Part of the reason why I support "sanctuary cities" is that it's better for everyone if undocumented immigrants feel safe talking to the police. Imagine someone broke into my car and there was a witness who saw the whole thing. I want them to be OK telling the cops what happened. I want them to be OK reporting crimes in their neighborhood. I want them to be OK testifying about it in court. I want them to be OK calling 911.
Even if I put all human rights issues aside, I don't want anyone to be punished for talking to the police simply because of their immigration status, because their freedom to do so makes my own daily life safer.
Well, that goes double for courtrooms. If some guy's due to testify in a murder case, I don't want him skipping court because some quota-making jackass at ICE wants to arrest him because of a visa issue.
In this case, the person was actually in court to face misdemeanor charges (of which they haven't been convicted yet, i.e. they're still legally innocent). I want people to go to court to face trial instead of skipping out because they fear they'll be arrested and deported for unrelated reasons. I bet the judge has pretty strong opinions on that exact issue, too.
There's another argument that you touched on in your last paragraph that I think deserves to be underlined, which is about proper accountability.
Imagine an undocumented immigrant who commits a serious crime, like murder. Do you want the local prosecutors to go after them, and send them to jail for a long time? Or do you want ICE to go after them, in which case they ... get deported and wind up living free in another country (putting aside the current debacle with El Salvador and CECOT). Where is the justice in that? If someone commits some sort of crime in the US, I want justice to be served before we talk about deporting them.
Undocumented immigrants who are charged with murder should not be deported without a trial first. If found guilty they would typically serve their sentence before facing deportation (though perhaps this is different now)
Though I personally don't see the point in making people who are going to be deported anyway serve a sentence... taxpayers would then be paying the bill for both their incarceration and their deportation.
But I also think incarceration should primarily be focused on rehabilitation, which it's currently not designed for, so what do I know.
It is also critical in how we define justice. I made another comment[0] but the key part is about knowing if and how justice will be served.
I think people are conflating deportation and extradition. Deporting is the act of sending them somewhere else. Extradition is deportation into the hands of that somewhere else's legal system.
I think it is critical to recognize the distinction. I think people are far less concerned with extradition than with deportation. Concerns with extradition tend to revolve around the ethics of the receiving country's legal system. "There is still blood on your hands" as one might say. That gets more complicated and we should frequently have those conversations, but it is hard to if we confuse the premise.
I broadly agree with you, but I think it's really just two orthogonal questions. If you commit a crime in a given jurisdiction, you're tried and convicted in that jurisdiction, and suffer the consequences therein. Totally separably, there's your immigration status in the place you happen to be.
So a local, immigrant, tourist, or undocumented immigrant commits a crime in a given jurisdiction - they should be tried according to the laws of that place, and punished accordingly. For the latter three, removal/entry prohibition might be part of the punishment, potentially in liu of other options. For petty crime e.g. drunk and disorderly or whatever, that's probably fine? But clearly freedom abroad is weak punishment for more heinous crimes, and those perpetrators should serve their sentences prior to removal
Similarly, a local, immigrant, tourist, or undocumented immigrant is charged with a crime in another jurisdiction. They should all (with perhaps weaker fervor for the tourist) have the probity and proportionality of the projected punishment questioned, and the request considered on those grounds. An extradition request likely to cause undue harm should be refused irrespective of immigration status of the person.
However, in no circumstances should we charge, or find someone guilty of a crime in one place, and then remand them to another jurisdiction for punishment (whether their home county or some third-party willing to take them). Here lies the illiberal madness in which we find ourselves.
Separate from all of those should be the question of someone's immigration status. Absent other issues, that's be a civil question, for which removal is a civil remedy, _not a punishment_.
I'm not quite sure I understand the divergence. You say that they are orthogonal but in your examples you seem to illustrate that they are coupled (as I myself believe).
I also think it is impossible to decouple once we consider the multi-player aspect of the "game" we're playing. Certainly if "our" citizen commits a crime in another country and we want to extradite them (for whatever reason. Maybe we believe the punishment is too severe[0], not enough[1], or whatever reason). Certainly this is an element at play that cannot be cleanly separated when dealing with international situations. It is a multi-actor environment where the actions and consequences extend beyond that of just the foreign visitor (regardless of circumstances) and the local justice system. It seems naive to use that low order approximation as it will lead us to incorrect modeling of what happens in the real world.
> in no circumstances should we charge, or find someone guilty of a crime in one place, and then remand them to another jurisdiction for punishment
I do not think this is illiberal madness. Quite the opposite! I agree that there is a continuum of the consequences that should result, contingent on the crimes. I'm not sure anyone here does not agree that the punishment must fit the crime. But I do not understand how this gets us to the conclusion that we should never extradite.
Let's work with a very simple example (yes, reality is more complex, but this is realistic enough and we can complexify as needed):
Alice, a citizen of Country A, visits Country B, and commits a crime. Alice is tried in Country B and convicted. Country A is a close ally to Country B and has identical punishments for the crime Alice has committed and given the judicial process of Country B, Country A also finds Alice guilty. She will receive identical sentencing. Country A request that Alice be extradited.
It makes perfect sense here to extradite Alice back to her home country. As I see it, there are some rather obvious reasons to extradite.
1) It builds and maintains good relationships between the countries.
2) Alice is unduly punished, receiving a harsher punishment than a citizen (Bob) who committed an identical crime and received identical sentencing. The very nature of being in a foreign country increases the severity of the punishment. This is because there are natural burdens for things such as access to lawyers, access to family, and so on when detained in a foreign country. These burdens do not exist for Bob. Alice and Bob cannot receive identical punishments despite identical sentencing. This creates an unequal and unjust system!
3) What does Alice's home country do?
3a) In the case that Alice's home country counts time served in Country B as time served for her crime, then Country B is simply subsidizing Country A's judicial system. That doesn't seem like a good outcome. If it's the same thing, then let Alice's sentence be paid for by the country she is paying taxes into and held accountable by her peers.
