One of the most frustrating current issues is the Immigration Crisis. Because of the complexity and the real-life, immediate consequences of both immigration itself and the current US policy on immigration, it feels that there is is no good answer to the the problem. I talk with people on both sides of the issue and it’s clear that both sides have good faith reasons for what they do believe for the most part. That makes it even harder, in my opinion. This isn’t one of those posts where I come out with some big answer that will solve everything, this is more a post about some of the discussions I’ve had recently.

A person is not truly free unless they have the right to freedom of movement, and I would say, freedom of association. These are two of the biggest issues at play when discussing immigration. Freedom of movement in full does mean freedom of movement between one country and another, not just movement within one country. Freedom of association includes both personal and business associations. If I find a community willing to sell or rent a home of me and someone to employ me or customers that would purchase goods and services from my business, then it shouldn’t matter my country of origin. I’m freely and voluntarily associating In a location of my choosing.

I believe that we need immigration to sustain our rapidly aging workforce. Functionally, with the technology of today where it’s incredibly inexpensive to communicate internationally, pretending that immigration isn’t going to happen is foolish. We are already so globally interconnected and have had such robust immigration in the past that personal and professional relationships internationally permeate everyone’s life on a daily basis.

How a society treats it’s most vulnerable members is how a society should be judged. By that mark, we have much work to do. If we deport without due process, separate families, and continue to act like immigrants are less than human, we have failed.

I know this is where you’re going to tell me that it’s not President Trump’s fault, these policies were started 3-4 Presidential Administrations earlier. You’re right. It’s a travesty that things are just now coming to a head if it’s been going on this long. Where were the whistleblowers 15 years ago? I purchased my first digital camera 11 years ago, and if as a college student at the time, a digital camera was affordable enough for me, then there’s just no way ICE Agents, Immigration Attorneys and Judges and social workers had no way of documenting and bringing light into this darkness long ago.

In the last 3 weeks, there were two very large ICE raids here in Ohio. One was at a lawn and garden / landscaping business where 114 were arrested and the othe was at a meat processing plant where 100 were arrested. In both stories, the individuals were detained at their places of employment and there were allegations of using forged employment documents. Some of the news articles I read used the allegation of identity fraud, but in my mind, identity fraud actually means that there’s another individual who’s credit is being used, or who’s social security number is being used for employment / financial / identification purposes and from following both of these stories, noone’s come forward saying that they were harmed by any of these individuals. Also, so far, at least, there’s been no reports of any of these arrested individuals attacking, robbing, raping or in any other way harming their communities.

If this continues to be true, and no stories come out, then I would have to question why this all happened to begin with. If we do find out that certain of these individuals did commit violence against other members of their communities, then I think I would advocate having the perpetrator serve the same restitution regardless of their immigration or citizenship status. I think when the logical thought process follows all the way to completion, we are still looking at, on the individual level, did this person cause harm or are they acting peacefully

If you simultaneously argue that 1) Other countries only send their murderers and rapists and that 2) Immigrants are taking my job prospects, then I have a question for you.... What exactly is it that you do for a living?

https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/06/us/ice-undocumented-immigrants-arrests-garden-ohio/index.html

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2018/06/20/ice-ohio-arrests-100-meat-packing-plants/717479002/