It’s a grim task and there’s no thanks, because the people who should be glad they’re scooping desperate people out of the sea are too often the same ones attacking the people who think they should be shooting them - and both sides (not you) throwing rocks at the forces for either not shooting enough people or wanting to shoot people…
Think there's something missing in the above; but I don't really see many people accusing the Navy of wanting to shoot migrants, rather there is a reaction politicians trying to militarise the stopping of migrants.
[There's a separate issue of senior officers putting their names to poison pen letters]
I previously had a difficult discussion with an American regarding a complicated immigration situation involving a couple; one party had successfully entered the United States, the other was unsuccessful. My American contact, attempting to reunite this couple, was under the impression that [we] could easily bring the other party to Canada, assuming that Canadian immigration would "let in anyone", and from there likely manage to reunite the couple on one side of the border or the other. This was despite the fact that the situation had already attracted the attention of Homeland Security. It was a mutually frustrating conversation.
I think a lot of it depends on what you mean by "racism."
I'm not sure about England. But in America, there's so much racist thought and rhetoric baked into the status quo of the conversation that - while I'll accept that it's hypothetically possible to discuss border security without allowing racism into the conversation - I do not think it's practically possible.
But somehow we need to have the conversation. Our elected officials have to have conversations if they're going to do something about the misery at our southern border, and we as their constituents have to talk to each other and to them.
I would like to see 1. policies and procedures for a lot of legal immigration, 2. a generous asylum policy, and 3. billions of dollars of aid to and investments in Central America. It is frankly in our best interest to promote immigration to the US, given our rapidly aging population, and if we really want desperate people to stop crossing the border illegally, we need to help make the countries they come from better places to live.
Quite, same in the UK really - but our “misery at our southern border” is people drowning trying cross the med and the channel. The violence currently happening in the UK is the result of decades of racist scapegoating - when politicians have chosen to disinvest in public services and public housing and then claim the immigrants took it.
But somehow we need to have the conversation. Our elected officials have to have conversations if they're going to do something about the misery at our southern border, and we as their constituents have to talk to each other and to them.
The number of migrants unlawfully crossing the U.S. southern border has continued to drop markedly in July, nearing a threshold that would require officials to lift a partial ban on asylum claims enacted by President Biden, according to internal government data obtained by CBS News.
July is on track to see the fifth consecutive monthly drop in migrant apprehensions along the U.S.-Mexico border and the lowest level in illegal immigration there since the fall of 2020, during the Trump administration, the internal Department of Homeland Security figures show.
<snip>
Illegal border crossings — which were already falling before Mr. Biden's action — plunged further after the order took effect, reaching a three-year low in June.
The assumption that the U.S. southern border is "in crisis" is one of those things that everyone "just knows" regardless of the situation, like the way they "know" inflation is out of control. It doesn't matter how low immigration is. For those who "just know" that there is a crisis no facts on the ground can convince them.
In fact, Harris was never put in charge of the border or immigration policy. Nor was she involved in overseeing law-enforcement efforts or guiding the federal response to the crisis. Her mandate was much narrower: to focus on examining and improving the underlying conditions in the Northern Triangle of Central America — El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras — which has been racked by decades of poverty, war, chronic violence, and political instability. The strategy relied on allocating billions for economic programs and stimulating private-sector investment in the region in hopes that these programs would ultimately lead fewer migrants to make the dangerous journey north.
Why won't the government implement my perfectly reasonable suggestions that they have already implemented?
For those who "just know" that there is a crisis no facts on the ground can convince them.
Clever of you to put this in the plural. I don't know if the hosts will consider it a personal attack, but it seems unnecessarily rude to me.
I didn't say there was a crisis -- I said there was misery. A reduction in illegal border crossings just means we've managed to keep miserable people from entering the country - not much of a solution. The crackdown on asylum is cruel. Immigrants' rights groups are suing the administration for its latest decisions.
Why won't the government implement my perfectly reasonable suggestions that they have already implemented?
Thank you for the reminder of the money already spent, though again the rudeness is uncalled for. Do you think the money has been effective? Do you think it has been enough?
My unfashionable opinion is that making life more difficult for migrants, even to the extent that many die or have miserable lives in camps (as at the southern USA border, in the Med and in the English channel at present) could actually encourage migration in a perverse way.
Which is tough to explain, but I suspect it is something about the philosophies that the migrants have been brought up with (which is Christianity/Islam on the whole).
