The worst argument against deporting criminal aliens
The worst argument against deporting criminal aliens
May 8, 2017, 12:36 PM
http://cdn.washingtonexaminer.biz/ca...6248224775.jpg
There has been a big fight going on recently in Los Angeles over the L.A. Justice Fund, a $10 million fund created to pay for representation for immigrants facing deportation. Unlike in criminal court, there is no right to representation in immigration proceedings, but it can be helpful if you're facing deportation.
The bone of contention, surprisingly, is that the fund's standing rules forbid its use to pay for representation for immigrants convicted of violent crimes, simply so that there are more resources for more deserving cases. Believe it or not, some people think that's unjust — and even that " — and even that "no one should be deported — not even those convicted of violent crimes."
Of course, common sense is crazy-talk for sufficiently motivated activists. Democrats in California, not to mention President Obama, support the deportation of criminals, and in Obama's case he made criminals an enforcement priority. Even so, some of the arguments currently being made against deporting criminal aliens, outlined over the weekend in a Los Angeles Times report, are even flimsier than you'd think:
For activists like Pablo Alvarado, executive director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, deportation even of convicted criminals ends up sowing chaos in places with weaker criminal justice systems such as Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. And that, he said, causes more people there, including victims of crime, to flee those countries.
"I've been in El Salvador and in Honduras when the planes land with deportees," Alvarado said. "It's becoming the penal colony of the United States where criminal dumping is acceptable."
It's hard even to know where to start on this one. First of all, the idea of any sort of "colony," including a "penal colony," is to send your own citizens to a foreign country to live there and establish a presence, and usually (as the word "colony" is typically used) to claim the land and rule there. This is not exactly what happens when hardened criminals are expelled and sent back to their own country.
Or any other foreigner, for that matter. When we declare Russian diplomats to be personae non gratae, we aren't taking a tiny step toward colonizing Russia.
But the more important fallacy — one of the reasons we ended up with Donald Trump as president — is the argument that Americans' safety should be jeopardized for the sake of easing the burden on foreign countries' justice systems. This is not why we elect or consent to a government. It might be an argument for foreign aid, it's not an argument for keeping criminals illegally roaming within the U.S. when there's an easy way to prevent it.
The whole purpose of having a national or state goverment is to serve the common good of the nation or state. Its first obligation is always to its citizens, and the unnecessary importation of proven killers or even just robbers or burglars doesn't really serve that end. To the extent that it does assist foreign countries or foreign nationals (through aid, alliance in war, or in any other matter), a government ideally does so in order to promote its own citizens' collective interests in world peace, stability, and the free flow of commerce.
Besides, if you gave them a choice, I suspect that 99 percent of Americans would say they'd rather have the crime victims of Honduras come to live in the U.S. than its criminals. The other one percent would be liars.
What's funny is that the actual illegal immigrants the Times interviewed for its piece think that the activists are completely nuts, and don't want their native countries' crime problems to follow them here.
This should be the cause of hope, that new immigrants, including those without legal status, are bringing some common sense with them that at least a few liberals lack.
But as long as activists keep standing up for special rights for criminals, it only delays the day when we'll have a political environment necessary to allow for a much-needed deal on immigration reform.
Trump won his election on the back of true stories about seven-times-convicted illegal immigrants murdering someone in the U.S. after being released from a sanctuary city's jail. If you don't want another President Trump in the future, then you should support reasonable policies that prevent such things from happening, instead of trying to make his point of view look like the sane one.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/th...rticle/2622423
