Ah, the immigration ban. It’s in its second iteration, just as bad as the first. Conceptually, it’s the worst piece of legislation on the subject since perhaps the blanket banning of people from several Asian countries in the Immigration Act of 1917. What’s that, you say? We’ve been here before? Well, yes, and that’s why I’m writing this blog. For god sakes, we’ve done this before. Whether you agree or disagree with immigration reform, in this way or in any other way, the banning of immigrants for specific countries rather than based on who those people actually are has to make you feel queasy.
Given that no country in the history of the world has been able to successfully handle immigration in the same way that it handles its own people–some treat immigrants better and most treat them worse–I think it’s incredibly important to consider founding an international organization that governs how any one country can act on immigrants in their country. You can’t just kick them out. You can’t just treat them as a “them,” as if they’re all the same. You can’t just send them back to Mexico and let Mexico deal with it.
America has had a great system. In fact, our immigration policies are were so inclusive and we provided barely any other guarantees than freedom. We didn’t offer free money or a job or anything like that. In fact, we said people could come here with nothing but their hopes and their dreams and they could have the freedom to figure out life for themselves. Without any money or plan at all, so many people came in. Granted, our population increased, and we’re one of the largest countries in the world, but I doubt that was our motive. People came here seeking freedom, and they encouraged others to come here and partake in it.
NOW, we’ve proven that 100 years later, there’s someone in office that can’t be trusted to divvy up that freedom equally. How one does that is a mystery to me since freedom doesn’t seem like a limited resource. Therefore, I think it’s time we consider taking that power away from the government of any one country.
VERY IMPORTANT: Crossing state lines makes an infraction a federal crime but crossing national lines doesn’t make an infraction an international crime? WHY?!
Now, I’m sure that our government doesn’t necessarily want that, but given its ability to control immigration standards worldwide via its mostly insurmountable leverage compared to other members of international governing bodies, I think it’s we can get our government sign onto at least a study of such a body that would control how individual countries treat immigrants when those immigrants cross national borders.
We’d be able to influence countries like Turkey who have so many immigrants from Syria, support countries like Sweden who have done a very good job, and certainly get other countries to support what we think immigration policy should look like. It’ll just be another organization in which politics is still the name of the game, but in this organization, over time, we’ll be able to develop a standard.
We can’t just deport immigrants back to Mexico or Saudi Arabia or anywhere else and not care at all whether those people are taken care of.
There need to be standards to ensure ICE isn’t just dropping people off at Mexican bus stations. We need to ensure that they can get back home or resettle or start a brand new life in a country they’ve never known, which is the case with so many people.
If our government is going to be ruthlessly kicking them out, then I’m pretty sure our government also doesn’t care what their life is like in the country to which they’re deported and whether the government there can help them or even wants them to be free. We deported a woman to Saudi Arabia! A woman! The Saudi Arabian government doesn’t care at all about women, and we, the United States of America, deported a doctor there. Impressive.
We’ve seen it time and time again. Whence you deport, you no longer care about that person. They’re gone so whatever. Well, it’s not ‘whatever.’ We should care. We’re the ones uprooting them. I know they might be here illegally (not always!), but we should be the bigger person. We should make sure they’re okay. Clearly, some countries wouldn’t treat deportees the way we usually treat immigrants coming here. Some countries wouldn’t treat them the way we would want to be treated. Since we have no jurisdiction over that other country and there’s no international jurisdiction governed by an international body, they just get dumped there, under a new system of laws and with likely much worse treatment.
Frankly, we should be researching this more and determining whether any one country has the right to send people across national lines unchecked by an organization that governs that jurisdiction. I think the national government would have to recuse itself in that case. I don’t see how they could be unbiased.
We all have the power to change the way we treat immigrants, whether they’re geniuses, farmers, criminal, DREAMers, or illegal immigrants of all kinds.
This situation involves a minimum of two countries (sometimes several), and it’s clear that most countries involved in immigration are playing political games with those people’s lives.
I just don’t think our government can be trusted with this, and I just don’t think we have the right to send them across national lines without asking an international body how we’re allowed to do it.