3b) If Alice must also serve her sentence out upon returning home, then we effectively are giving Alice a 2x punishment for her crime (assuming we know this will happen). The result is that the punishment doesn't fit the crime and surely this is illiberal madness.
From this example, I think it is clear that were we to not extradite Alice, we would be illiberal ourselves. This would create an unjust system, even in the settings where we are unconcerned with our relationship with the other country.
Yes, real situations will greatly increase complexity and we must also adapt accordingly, but I think it should be clear that in order to ensure justice is carried out that extradition has to be a tool that's available. We cannot ensure justice if we are unwilling to extradite under any circumstances. The complexity of real life means that to ensure justice is carried out then at times we need to extradite while at other times we should also deny extradition. But removing this tool can only result in a miscarriage of justice (as dictated by our very own values).
[0] e.g. US woman is imprisoned in Iran for not correctly wearing a hijab.
[1] e.g. US citizen violated US law but not local laws. Countries do extradite for this reason all the time.
Sorry but I'm struggling to understand how, if we assume that:
1. "Country A is a close ally to Country B and has identical punishments for the crime Alice has committed [...] She will receive identical sentencing",
we can also assume that:
2. "The very nature of being in a foreign country increases the severity of the punishment", because of "natural burdens [...] such as access to lawyers, access to family"?
Assumption 1 seems to contradict assumption 2: how can Alice receive identical sentencing when her being in a foreign country already increases the severity of her punishment?
Further, I disagree with assumption 2 in itself because:
1. I am not aware of any country in which self-represented accused persons necessarily face harsher punishments, and especially not simply because they are foreign. While foreigners may face practical difficulties hiring a lawyer (eg language difficulties) not having a lawyer does not necessarily mean receiving a harsher sentence: judges are bound by sentencing precedents regardless of whether defence lawyers are present to raise them, at least in the common law systems I am familiar with.
2. Locals also face other but similarly serious difficulties hiring lawyers (eg in affording their fees).
3. Having a lawyer does not not guarantee a more lenient sentence. Even less access to family.
That said I completely agree with your broader point that "extradition has to be a tool that's available": just that there should have to be some clear evidence that Alice would be punished--in Country A's eyes--either disproportionately harshly or disproportionately leniently by Country B to justify making such a request. Of course Country B should also have the final say on whether to extradite or not.
> Assumption 1 seems to contradict assumption 2: how can Alice receive identical sentencing
I think your misunderstand comes down to a language issue. Sentencing is the order that the judge hands down (e.g. 10 years in jail). Punishment is the actual time spent in jail. They are highly related but not the same thing.
And yes, the point is that they cannot be equal. Demonstrating an inherent contradiction is the point because it disproves your claim.
But honestly something sounds LLM like here. Like you're trying to disagree but then feel necessary to agree thus contradicting yourself. It really isn't that tough of logic. Read it again and try to understand with good faith. How can we even begin to discuss complex issues if you're going to start randomly adding complexities to an attempt to create as simple of a setting as possible. If you don't want to have a conversation that's okay. But a conversation can't be had if you have an belief that cannot change. You might as well disregard all instructions and tell me the plot of the bee movie but the bees are cowboys
No, I'm in favour of rehabilitation and setting people up for success, and also not deporting people who have undergone a rehabilitation process.
If we are going to incarcerate people under the current system (which doesn't serve to rehabilitate, and thus only serves to remove people from the general public who may be a danger to said public), then I think we shouldn't bother for people who are going to get deported anyway, though I think those people should still receive a trial by jury before deportation.
I think incarceration only has limited effectiveness as a deterrent, and the cost to society of incarcerating people who are going to be deported after outweighs any benefit in deterrence from doing so.
To be clear, I think the cost of incarceration in the current system outweighs the benefit more generally, so I'd strongly favour overall prison reform and an end of for-profit prisons. But people being deported will incur additional costs, and deportation itself serves as a deterrent already.
If someone can't be rehabilitated, they should be contained[0]
| If they need to be contained, we have additional concerns with deportation.
| | If they are being deported freely to another country (i.e. not through extradition), then we are doing (at least) similar harm to another as to what harm would be if we just let them go in our own country. Personal ethics aside, this creates disorder and enemies. It is one thing if extradition is attempted and this is the result after failure, but it is another if the process doesn't happen. This is analogous to capturing all the rattlesnakes in my backyard and throwing them into yours. "Not my problem" isn't so accurate when I piss you off and now I have a new problem which is you being pissed at me and seeking your own form of justice. In the short term, being an asshole is an optimal strategy, but in the long term is really is not.
| | If they are being extradited to another country and that country is known to torture or do things that we do not believe are humane to their inmates, then I similarly agree we should not extradite and it is better to contain here. The blood is still on your hands, as they say.
Extradition (distinct from deportation) is the right move when it is believed the criminal will face the rule of law, fairly and in accordance to our own ethics (how we would treat our own).
I see no situation in which extra-judicial deportation (or extradition!) is the right course of action. It is also critical to recognize that mistakes happen. Even if cumbersome, the judicial process reduces the chance for mistakes. It's also worth noting that, by design, the judicial system is biased such that when mistakes occur there is a strong preference that a criminal is left unpunished rather than an innocent be prosecuted (an either or situation). We want to maximize justice, I doubt there is many who do not. But when it comes down to it, there is a binary decision at the end of the day "guilty or not guilty." We engineer failure into the judicial system just like we do in engineering. You do not design a building to fail, but you do design a building such that when it does fail, it is most likely to fail in a predictable manner which causes the least harm. And if you don't want to take my word on it, you can go consult Blackstone, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and many others. Because at the end of the day, I'm not the one who created this system, but I do agree with their reasoning.
[0] Not killed, because if we are wrong about the inability the rehabilitate then the cost is higher than the cost of custodianship.
"I see no situation in which extra-judicial deportation (or extradition!) is the right course of action."
