Immigration

 

ICE agents shot and killed an American named Lorenzo Araujo in Houston a few days ago. I say “American” because that is what he was. He was not a citizen, and his residency papers were not in order, but he had live here for over thirty years, worked productively, created and built his own business, and raised three American sons. That makes him an American in my book, and, on the surface (which is all I can know), a pretty good one. The excuse for killing him was that he drove toward one of their agents after his vehicle was stopped. I have read that there is evidence on video contradicting that claim. Regardless, that act by itself would not justify firing on him if no one’s life was threatened. The right response to what agents claimed he did, would be for any agent who happened to be in front of the vehicle to get out of the way and then for agents to stop him and arrest him. An ordinary civilian who had to jump back from somebody pulling out toward him in a parking lot would be in trouble in most jurisdictions if he reacted by pulling out a pistol and shooting the driver dead. Employees of the government should be held to the same standard.

I understand that open borders are incompatible with a welfare state, and I surely understand that the American welfare state is not going anywhere. I think Trump’s administration was right to close the borders to illegal immigration. I do not oppose deporting illegal immigrants who are criminals or security risks or even some of those who are neither but arrived during the time of open borders during Biden’s administration. However, I believe illegal immigrants who have been in the country a good while and are settled, law abiding members of society should be left alone, especially those who have spouses or children who are citizens or permanent residents. They should not be eligible for naturalization, and surely should not vote, but they should be left alone. There are lots of good Americans among them.

Trump and Deportations

 

Some of what Trumpists have been saying about immigration is true. The number of illegal aliens in the country was much larger at the end of Biden’s administration than at its beginning. Unlimited immigration of poor people into a welfare state increases the burden on those being taxed to support that state. People in the Biden administration opened the southern border intentionally, probably at least partly because Democrat politicians have long term political incentives to increase the size of the government-dependent economic underclass. The open border made it easier for criminals, gangsters, and suspected terrorists to enter the country, and some of them did. Preventing almost all future illegal immigration is a good idea.

None of this justifies the things Trump’s people are doing. Officials should be required to get an order of deportation from a court before deporting a person. They should be required to use appropriate diligence in verifying that an apprehended person who they think has an existing order of deportation against him really does. They certainly should not be allowed to change a person’s status from legal to illegal alien because of his politics or opinions. Neither should they be allowed to ship even properly deported people directly to prisons in foreign countries. If they want to jail someone, they can charge him with a crime.

Beyond that, they should show some humanity. There are valid questions about what welfare and governmental services should be available to illegal aliens, but those are separate from the issue of mass deportations. The claim that illegal aliens are criminals by definition because they are illegally in the country is false. A crime is an unjustified actual or threatened act of physical violence against another person, the theft of property through robbery, extortion, or fraud, or the severe damage of property through vandalism. A criminal is someone who has committed a crime. Being in the country illegally is against the law but is not a crime and does not make an illegal alien a criminal, any more than breaking the speed limit laws makes most of the rest of us criminals. While they should not be voting or offered a path to citizenship, most otherwise law abiding illegal aliens who have been here a good while and have made a life for themselves should be left alone. Certainly those in that group with children or spouses who are citizens and those who have spent most of their lives here should be.

Immigration and the Pope

The pope’s visit to Mexico and his criticism of Trump brought more attention to his support of massive immigration from Latin America into the United States.  Various people have speculated as to why he cares – often attributing it to his generally  leftist political opinions.  While that should not be discounted,  there is another reason that I think is important.

People these days often forget that the  papacy is and for centuries has been a political as well as a religious office.  Historically popes have been active participants in geopolitics with the goal of preserving and extending the power and domain of their office and the  Catholic church.  For the last two hundred years since Waterloo, the world’s dominant political and economic power has been a mainly protestant nation with strong liberal and secularist  components and tendencies. There is no reason to believe this is anything other than undesirable to the Catholic church.

The facts make it plain that the chances of any Catholic nation supplanting the United States in that role are effectively nil.  Without that happening the next best thing from the viewpoint of the papacy  would be to make the United States more Catholic.  Since a majority of people in Latin America are Catholics, mass immigration to the United States from Latin America would serve that purpose.  That, I think, is a natural and simple at least partial explanation for the pope’s interest in such immigration. 

The Attacks in Paris and California

The attacks by Muslims in Paris and California have had strong effects  on politics and public opinion. Perhaps the most beneficial effect is that more people realize the absurdity of the claim that Islam is no different from any other present day  religion in terms of violent aggression toward nonbelievers  and are willing to say so and to question the desirability of admitting large numbers of lower class,  un-Westernized, fundamentalist Muslims into this country.   Liberal, civilized societies are better off without large, cohesive, anti-assimilationist   minorities of people who reject liberal and civilized values on principle.  It may be that enough Americans are starting to accept that fact to cause  changes in the policies and activities of the  government.

The worst effect of the attacks is the overreaction  to them, particularly among politicians. The actions of Muslim fanatics in this country are often brutal and terrible, but, except for the attacks on September 11, 2001, they are also statistically insignificant in relation to the totality of violent crimes or the routine risks of life.  It is often  unclear whether foreign Islamic groups or governments had anything to do with causing or organizing the attacks. Yet people are scared and jumpy, and some politicians are calling for an invasion of Syria and a third invasion of Iraq.

Besides the issue  of whether what happened in California is sufficient reason to go to war even if we could find some foreign enemy to pin it on, there are the practical questions of whether such a war would do much or anything to make such attacks less likely and of whether it would have beneficial or harmful geopolitical results for the United States.   The last such venture was a disaster. It seems to me we should not risk a repetition without better reasons than we have seen so far.