What I mean is that if circumstances make a journey to a better life difficult then surviving it becomes a test of faith rather than a disincentive to undertake it. You might then be completely aware of the difficulties that others have experienced but still believe that you've somehow got the touch of God to survive. Or perhaps even that you will survive and beat the odds because God is rewarding you.
I’d like to remind everyone on the thread of point 1 of the Epiphanies guidance:
… Posting style therefore needs to reflect this; we're looking for listening, sharing, thinking and giving room to those with lived experience – aiming for constructive dialogue rather than competitive debate.
@KoF, I don't know of any data supporting that opinion. I also haven't seen interviews with immigrants saying making the journey more difficult encouraged them. Can you offer any support for your theory?
The majority of the migrants I met referred to God when
Migratory Adventure as Moral Experience explaining their luck in avoiding prison or death but also when rationalizing their capability to support the agony of separation or the pain and anguish endured physically. On the one hand, they wanted to describe the ways in which they were fortunate: ‘I never fell into the hands of the police. It’s a
work of God! I cannot say that it’s because I know the road well. No, that is
God’s work! Because nobody has his luck’.
However, our results point out the limits of such information campaigns given that migrants are willing to take the risks as long as they perceive themselves to have been “blessed with spiritual protection” to succeed.
I thin’ the problem is that illegal border crossings are happening in the first place, so reducing their number is therefore very much a solution. If the people thus prevented from entering the country are miserable where they are then that’s their problem, not America’s (or Britain’s, or Greece’s, or any other country’s).
I thin’ the problem is that illegal border crossings are happening in the first place, so reducing their number is therefore very much a solution. If the people thus prevented from entering the country are miserable where they are then that’s their problem, not America’s (or Britain’s, or Greece’s, or any other country’s).
Apart from whether basic charity (not only Christian) should encourage every country to try to welcome the foreigner in need, America specifically has this engraved on the Statue of Liberty:
The New Colossus
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
And to descend from charity to thumping practicality, as long as there are miserable human beings just a border away from what they perceive as happiness, there will be border crossings. Human ingenuity and foolhardiness guarantees it, and nobody’s come up with an effective preventive yet—let alone a cost-friendly one.
It therefore makes practical sense as well as ethical sense to put real money and effort into helping fix misery elsewhere, especially nearby.
And of course law is mutable, what is really at issue is what the law and its application *should* be.
If I declared everyone leaving the country for more than 30 days lost citizenship and was not allowed to return, it wouldn’t magically become ethical just because I’d passed a law.
And to descend from charity to thumping practicality, as long as there are miserable human beings just a border away from what they perceive as happiness, there will be border crossings. Human ingenuity and foolhardiness guarantees it, and nobody’s come up with an effective preventive yet—let alone a cost-friendly one.
It therefore makes practical sense as well as ethical sense to put real money and effort into helping fix misery elsewhere, especially nearby.
Amen, amen, amen.
Especially when you’re the most wealthy and powerful nation on Earth, or among them.
Agree entirely. And we need the labor. It's in our own interest to admit immigrants, who skew younger than the existing American population, work hard, pay taxes, and commit fewer crimes than people born here. Our birth rate is falling rapidly - we need immigrants so we can have a gradual reduction in population rather than have it fall off a cliff.
The only people in the US who aren't immigrants or descended from immigrants who came here looking for a better life are the Native Americans and the Black people descended from enslaved people. The first people in my family to immigrate didn't get here till the 1870s, and the last one came in 1930 - it would be utter hypocrisy for me to want to shut the door in the faces of new immigrants.
I thin’ the problem is that illegal border crossings are happening in the first place, so reducing their number is therefore very much a solution. If the people thus prevented from entering the country are miserable where they are then that’s their problem, not America’s (or Britain’s, or Greece’s, or any other country’s).
The extent to which we and other countries took that view in the 1930s is however rather considered a stain on our national character.
And of course law is mutable, what is really at issue is what the law and its application *should* be.
If I declared everyone leaving the country for more than 30 days lost citizenship and was not allowed to return, it wouldn’t magically become ethical just because I’d passed a law.
And similarly, if I legislate that anyone who reaches a British embassy and request right to remain in the UK will immediately receive it - I will have enacted a border control process and massively reduced illegal immigration. However, I doubt this is what most people talking about wanting control of our borders and an end to illegal immigration actually want to happen. (And I am fairly sure it would “stop the boats” too.)
Desperate to escape Nazi persecution during World War II, Anne Frank’s family tried repeatedly to flee to the United States before going into hiding in 1942, according to research published July 2018. However, the combination of Nazi rule, World War II bombing and American bias against accepting Jewish refugees ensured they never made it far enough through the application process.