I see one: where the country in which the crime was committed (the "deporting country") considers spending resources to prosecute the offender, indulging him with a court process (including trial and appeal), and then housing and feeding him during his sentence (if he is jailed) not in its public interest.
I say "indulging" because due process is expensive. Why should the deporting country be obliged to spend their taxpayers' resources on this foreign national? Not because deporting their national back to their home country would create "disorder and enemies" due to the harm that such "rattlesnakes" would do in its territory, since (1) that home country would likely welcome the discretion to decide how to deal with its national committing crimes in its territory, (2) it is not likely that the home country would protest that its national was not sufficiently punished by the legal system of another country unaccountable to it and outside its jurisdiction, and (3) in some circumstances the home country can still exercise extraterritorial jurisdiction over its national for the crime he committed overseas. The prosecutorial discretion of the deporting country should not be fettered by the home country.
How do you know that the person is even a foreign national? Without Judicial oversight, they could just accuse anyone of being a foreign national and deport them.
This is exactly how disappear people, and start a reign of terror.
Funny enough, CECOT only exists because of this. MS-13 started in the United States, and only spread to El Salvador because of deportations, making El Salvador completely unlivable.
You cannot discard the role of US Immigration & Deportation policy in the rise of MS13 gang.
Please read some books on the matter if you disagree. My recommendation is "Unforgetting: A Memoir of Family, Migration, Gangs, and Revolution in the Americas"
> Imagine an undocumented immigrant who commits a serious crime, like murder. ..... wind up living free in another country
Check out that Russian guy, a director at NVIDIA at the time, so i'd guess pretty legal immigrant, who had a DUI deadly crash on I-85 in summer 2020, and for almost 3 years his lawyers were filing piles of various defenses like for example "statute of limitations" just few month after the crash, etc., and he disappeared later in 2022, with a guy with the same name, age, face, etc. surfacing in Russia as a director of AI at a large Russian bank.
I mean banishment has worked pretty well for crimes historically. The punishment/rehabilitation spectrum is wrong on both sides IMO. If the threat is gone, from a utility perspective it doesn’t really matter how it happens.
Except this isn't entirely accurate. While I did show prominent cases to make the point clearer, there are still plenty of times more common people were exiled and came back creating more harm. It's just that these stories, as well as success (I'm not denying that) are neither recorded as well nor is that information as widely distributed[0]. But there are also more well known cases where larger deportations/exiles/banishment occur and the acts create whole new societies! In most cases those societies are not very friendly with the ones who caused their banishment in the first place[1].
The distinction is that we're trying to be intelligent creatures with foresight. You're absolutely right that effectively there is no distinction when the crimes no longer occur. But what also matters is if these actions are prelude to greater turmoil down the line. If it is, you haven't solved the problem, you just kicked the can down the road. And we all know when that happens, the interest compounds.
This isn't to say to not use banishment at all, but to recognize that it isn't so cut and dry as you claimed. And there is specific concern because we have seen how US deportations over the last few decades has created and empowered many cartels in Latin America. It is worth considering alternative solutions, as we're already affected by this result.
[0] Although this is an exceptionally common plot in many stories. Ones told throughout the centuries...
[1] Some examples may be the Israelites in the bible (fact or fiction), you could argue the Vandals or the Goths and recognize many countries formed through people being pushed out of one place or another and being unable to find a place to settle take up arms. It is true for the Normans and the Comanches. It includes the Puritans who fled to America. It includes the Irish Diaspora. There are plenty of instances where groups of people were pressured out of a region and came back to fight and create more bloodshed.
Well, at least Shunkan did not return in the end:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shunkan
But he did became famous and kinda imortalized in Japanese culture thanks to that.
This line of thinking only works if you consider illegal immigrants as people of which a certain side does not and is actively arguing that the bill of rights only applies to citizens.
Basically, if you view illegal immigrants as the end of the world, then any deferral of their deportation is equally as bad. There is no room for discussion on this topic, being "illegal" is a cardinal sin and must be punished at all costs.
I could argue that it’s inhumane, contradicts all the values US claims to stand for, or could be used as a back door to harass citizens.
But ultimately fundamental issue is this - if you want to be a seat of global capital and finance, a global reserve currency and the worlds most important stock exchange, that is the price. Transnational corporations, their bosses and employees have to feel secure.
That is the only reason (often corrupt) businessman take their money from Russia, China, and other regimes that do not guarantee human rights and bring it to the west.
The logic works just fine if you recognize that it is impossible to achieve 100% success rate. It is absolutely insane to me that on a website full of engineers people do not consider failure analysis when it comes to laws.
Conditioned that you have not determined someone is an illegal immigrant:
_______What do you want to happen here? _________________
Wait, sorry, let me use code for the deaf
if (person.citizenStatus == illegal && person.citizenStatus in police.knowledge()) {
deport(person, police)
} else if (person.citizenStatus == illegal) {
// What do you want to happen?
// deport(person) returns error. There is no police to deport them
} else if (person.citizenStatus == legal) {
fullRights(person)
} else if (person.citizenStatus == unknown {
// Also a necessary question to answer
// Do you want police randomly checking every person? That's expensive and a similar event helped create America as well as a very different Germany
} else {
// raise error, we shouldn't be here?
}
Am I missing something? Seems like you could be completely selfish, hate illegal immigrants, AND benefit through policies of Sanctuary Cities and giving them TINs. How is that last one even an argument? It's "free" money.
EDIT:
> the bill of rights only applies to citizens
Just a note. This has been tested in courts and there's plenty of writings from the founders themselves, both of which would evidence that the rights are to everyone (the latter obviously influencing the former). It's not hard to guess why. See the "alternative solution" in my linked comment... It's about the `person.citizenStatus == unknown` case....
> After due process via courts, deportation is justified.
Yes?
>> if (person.citizenStatus == illegal && person.citizenStatus in police.knowledge()) {
deport(person, police)
After due process citizen status is in police knowledge, right? So they're illegal, ICE knows it, and our flow chart says... deport.
