Immigrants (Know The Facts Before You Decide What You Think)

What are all these protests about? Why are immigrants complaining? Shouldn't they just get a job? If they're illegal, shouldn't they just go home?

It is important to remember in navigating this debate that individuals who are impoverished or persecuted do not have viable ways of entering this country legally and therefore have had to come in illegally in order to eventually get legal status and escape the atrocities they are experiencing elsewhere.

Further, I'd like to preface all of this with the suggestion that immigration reform is indeed needed but this is not a humanitarian way to do it.

H.R. 4437 is a bill before the senate which is seeking to make immigration laws more strict than ever in U.S. history.

Here's why the current protest by immigrants are necessary and why I support them:

1) Prohibit Aid to Illegal Immigrants

The bill includes provisions that the prison term applicable to an illegal immigrant, would also be applicable to anyone who "knowingly aids or assists" that immigrant "to reenter the United States". While these clauses may be intended only to target smugglers, as written it includes any charity, church or neighbor of an illegal alien, who aids the illegal alien to remain in the U.S., for example by providing food, clothing or shelter.

This means that as a counselor, which I am, I could not provide any help to someone needing food, clothing, or shelter without the threat of prison for at least 3 years! Further, either could anyone else, including a church. This is immoral and inhumane at it's very core. If I see a homeless child, needing a place to live, food, or shoes...I'm helping! Not turning them in so they can be returned to another country where they have just escaped similar conditions. Interesting that the majority of supporters of this bill are right wing republicans who are also Christians. Since when is NOT helping thy neighbor Christian? Even Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles has instructed priests to disobey any law that outlaws humanitarian assistance to illegal immigrants if this bill does become a law.

2) The bill includes measures that will infringe on the human rights of asylum seekers by stripping important due process protections, criminalizing status over which they may have no control, and dramatically limiting their access to essential services. It would also redefine undocumented illegal immigrants as felons, and punish anyone guilty of providing them assistance. It also would create several new mandatory minimum penalties for a variety of offenses, including some that would expose humanitarian workers, public schoolteachers, church workers, and others whose only object is to provide relief and aid to five-year mandatory minimum prison sentences.

3) Housing of illegals will be considered a felony and subject to no less than 3 years in prison

This would mean that if a family moved here from Mexico, or Bosnia, or Sudan, due to extreme poverty, hunger, genocide, or any other reason one might come to the richest nation in the world, and they could not find a place to live, anyone offering them a place to live would be considered a felon. This will result in homeless men and women and children who have come to this country to escape hunger and poverty, in the case of Mexican immigrants, or in some cases oppression, war, etc, in the case of many other immigrants as this bill effects all immigrants, not just Mexicans.


4) The bill also increases penalties for employing illegal aliens to $7,500 for first time offenses, $15,000 for second offenses, and $40,000 for all subsequent offenses

This means that if an individual coming from Mexico wanted to work in order to feed their families, in a nation with plenty of money to drive SUV's with gas prices per gallon above an average Mexican workers weekly pay at a U.S. owned plant in Mexico, employers would be fined. Immigrants won't be able to work for legitimate employers but instead will look to crime and jobs offered by illegitimate businesses instead. Further endangering their families, their children, and you and I. Children of illegal immigrants, not only would be homeless, without counseling or available social services, they would be hungry too; it would be considered a felony to give someone of this status food. Not very Christian...not even civilized! Further, what about the woman who escapes being a sex slave brought here illegally by Eastern European mafia...hides from her captors and eventually assimilates into society albeit still being an illegal immigrant. How does this individual get help? Who does she go to? Can't tell a priest, can't tell a counselor, or a humantarian aid worker. That is what amnesty is for, to protect people from inhumane treatment.


5) It is proposed that a 700 mile wall be developed...Beginning in 1994, the Clinton administration implemented Operation Gatekeeper, a strategy of “control through deterrence” that involved constructing fences and militarizing the parts of the southern border that were the most easily traversed. Instead of deterring migrants, their entry choices were shifted to treacherous terrain—the deserts and mountains. The number of entries and apprehensions were not at all decreased, and the number of deaths due to dehydration and sunstroke in the summer or freezing in the winter dramatically surged. In 1994, fewer than 30 migrants died along the border; by 1998 the number was 147, in 2001, 387 deaths were counted, and this past fiscal year 451 died.

People will continue to attempt to come to the U.S. due to the extreme contrast in quality of life. Even more people would die while trying to escape extreme poverty in a country adjacent to the U.S. which, I might add, the U.S. continues to profit from through cheap labor, and cheap land/resources for outsourcing companies and jobs and exportation of goods and services.

6) Sets the minimum sentence for fraudulent documents at 10 years, fines, or both, with tougher sentencing in cases of aiding drug trafficking and terrorism.

People attempting to provide for their families, work, eat, and be safe in the U.S. would be considered felons receiving larger sentences at a minimum of 10 years...larger than those U.S. citizens committing, rape and murder. Further, I'm glad to see escaping oppression or extreme poverty by forging a green card is still being considered not quite as severe as drug trafficking and terrorism.

7) The bill also seeks to return all illegal immigrants to Mexico or wherever they may have come from regardless of what they may have been suffering from.
What? That would mean that families would be split up, people would return after 5, 10, 15 years to places where they have no jobs, food, and shelter. Children born in the U.S. with parents considered illegal would have to choose between taking their children back to nothing or leaving them behind. These are parents who simply wanted to provide for their families, attracted by the extreme wealth of the richest and most powerful nation in the world. Others would be returned to situations endangering them of the very things that they origanally left in the first place, like torture, enslavement, war, genocide, ethnocide, and so on.

I agree that immigration reform is necessary...there are many ways to make changes to immigration laws that do not contribute to inhumane treatment of women, men, and children. Further, this law needs to account for the sociopolitical factors which have created this problem. We profit off of the very same countries we are pushing away. Not necessarily in a political fashion, but definitely from a corporate standpoint. We place our corporations in these countries, pay low wages, strip them of need for their own products and ask them to stay and suffer the consequences. Even further, we advertise through television, movies, and other media everything that is great about America, everything that they cannot have, and then expect them not to come looking for it. In fact, I could go on about these in detail but would be surprised if most people that read this even make it this far. Most people simply don't care, and somehow have based their opinions simply on watching the news about latinos singing the national anthem in Spanish, or carrying Mexican flags, or simply showing people marching with no real explanation of the proposed legislation itself. As white middle class Americans, we don't necessarily do our research and are likely to form opinions without doing much work to get the facts at all.

Don't forget your families were all illegal immigrants once!!! That is what made this country. I implore you to read about the issues, to find out the facts, to read about alternative proposals to immigration policies, but most of all, not to form any opinions without knowing what the consequences of those opinions could be.