s rules. Not, some might think, the best augury for their future performance as U.S. residents – i.e., their first act in this country was a willful violation of its rule of law.
I’ll also avoid any extensive digression on the asylum follies, except to tip my hat to the huge numbers of selfless democracy activitsts (at least to judge by their lookalike asylum filings) – with so many Jeffersonian democrats (again, based on their carbon-copied stories of persecution in the homeland based on their democratic ideals – cf. Amadou Diallo, who in his petition swore to some tale of woe about his persecution on grounds of political ideals, and later turned out to be the son of a privileged, and far from dissident, Sierra Leone clan), it’s a bit of a puzzlement how their homelands are still (again by their accounts) such hellholes.
I think that “homeless” is a better term than “vagrant”. While its true that many of the homeless made choices that helped lead to their current situation, homelessness is ultimately a lack, rather than presence, of action. It seems to me that if anything, it is the word “vagrant” which is a linguistic sleight of hand, excusing prejudice against those that lack, by treating that lack as a choice, as something they did. Hence there are laws which explicitly make vagrancy a crime, while a law declaring homelessness to be a crime would be widely considered absurd: how can you prosecute someone for not doing something?
Well . . . we prosecute people for “not doing something” every day.
Not paying child support. Not cutting one’s lawn for six months. Not (in the U.K.) paying a license fee for the television signals being sent into one’s house. Not reporting offshore income.
BTW, the laws against vagrancy per se were, as far as I know, mostly deemed unconstitutional by the U.S. courts, so there is no legal distinction between the two metaphysically-distinct states of not having a home due to Reagan-taking-your-house-induced “homelessness” and living in the public library restroom because you don’t want to work.
Back to the main point . . . failure to take the readily-understood steps that qualify one for being “documented” as an alien is prohibited by law and hence, um, “illegal,” so I think the two categories collapse into one; and I’ll opt for the more straightforward and descriptive nomenclature.
Hope you weren’t planning to bet a lot of money, JM.
Jesus Valles, a Mexican soldier who refused to carry out orders to kill Zapatista rebels, was granted asylum a few years back. Cite. According to that page there are others - “fewer than a hundred”, but obviously greater than zero. The BCIS web page has statistics if you want to examine the matter further.
Don’t forget that asylees don’t need to prove a fear of government persecution. If the government cannot protect a person from persecution at the hands of private individuals that too is grounds for asylum.
"Don’t forget that asylees don’t need to prove a fear of government persecution. If the government cannot protect a person from persecution at the hands of private individuals that too is grounds for asylum".
It’s still sticky and political. Here’s an interesting example:
Ritt Goldstein, the US citizen (still?!) denied asylum by Sweden after nearly 5 years, even though his persecution by rogue police/failed govt protection was well documented. Cite:
That was in 1998. Here’s the latest update I could find (2002), from The Guardian:
“Open borders” sounds better and better every day…
Well, I was speaking in terms of US policy, annaplurabelle. I don’t pretend to know what qualifies for asylum in other countries.
But I agree it’s probably political everywhere.
Undocumented is illegal. An illegal immigrant is a criminal, a law breaker, and we dont need more criminals in this country - they should all be deported.
It is unjust and unfair to all those law abiding legal immigrants(and their decendents) who went about coming to this country in the legal way and followed all of our laws.
Does this last part mean that you favor some proposal to deal with the descendants of illegal immigrants in some way? Say shipping them off to, well somewhere else? You know, in the interest of fairness.
Ah, yeah, so you want to possibly deport my 86-year-old grandmother? After all, it’s entirely possible she is here illegally, and even though she came in 1930 when she was still a minor, she should have the burden of proof that she’s legal, right?
Background/explanation:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=204080
Liberals call them “undocumented workers”. Conservatives call them “illegal immigrants”.
I think the conservative label is more accurate, biased though I may be.
It’s no different than hearing someone say they are “pro-life” or “pro-choice”. You certainly wouldn’t expect someone who is pro-life to call themselves anti-choice, or vice versa.
It all comes down to marketting.
My wife happens to be a legal immigrant, and nothing could affect her less than the laws that other immigrants break. I assure you she feels no injustice done to her.
Although she does break the speed limit at times, and once we brought more than two bottles of liquor back from mexico. Should she be deported? We didn’t stop and register our dog when we brought him back from mexico last christmas. Are these crimes less heinous than crossing from one side of the border to the other?
Ooh here’s one. She once hung out in front of a store for a whole hour. Same crime most undocumented immigrants commit when they’re waiting for someone to offer them work daily.
One of our laws is that workers have to be provided with things like minimum wage pay, health care, etc.
Now, given that some portion of the population needs to remain exploitable in order for us to afford an apple or a head of lettuce, Who’s gonna pick all that produce for substandard wages?
The hard working independent contractor, he hires those mojados, documented or not because he has to outbid someone else for the job.
Undocumented immigrants provide exploitable labor in exchange for their presence here.
Ya wanna fix the problem, do it at the source, we have the need for exploitable workers, it’s part of our system.
When we stop looking at these workers as criminals simply for coming here to work and not being able/willing to wait for a visa (we’ve been waiting for a year on a turist visa for my father in law by the way) we stop looking at the majority of them as criminals. Most of them only commit the crime of crossing illegally looking for work. Subsequent crimes often result simply from their being criminals.
I have no problem with “fixing it at the source”, but the same folks who champion “undocumented workers” go ballistic if there is any effort to require employers to verify the citizenship or visa status of their workers.
I’m thinking the source is the demand for cheap services.
Or maybe there’s a problem between our legal system and our employment market.
We have these jobs, we have these people willing to do these jobs, it’s illegal for the people to be where the jobs are.
Greck: Economics is about supply and demand. You can cut off either the supply (of cheap labor) or the demand (for cheap labor) to change the situation. A guest worker program would likely be at least a bit more expensive than hiring illegals, so I’m not entirely sure that would solve the problem.
And I’m not even saying that we have some serious problem because of illegal immigrants (other than the obvioius terrorist issues). Hell, if I were a poor Mexican, I might sneek across the border, too. But that doesn’t change the fact that the act itself is illegal, and calling them “undocumented workers” is an attempt to obscure that fact.
What? No human being is illegal? Such gobbledygook!
I guess if a strange gentleman from Mexico took up residence in your back bedroom he would become an “undocumented guest” and you would be obligated to set out an extra plate for him at dinner. No?
Real men groan at such fuzzy-minded constructions.
Oh darn, guess I’m not a real man.
Well, I for one I’m thankful for that.
But it would acknowledge that these people are not criminals. Lets face it, we’re not talking about violent sociopaths here; call them wetbacks, dirty spics for all I care. Honest people who are looking for work and are willing to go to extremes to find it deserve better than to be labelled criminals and led down a spiraling path of criminality.
re: supply and demand. I don’t for one second believe that if mexicans stopped coming across to provide service that we’d all just be fine with rising costs. Can you honestly say you’d take consolation in the fact that we’re wetback free while paying through the nose for apples? Or am I forgetting something from econ 101 that’s important here?