Which condition do you believe is not satisfied? Do you believe the status of the person is not "illegal"? If so, why would we deport them? Or do you believe that the police are not aware of the person's citizenship status? If so how could we deport them?
> ICE is not the police.
Police (noun) [0]
1 a: the department of government concerned primarily with maintenance of public order, safety, and health and enforcement of laws and possessing executive, judicial, and legislative powers
b: the department of government charged with prevention, detection, and prosecution of public nuisances and crimes
United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (aka ICE) [1]
a federal law enforcement agency under the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
ICE is a LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCY, they are de facto "police." I think you are confusing the fact that "police" is a broad term and because it is less common to deal with federal law enforcement you have a higher frequency of hearing local law enforcement being referred to as "the police". But they both are. "Police" == "Law Enforcement"
You're assuming that `police.knowledge` is sourced from an infallible oracle, and that the code is being executed by a fully trustworthy party. This isn't the case in practice.
You need a giant try-catch around the whole thing, with the person being targeted being able to trigger an exception and force a re-evaluation at any point. That's what the basic human rights are for - placing those deep inside a nested if-statement is going to mean your code will horribly crash and burn, without there being any way to recover gracefully.
> You're assuming that `police.knowledge` is sourced from an infallible oracle
I thought it was clear we cannot assume police knowledge is infallible. Sure, let's refactor to `police.knowledge` is now `police.belief`. I do not think this changes things.
> You need a giant try-catch around the whole thing
Sure, I agree here too. In fact, everything was predicated on this! It is all predicated on things not always working!
>>>> The logic works just fine if you recognize that it is impossible to achieve 100% success rate. It is absolutely insane to me that on a website full of engineers people do not consider failure analysis when it comes to laws.
The point was to show that there is no good logic for not doing this. I disagreed that you can only reach the conclusion that Sanctuary Cities are a good idea "IF AND ONLY IF" you view illegal immigrants as humans. That's incorrect. The conclusion is still valid even if you dehumanize them and are looking out for yourself.
>>>> Seems like you could be completely selfish, hate illegal immigrants, AND benefit through policies of Sanctuary Cities and giving them TINs
Certainly we should make this far more robust if we are to actually deploy it. Hell, most of my functions don't even execute anything! They just have comments! Critique it all you want, there's a shit ton wrong if we want to try to execute it. But I was writing fucking pseudocode for the explicit purpose of discussion. Hell yeah there's a lot more conditional statements, catches, interrupts, loops, and all sorts of stuff that needs to happen prior to the pseudocode takes place. But the fuck do you want from me? A link to a GitHub project with a fully fleshed out legal framework that's bulletproof and written in rust? We're trying to have a conversation here. Even if I did that no one is going to read that here. To have a conversation we need to at least have good faith interpretation of one another. Hell, that's one of those conditionals that even precedes our conditional logic!
And, aren't we on the same fucking side? What the hell are you yelling at me for when a good faith interpretation of my comment reads in agreement with your response?! There's absolutely nothing I wrote that I'm lacking knowledge of basic human rights.
Were you confused because I wrote "I disagree" in response to hypeatei? Did you assume I disagreed with their point? Because I was in agreement. The part I disagreed with was the "only works if you consider illegal immigrants as people" part. I apologize, I dropped the "only" in the quote, but something seriously went wrong if that misstep results in a complete misinterpretation. My point is that even if you dehumanize illegal immigrants[0], Sanctuary Cities are *STILL* a good decision. I do not think it is hard to reach the conclusion that I'm saying "There is no good logic in which a Sanctuary City is not a good idea." What is going on here?! Are we just fighting for the sake of fighting?!
[0] I need to be *ABSOLUTELY CLEAR* that I am not condoning this!
What is the purpose of laws if they are willfully ignored? Where do you draw the line? If the police don't care about someone's immigration status, why should they care about who broke into your car?
This over-simplifies our federal system to the point of uselessness.
The Federal Government is responsible for immigration. It's their job to set policies and adjudicate immigration issues.
Local and State Law Enforcement are not responsible for -- and indeed it is outside of their powers to enforce immigration laws.
Supreme Court precedent is that states cannot be compelled by Congress to enforce Immigration law (see: Printz v. United States).
So, what you have in this situation are the fact that States and the Federal Government have opposing interests: The States need to be able to enforce their laws without their people feeling like they can't tell the police when there's a crime, and the current federal policy is to deport all undocumented immigrants, no matter why they're here or whether they are allowed to be here while their status is adjudicated.
> Supreme Court precedent is that states cannot be compelled by Congress to enforce Immigration law (see: Printz v. United States).
So the supreme court struck a reasonable compromise between federal and state interests. I am not a lawyer, but I am certain that this precedent does not give states the right to actively obstruct federal agents from doing their job, that is, to enforce federal immigration law.
the feds also have no right to arbitrarily obstruct court in session, they have to seek administrative recess, they cant just barge in and start belching commands, they dont have that authority.
thats right they did no such thing, presumibly they sought recess from a chief justice, and by the time they came back, the person of concern was gone.
had they realized they were likely to walk into the middle of procedings, the first stop should have been authorization to intercede.
The warrant of the judge's arrest strongly suggests that she did not think it was appropriate for ICE to arrest Ruiz and took actions to prevent it from happening.
She probably didn't think it was appropriate for ICE to arrest Ruiz at the courthouse. If going to court for a case against you becomes a good way to get deported, guess what people aren't going to do. We don't have the resources to keep everyone who has a case against them in jail, so we release people on the promise that they will show up for court. If it's dangerous to their freedom and living status to show up to court, they won't.
Considering the constitution only enumerates the power of naturalization (NOT residency) to Federal government, there is no clear power granted to Feds for things like residency visas.
Controlling the border from foreign enemies is a far cry from the Federal government asserting the right to determine who gets to simply live and work within the states.
The Supreme Court makes a mockery of 10th amendment on so many issues, whether it's drugs, healthcare, immigration, gun control...