Comments
Think there's something missing in the above; but I don't really see many people accusing the Navy of wanting to shoot migrants, rather there is a reaction politicians trying to militarise the stopping of migrants.
[There's a separate issue of senior officers putting their names to poison pen letters]
I previously had a difficult discussion with an American regarding a complicated immigration situation involving a couple; one party had successfully entered the United States, the other was unsuccessful. My American contact, attempting to reunite this couple, was under the impression that [we] could easily bring the other party to Canada, assuming that Canadian immigration would "let in anyone", and from there likely manage to reunite the couple on one side of the border or the other. This was despite the fact that the situation had already attracted the attention of Homeland Security. It was a mutually frustrating conversation.
I'm not sure about England. But in America, there's so much racist thought and rhetoric baked into the status quo of the conversation that - while I'll accept that it's hypothetically possible to discuss border security without allowing racism into the conversation - I do not think it's practically possible.
I would like to see 1. policies and procedures for a lot of legal immigration, 2. a generous asylum policy, and 3. billions of dollars of aid to and investments in Central America. It is frankly in our best interest to promote immigration to the US, given our rapidly aging population, and if we really want desperate people to stop crossing the border illegally, we need to help make the countries they come from better places to live.
Do we?
The assumption that the U.S. southern border is "in crisis" is one of those things that everyone "just knows" regardless of the situation, like the way they "know" inflation is out of control. It doesn't matter how low immigration is. For those who "just know" that there is a crisis no facts on the ground can convince them.
How about something like this?
Why won't the government implement my perfectly reasonable suggestions that they have already implemented?
Clever of you to put this in the plural. I don't know if the hosts will consider it a personal attack, but it seems unnecessarily rude to me.
I didn't say there was a crisis -- I said there was misery. A reduction in illegal border crossings just means we've managed to keep miserable people from entering the country - not much of a solution. The crackdown on asylum is cruel. Immigrants' rights groups are suing the administration for its latest decisions.
Thank you for the reminder of the money already spent, though again the rudeness is uncalled for. Do you think the money has been effective? Do you think it has been enough?
Which is tough to explain, but I suspect it is something about the philosophies that the migrants have been brought up with (which is Christianity/Islam on the whole).
What I mean is that if circumstances make a journey to a better life difficult then surviving it becomes a test of faith rather than a disincentive to undertake it. You might then be completely aware of the difficulties that others have experienced but still believe that you've somehow got the touch of God to survive. Or perhaps even that you will survive and beat the odds because God is rewarding you.
Doublethink, Temporary Hosting
For example see this anthropology paper "The migratory adventure as moral experience" https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.12657/48483/9781317335481.pdf?sequence=1#page=149
"Spiritual practices predict migrant behaviour" https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-39587-4
I guess that depends on what you think the problem actually is.
I think the fundamental problem is that people are miserable. If they weren't, they'd stay put. What do you think the problem is?
Apart from whether basic charity (not only Christian) should encourage every country to try to welcome the foreigner in need, America specifically has this engraved on the Statue of Liberty:
https://www.nps.gov/stli/learn/historyculture/colossus.htm
It therefore makes practical sense as well as ethical sense to put real money and effort into helping fix misery elsewhere, especially nearby.
If I declared everyone leaving the country for more than 30 days lost citizenship and was not allowed to return, it wouldn’t magically become ethical just because I’d passed a law.
Amen, amen, amen.
Especially when you’re the most wealthy and powerful nation on Earth, or among them.
The only people in the US who aren't immigrants or descended from immigrants who came here looking for a better life are the Native Americans and the Black people descended from enslaved people. The first people in my family to immigrate didn't get here till the 1870s, and the last one came in 1930 - it would be utter hypocrisy for me to want to shut the door in the faces of new immigrants.
I don't know how realistic it is to think that these push factors can be eliminated in central and South America.
The extent to which we and other countries took that view in the 1930s is however rather considered a stain on our national character.
And similarly, if I legislate that anyone who reaches a British embassy and request right to remain in the UK will immediately receive it - I will have enacted a border control process and massively reduced illegal immigration. However, I doubt this is what most people talking about wanting control of our borders and an end to illegal immigration actually want to happen. (And I am fairly sure it would “stop the boats” too.)
https://www.history.com/news/anne-frank-family-immigration-america-holocaust
As Uganda has done to welcome refugees from South Sudan, and as America did to welcome those from Europe who wanted to build a new life?
Doesn’t this depend upon whether there is sufficient land, and a need for more people in the host country?