On Mass Deporations

       Mass deportations are foolish, for they do not fix the problem they purport to represent. Even if we accept the idea that illegal immigrants are a danger and an issue, the justification for deporting millions of them is as thin as tissue. Are they hurting the economy, stealing our jobs? Do you have any idea how much it would cost to toss them all out? We’d spend decades doing it, shouting and arguing about it the entire time, while over the southern border millions of new folk would continue to climb. If Congress and the last generation of political power would have done their job correctly, and decided yay or nay on if we wanted millions of new people entering the country or not, then we would not be in this situation today. But we are, and they’re to blame. The way I see it, either we can control the border or we cannot. Everything else is just a fanciful thought. If we may determine who comes in and out, spending our money and standing stout, then there is no need to shout about undesirables coming in: We have already decided to let them through. There are many reasons for this of course: For work, for goods, for the economy, for the refugees, because we are part of the human family. Tons and tons of folk every day want to come here, want to get away, because the countries where they are from are not good places to stay. There is violence, or hopelessness, or a hard limit to success. We should be proud of the opportunities we represent, here in this land of promise. 

If we cannot, or will not control the border, because we don’t want to pay the cost, then I fear that any attempt to deport millions of people will cause that dream to be lost. We deport criminals, and anyone here illegally is a criminal by definition alone. We already have the police, the DEA, the FBI, who on the American populace spy, and catch those who are violent, those who are thieves, those who trick, hurt, and deceive. Whether they are illegal immigrants or not has no bearing on their act. We already have a system in place. Adding ICE on top is just a disgrace, because by giving them two jobs, the border and interior immigration, when they can't even do one, we have already set them up for failure and blame, a scapegoat when the real shame is our administration and lawmakers, who can't make up their collective mind, and refuse to bite the bullet and reform immigration. An issue I have heard about literally my entire life, as the red and the blue both whine that it is somebody else's fault, and not theirs. I might believe them for a year or a decade, but not this many. Not for entire lifetimes of humankind, as children unknowingly brought here when they were five, who don’t know anything about the country their parents came from, go to school, graduate, grow up, have families, run businesses, and then get run outta town, because they are, by definition, ‘criminals’, never mind any actions they’ve ever taken, any choices they’ve ever made, and any good they’ve ever done. 

They aren't the people harming the economy. They are the ones expanding it: If they pick berries, then they also buy cars. If they build houses, they also buy food. The economy has very little to do with how much money we have, and everything to do with the flow of goods continuing, every person in this country both selling and buying. You want to catch violent criminals? Fine. Leave that job to the police. You want to control the border? Fine, leave that job to ICE. You want to deal with the millions of illegal immigrants already in the country who have been acting nice? You certainly don’t attack them for simply existing in the system you decided to put into place. Forty-five years ago, maybe mass deportations across the country were an answer, but there’s too many people now. It's too late. Illegal immigration is a real crisis, tens of thousands of people every day we are unprepared to handle, but illegal immigrants are a fake and manufactured crisis, as is evident by the fact that most of them stay out of trouble and haven’t been caught. 

So what would I do? Police the border strongly, accept the economic slowdown that represents, and only then can we decide what to do next. A general amnesty, for the millions here for twenty years, because they follow every reasonable law, pay taxes, and deserve representation, that original dream of the American nation. Then we can deport those newly arrived if we decide that is necessary, a few hundred thousand, and not the millions and millions we have at this time. If we want them to go back to where they came from, make them not so desperate to reach our shores, then we have to improve where they came from, and offer an alternative option. As long as it is better to live as an illegal underclass in the USA, instead of a forthright and legal civil participant in a foreign state, then as anyone may understand and relate to, they’ll chase a better life. Interference in other states is what we have always done, and if foreign adventurism comes at cost, at least the majority of the trouble is over there among their citizens, and not in here between ours. This isn’t a nice or reasonable thought, but it's the choice we’ve got. There are obviously tens of millions of people across the entire planet who look upon the United States as a beacon of a better life and a democratic hope. Why are we trying to disappoint them? It’s reform we need, not deportation. An actual solution, not a delusion which is a sickness of the nation. Sending ICE into the interior in order to catch a few thousand people is nothing but an expensive political stunt, a blunt instrument and a beast’s dull fangs, where we should be instead using a sharp pen and a human brain.