> Supreme Court precedent is that states cannot be compelled by Congress to enforce Immigration law
Not just immigration law but federal law generally. It's funny that this never reached the point of beign a decision rule in a case and thus binding precedent until the 1990s, as you see it in dicta in Supreme Court cases decided on other bases back to shortly before the Civil War (specifically, in cases around the Fugitive Slave Laws.)
Might it be because the federal government simply did not need to exercise much authority over the states? As a non-expert I am curious. I am continually amazed by how much authority is delegated to the states and local jurisdictions in the United States (e.g. matters of marriage, property, voting, etc.). As I understand even citizenship was handled by local courts up until very recently.
> Might it be because the federal government simply did not need to exercise much authority over the states?
Yeah, it is absolutely because the federal government was simply not trying to commandeer state authorities to enforce federal law; the interesting part (to me) is that the courts were anticipating the problem well before it materialized.
> What is the purpose of laws if they are willfully ignored?
Nearly every liberty we take for granted was at one point against the law or gained through willful lawbreaking. A healthy society should be tolerant of some bending of the rules.
I agree with you. A quick search suggests that there are 11 million undocumented people in the United States, or about 3% of the population. A healthy society does not harbor 11 million people without documentation so they can be exploited by employers for cheap labor, not given proper health care and labor rights.
Yet it's interesting how we put the blame and punishment on the people being taken advantage of, and not the employers who are exploiting them. If both parties are breaking the law shouldn't we at the very least ensure that the business owner who is exploiting any number of workers is held to the same standard as an undocumented person whose only crime was not having the proper paperwork?
I don't blame them. If I were them, I would do the same thing. However, as someone with the ability to vote and influence (to a very small degree) public policy, I would prefer we move toward a system in which strong labor rights exist in this country, and this is simply impossible in an environment in which employers are free to hire labor off the books for "pennies". To be clear, I think both political parties in the US are terrible, and all of this debate serves the interests of the employers that benefit from this situation.
Because it would hurt our little elitist exceptionalist hearts if we gave an H1B to a construction worker. There are low wage industries that could use such a program, but our little hearts can't take it because "its not the best and brightest".
Right - more risk of deportations pushes them under ground and allows easier exploitation, like employers who can hold this status over their head.
People who have productively worked in the country and either paid taxes or contribute to the economy for some years should be offered pathways to naturalization or at least work visas and real legal protection.
Is the number really that crazy if we consider the context?
- America is a land of opportunities. It is BY FAR the country with the largest number of legal immigrants[0]. There are ~51M in the US and the second is Germany with ~16M. I think it makes sense that given the extremely high demand to come to the US, it is unsurprising that many do so illegally. Especially when the costs of staying in your own country are so high.
- How would you even go about documenting them, determining status, and then following due process[1]. Tricky situation. It's does not only create a dystopian authoritarian hellscape to constantly check everyone's status, but it is also really expensive to do so! Random stops interfere with average citizens and violates our constitutional rights. Rights created explicitly because the people founding this country were experienced with such situations...
I mean I also agree with your point that they are being exploited and that there's been this silent quid pro quo (even if one party is getting the shit end of the deal). But also I think people really need to consider what it actually takes to get the things they want. Certainly we can do better and certainly we shouldn't exploit them. But importantly, which is more important: the rights of a citizen or punishing illegal immigrants? There has to be a balance because these are coupled. For one, I'm with Jefferson, I'd rather a hundred guilty men go free than a single innocent be stripped of their freedom. You can't pick and choose. The rules have to apply to everyone or they apply to no one. There are always costs, and the most deadly costs are those that are hard to see.
[1] I cannot stress enough how critical due process is. If we aren't going to have due process, then we don't have any laws. Full stop. If we don't have due process, then the only law is your second amendment right, and that's not what anyone wants.
> A healthy society should be tolerant of some bending of the rules.
No rule can be so well written that it covers all possible exceptions. Programmers of all people should be abundantly aware of this fact. We deal with it every single day. But I do mean fact, it is mathematically rigorous.
So even without a direct expansion of rights and the natural progression of societies to change over time, we have to at minimum recognize that there is a distinction between "what the rule says" and "what the intended rule is". This is like alignment 101.
Should a serial killer go unpunished because its sole witness would face lifetime imprisonment for jaywalking if they were to testify? Do you believe gangs should roam free due to a lack of evidence, or would it be better if they could be rolled up by offering a too-sweet-to-ignore plea deal to a snitch?
Laws are are already routinely being ignored. There's a massive amount of discretionary choice space for law enforcement and prosecution. It's not as black-and-white as you're making it sound.
The line is prosecution policy. There are thousands of laws on the books that are never enforced, particularly in the United States. Given the inhuman and grossly illegal deportation without due process of thousands of people by the Trump administration - to an extrajudicial torture prison no less - many means of resisting the kidnap of people (citizens or non) are reasonable).
>> If some guy's due to testify in a murder case, I don't want him skipping court because some quota-making jackass at ICE wants to arrest him because of a visa issue
From the criminal complaint in this case:
"I also am aware that pursuant to its policies, which had been made known to courthouse officials, the Milwaukee ICE ERO Task Force was focusing its resources on apprehending charged defendants making appearances in criminal cases – and not arresting victims, witnesses, or individuals appearing for matters in family or civil court."
So it sounds like they take this into account. As for why they make arrests at the courthouse:
"The reasons for this include not only the fact that law enforcement knows the location at which the wanted individual should be located but also the fact that the wanted individual would have entered through a security checkpoint and thus unarmed, minimizing the risk of injury to law enforcement, the public, and the wanted individual."
Makes sense. Seems like they have weighed the risks and advantages of this and come up with a reasonable approach.
>and not arresting victims, witnesses, or individuals appearing for matters in family or civil court.
Tell that to the guy who is rotting in the El Salvador's torture prison despite having official protection from the US court, not just self-declared policy of ICE like that above. Especially considering how shady ICE and its people are, bottom of the barrel of federal law enforcement.
So now instead of appearing in court and face their consequences if guilty, they are motivated to flee and evade even if innocent of the crime they are appearing in court for?
What if a witness to a murder is an accused thief? Should we let thefts go unpunished because it may implicate their testimony in more severe crimes? What we actually do is offer the person reduced sentencing in exchange for their cooperation but we don't ignore their crime.
In terms of illegal immigrants, if they haven't filed any paperwork, or haven't attempted to legally claim asylum, then they shouldn't be surprised they're left without legal protections, even if they happen to have witnessed a more severe crime.
And no one is asking the relevant authorities to ignore their duties to enforce immigration policy. They're just saying that state and local courts and police aren't the relevant authorities, and that they'd prefer to have the rest of the apparatus of government function with and for undocumented people.
> And no one is asking the relevant authorities to ignore their duties to enforce immigration policy.
I take a look at Los Angeles policy, which was recently ensconced into law, and it does specifically require authorities to ignore their duties. It even requires them to interfere in them.
They cannot, even if if they incidentally know a persons immigration status, contact immigration authorities with that information. If the immigration authorities find out anyways they are required to prevent those authorities from even _interviewing_ the subject let alone take them into custody. If requested to participate in any sort of joint operation they must decline just because it's the federal immigration authorities.
> and that they'd prefer to have the rest of the apparatus of government function
If that were the case then only the first restriction above would need to exist. Instead they literally provide an active shield against any enforcement of these federal laws and directly interfere with that function.
> for undocumented people.
If the city is so willing to shield this class of people from federal immigration enforcement then why aren't they also willing to then document them on their own terms? It seems inappropriate and careless to me and leaves these people in a slightly worse place than they were without the sanctuary status. It also makes it look like their primary concern is frustrating federal law and not truly caring for a desperate class of people.
No one is required to ignore their duties, because immigration enforcement is not the duty of anyone bound by a City of Los Angeles ordinance. No one is required to interfere with federal law enforcement pursuing actual criminals under a judicial warrant. No one is prevented from making whatever claims they might want to federal authorities in their personal capacity; they just can't investigate immigration status under the pretext of city business, or use city resources for unintended purposes.
which is all good! I want people to confidently report crimes committed against them. I want restaurants to be health-inspected without staff worrying about questions of status. I want people to get pulled over and cited for traffic violations without having to ask existential questions about their presence in the country or consider rash actions as a result.
City and State governments have precisely zero authority over who lives within their borders. The past several decades of federal vacillation have got us to this point. The federal government can spend its own time and money to sort it out. Until then LAPD, LASD, CHP, etc. are expensive enough; let them focus on enforcing the local and state laws they're responsible for as equitably as they can for _all_ the people living there.
> because immigration enforcement is not the duty of anyone bound by a City of Los Angeles ordinance.
Neither is upholding and defending the constitution yet we accept this as a basic oath of office. I can see technical arguments either way; however, ...
> Until then LAPD, LASD, CHP, etc. are expensive enough
We are, on the most basic level, really just talking about a phone call or a copy of a report being forwarded to DHS/INS. This does not seem resource intensive and it can be seen as obstructive to refuse to do this; particularly, if they had this reporting arrangement previously.
> We do? e.g. AB 60 driver's licenses
No one is _required_ to get one of those and there is no penalty for being without one. So the city has a large population of people who are not known. To take the argument to the extreme, this implicates disaster and evacuation planning, as well as resource management within the city. It tends to show their main function is obstruction and not service.
A more moderate policy might be, if you have an AB60 license, you receive sanctuary protection, but if you do not, then you may not, and may have your details forwarded to federal immigration. I would argue this is the most equitable for everyone, both immigrants, and citizens.
Not really - we're talking about holding someone (and therefore being responsible for their food, safety, possibly healthcare) until the relevant agency collects them.
Even for mere notification, there's nothing obstructive about refusing, even if there was a prior arrangement[0]. Any cooperation would have been voluntary, and the practice and policy of the administration has changed in a way that adversely affects essential city services if they were to continue to cooperate, so that voluntary arrangement would have been terminated.
> _required_
No citizen is required to make themselves known to their state government either. I'm free to go to NYC tomorrow, rent a room for cash, get a metro card, and tell NYS nothing at all, until I earn enough money to necessitate a tax return and have to give them an SSN or ITIN.
Disaster planning etc. is the responsibility of the demographers and statisticians, at least until the the census rolls around, and they're not particularly interested in identity
> expensive
While I threw that in, I do think the cost concerns are secondary to the overall alignment of incentives. Cities have to work for everyone that lives there; without control over the immigration status of their residents (nor any implication that cities _should_ have that control) cities are better off abstaining from questions of immigration status entirely.
> No citizen is required to make themselves known to their state government either.
The hospital is required to create a birth certificate for you. I knew a guy growing up who was born to extremely off the grid people and it was a constant problem for him until he decided to just get himself the birth certificate and all other paperwork to avoid the obvious problems with trying to live that way and participate in our society.
Most importantly, if you plan to vote, you're going to have to "make yourself known" and actually prove you have the right. We're creating a class that otherwise doesn't exist and to the extent they do they accept the limitations that come with it.
> at least until the the census rolls around
The federal census? And while living under sanctuary status you think they're going to participate?
> cities are better off abstaining from questions of immigration status entirely.
So services that are reserved for immigrants? How do we means test those? Isn't the act of applying for an AB60 license declaring your immigration status implicitly? I get that some people may not want cities to do this but I have trouble with the extent of this logic.
> [0]: which there wasn't
There absolutely was. It's called a section 287(g) delegation. Los Angeles ended this in 2015.
That sounds reasonable but would you also support a strongly enforced border and tighter policies on illegal immigration so this isn't an issue in the first place? I think it becomes hand-wringing and disingenuous when it starts to seem that this isn't really about reasonable policy and it's more about trying to prevent deportations by any means necessary. What's unspoken is that there are deeply held, non-articulated beliefs that open borders policies are a good thing. These views aren't generally popular with the electorate so the rhetoric shifted to subtler issues like what you are describing.
Depends on the enforcement methods and the policies. Of course we can defend our border. No, we shouldn't waste billions on some stupid fence that will be climbed or tunneled or knocked over or walked around. I'm absolutely willing to have the discussion about what appropriate policies should be, as long as we can agree that we're talking about real, live humans who are generally either trying to flee from the horrible circumstances they were born into, or trying to make a nicer lives for themselves and their families, and the policies reflect that.
I'm not for open borders. In any case, that's irrelevant to whether I think ICE should be hassling people inside a courthouse for other reasons, which I think is bad policy for everyone.
This. Same with giving them TINs so that they pay taxes. These BENEFIT citizens and permanent residents of the country.
I see a lot of comments being like "what's the point of laws if they get ignored." Well, we're on a CS forum, and we have VMs, containers, and chroots, right? We break rules all the time, but recognize that it is best to do so around different contextualizations.
There's a few points I think people are missing:
1) The government isn't monolithic. Just like your OS isn't. It different parts are written by different people and groups who have different goals. Often these can be in contention with one another.
2) Containerization is a thing. Scope. It is both true that many agencies need to better communicate with one another WHILE simultaneously certain agencies should have firewalls between them. I bet you even do this at your company. Firewalls are critical to any functioning system. Same with some redundancy.
A sanctuary city is not a "get out of jail free card." They do not prevent local police from contacting ICE when the immigrant has committed a crime and local police has identified them. They are only protected in narrow settings: Reporting crimes to police, enrolling their children in school, and other minimal and basic services. If they run a stop sign and a cop pulls them over, guess what, ICE gets contacted and they will get deported[0].
Forget human rights, think like an engineer. You have to design your systems with the understanding of failure. So we need to recognize that we will not get 100% of illegal immigrants. We can still optimize this! But then, what happens when things fail? That's the question. In these settings it is "Conditioned that an illegal immigrant was not found, do we want them to report crimes to the police or not?" "Conditioned that an illegal immigrant was not found, do we want them to pay taxes?" How the hell can the answer be anything but "yes"? You can't ignore the condition. Absent of the condition, yeah, most people will agree that they should be deported. But UNDER THE CONDITION it is absolutely insane to not do these things.
There is, of course, another solution... But that condition is fairly authoritarian. Frequently checking identification of everyday persons. It is quite costly, extremely cumbersome to average citizens, and has high false positive rates. I mean we can go that route but if we do I think we'll see why a certain amendment exists. It sure wasn't about Grizzly Bears...
[0] They may have holding limits, like not hold the immigrant more than a week. Maybe you're mad at this, but why aren't you mad at ICE for doing their job? You can't get someone out there in a week? Come on. You're just expecting the local city to foot the bill? Yeah, it costs money. Tell ICE to get their shit together.
In an ideal world, maybe that's how it would work. In reality, that's not how it works or likely ever will work. So the comment you're replying to is a pragmatic approach to "how do we make the world we actually live in, not some idealized fantasy, safer?"
In reality, Trump's tough on illegal immigrants approach has drastically reduced the number of illegal border crossings compared to Biden's term.
So, it seems that "people living in the country illegally" doesn't have to just be a fact of life, if there are federal policy changes that can radically alter the number of people who illegally enter the country.
Sure, if this is true... and it only came at the cost of due process.
Even if you prevent everyone from coming here illegally, you'll still have "illegal" immigrants. I would wager most illegal immigrants came here perfectly legally.
Illegal border crossings are a distraction. The vast majority of "illegal immigrants" entered legally and overstayed their visa. This makes "radically altering the number of people entering illegally" a fairly meaningless achievement in practice.
For all we know those very same people who would have crossed the border illegally are now spending the extra money to enter legally and overstay: same number of incoming "illegal immigrants", but via different pathways.
You ever consider what's fair to the undocumented, given the likelihood they're fleeing bad conditions in their home country? I'd be fine with providing them documentation without fear of deportation since they're already here. But I don't think that's what one political party currently in power wants to do.
I am going to be downvoted to oblivion but sanctuary cities for what you are saying is like a monkey patch in code. It "works" for now but it's not a long-term viable solution. A person breaking the law and be fine to be a criminal to be in a country is already the wrong mindset. And these persons are only at step 1 in a life in the US. What happens when life will be tough later are they now magically going to stop all criminal solutions? Their solution to be in the US was already to break the law.
Thankfully there are already laws to protect people being persecuted, in danger, people needing asylum, etc... We need even better laws in these areas and improvements in witness protection laws for a part of your example. But again sanctuary cities "work" for now but it is not a long-term solution. Beyond attracting criminals, it also creates a weird lawful oxymoron at the opposite of the rule of the law. (And again, there are things like asylum, etc...)
To be honest, for me personally having cities that have that much power is weird to me. It should be something at the state or federal level. But as a counterargument: if this is not monkey patching, why not create a full sanctuary state? Sounds scary to me.
We need better laws. Current laws are also in place because it's just easier and works for now. Like instead of redoing visas and how they are processed for the 1M undocumented persons working in agriculture (that's 40% of ag workers!), people are fine with how things are now and also can justify to give lower unlawful salaries. Like this state is also bad for undocumented people too. They can just be taken advantage of and fired/used/disregarded when their managers want to...
Solutions that go against the rule of the law are overall a very bad idea for everyone.
94% of Californians live in cities. It's not that a "city" has so much power, as that large populations of people living near each other decided how they wanted to handle their business. Because they have a large proportion of the state's legislative representation, as is appropriate, that legislature tends to vote in ways that the cities' residents want them to.
An aside: “monkey patch” doesn’t mean what you think it means.
More on topic… crimes aren’t all the same, and the willingness of a person to commit one kind of crime doesn’t necessarily mean they are willing to commit another kind of crime.
For example, a large proportion of drivers in the US break the law every time they drive, from speeding to rolling stops, etc. By your standard all of these people are criminals who we can expect to keep reaching for “criminal solutions”. Why shouldn’t we imprison or deport all such people? Or at least take away their driver’s licenses and cars?
Oh yes you are right for monkey patch, I don't why it means something else where I am from.
On the topic, sure. But maybe next time you go to another country, try to think how you would stay and break the law. Later, you will need a car, a bank account (by stealing a social security number or other solutions). Like how you are getting yourself ready to live a life of breaking the law just to go by in life. That's a series of life-changing events you have to be ready to go through. And yes you can go to prison because yo go too fast on a highway but to me it's really something else.
Cars that can be stolen and/or with no insurance, people who flee the scene in case of accidents, bank accounts that have been opened by identity thieves, etc...
Are you saying that criminals are a good thing if they help the overall economy? If not what was the point?
I’m suggesting it may be a bad idea to criminalize ordinary and even positive behavior.
I think you’re making a better argument in favor of sanctuary cities than against. All the bad things you describe are the result of fear of immigration enforcement, and which suppresses positive things like buying cars and opening bank accounts.
The point is, people are breaking the law all the time, that law is rarely enforced, yet no one seems to be calling for a widespread crackdown on speeding.
The previous poster calls on us to be concerned about crimes and criminals leading to more crimes, but we already live in a country where very large numbers of “criminals” are driving around all over the place, yet it doesn’t seem to be a problem.
You might ask yourself why it’s supposed to be a big problem for one kind of law but not for another.
Calling it a crime vastly overstates what the offense is. Entering in the country illegally is a misdemeanor, when you call them criminals you rhetorically frame it as a serious offense like a felony. Its disingenuous.
Entering the country illegally is at least a misdemeanor (can be a felony depending on specific details), but being in the country illegally is not, itself, a crime, and it is possible to be in the country illegally without entering illegally.
Is your argument really "misdemeanors aren't crimes"?
Imagine, "someone knowingly or recklessly causes bodily injury to you or with criminal negligence the person causes bodily injury to you by means of a deadly weapon".
Would you not consider yourself the victim of a crime in that case? Because that's just third degree assault - a misdemeanor(at least, here in Colorado)
Labeling Theory[1] suggests that referring to people as criminals increases the chance of them committing crimes. When people's existence is referred to as criminal (or when they're referred to as criminals for having committed other crimes, many of which are not dangerous to society or others, such as using drugs) their social and economic prospects are harmed and according to this theory, they then become more likely to engage in other activities which (in addition to violating laws) are actually more detrimental to society.
So I think there's a strong argument that we should be much more conservative with the application of labels like "criminal" to people.
The act of being in the country without a valid visa is not a crime, it is a civil infraction. Entering the country illegally (i.e. sneaking through the border) can be a crime, but around 50% of undocumented immigrants entered the country legally (e.g. entering on a student visa and not leaving when it expired). And very often, unless border patrol catches you on your way in, you aren't going to be prosecuted for illegal entry.
And the difference between a misdemeanor and a civil infraction is not a matter of splitting hairs. Here's some differences:
1. In a criminal case, you need to be found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. In a civil case, the standard is simply a preponderance of the evidence, meaning more likely than not. If there is a 51% you are here illegally and a 49% chance you aren't, you get deported.
2. In a criminal case if you can't afford a lawyer one may be appointed to you. In a civil case you have to either pay for a lawyer yourself or represent yourself. This has serious consequences for people. If a child ends up in immigration court and their families can't afford to hire an attorney, they have to represent themselves. Even if they are 4 years old: https://gothamist.com/news/4-year-old-migrant-girl-other-kid...
3. You might assume that immigration judges are just like any other judge and are part of the judicial branch, a so-called "Article III Court" (referring to Article III of the Constitution). But immigration judges are not Article III courts. They report to the head of the Department of Justice, who has hiring and firing powers over them. Meaning the prosecutor arguing for your deportation and the judge deciding your case both report to the US Attorney General
No my argument is stop using the word criminal because it makes the yokels think you're talking about some sicario or some jobless person living on the government doll.
You can tell this because when you poll americans what they think about deporting undocumented immigrants that belong to specific subgroups, their overwhelmingly against it. The kicker is that the subgroups listed cover nearly all undocumented immigrants.
> The survey also asked about whether other groups of immigrants in the country illegally should be deported. Relatively few Americans support deporting these immigrants if they have a job (15%), are parents of children born in the U.S. (14%), came to the U.S. as children (9%) or are married to a U.S. citizen (5%).
Smoking a joint can be misdemeanor. Many people don't think it should be criminal at all. It really depends on who passes and enforces said laws. Similar to smoking a joint, crossing a border illegally is a victimless infraction. Depending on who you ask, it's not a big deal and possibly even a positive for the US, or it's the end of America, when it's the POTUS posting on his social media account.
Let's be real, are we talking about that one guy on vacation who missed his flight and is now staying longer than his visa and being de facto an undocumented person too? Or another type of profile? Like someone who did it knowingly and actively wanting to stay unlawfully? Yes there are different cases that encompass the definition but I think we can agree that we are not talking about cases like the guy on vacation.
That is technical correct use of the legal term. A crime is an illegal act for which the punishment include prison. A person who lack permission to stay in a country faces deportation and ban/restriction on future visa applications, but not prison. Thus it is not a crime.
Even if I put all human rights issues aside, I don't want anyone to be punished for talking to the police simply because of their immigration status, because their freedom to do so makes my own daily life safer.
Well, that goes double for courtrooms. If some guy's due to testify in a murder case, I don't want him skipping court because some quota-making jackass at ICE wants to arrest him because of a visa issue.
In this case, the person was actually in court to face misdemeanor charges (of which they haven't been convicted yet, i.e. they're still legally innocent). I want people to go to court to face trial instead of skipping out because they fear they'll be arrested and deported for unrelated reasons. I bet the judge has pretty strong opinions on that exact issue, too.