Returning to Banana Republics

2025-01-31

Category: politics

Immigration is a hot button issue at the moment. Newly reelected President Trump has taken steps to round up illegal immigrants and repatriate them. Most of the news coverage and other points I've been hearing suggests that the focus is on Hispanic aliens instead of members of other groups. There is a lot of loudness from the Left and Right in the political spectrum, but I cannot side with either of them entirely.

First, just to get it out of the way, I've heard reports of zealous immigration officials rounding up people who just happened to be speaking Spanish or otherwise appearing Hispanic and then demanding that these people provide proof that they are in the country legally. I have not yet seen this from a credible source, so I don't know if it is or is not true. If it is true, any officers involved are criminals and need to be punished accordingly. I have a nephew who is often mistaken for being Hispanic and a great nephew whose father is Puerto Rican (and therefore American). If one of my family members were to be detained in such a fashion, I would be quite irate. My, and my family's, ancestors have been in North America since the late 1600s and include a couple of officers in the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War.

Second, to cover this quickly, I believe that if they are doing this it must include all immigrants who are here illegally. For example, if someone were here from England and their visa had expired, they should be heading back rather than flaunting laws.

As for border crossing, I consider this a bad thing. It is extremely dangerous for those doing so. We hear tales of these people being exploited by criminals along the way. The trip is arduous. There is the occasional news report of immigrants stuffed into the back of unventilated trucks, often with tragic consequences.

Why would they make such a trek? We assume they are refugees. We also assume that refugees are leaving a situation in which they are in danger. This is important. We can generally have sympathy for persons running away from a situation where their life and health are threatened. It is more difficult to sympathize with someone who just wants an easier life.

So, assuming that we have refugees coming across the southern border, we also assume that they originate in the western hemisphere. This is also important. If a person crossing at the border comes from somewhere else, such as Africa or Asia, then they should be treated as a potential foreign agent. If they were truly trying to just get to safety, as a refugee, then there should have been places closer than crossing the Atlantic and marching through Mexico.

There are many people who really care about refugees. That is a noble thing to do. We should help them. However, encouraging them to cross the border and avoid the official immigration process is not as helpful as you may think. And yes, I understand that the process is in dire need of work and should be made easier. But how much better is it to be an exploited, lowest social class worker in the U. S. compared to the exploited worker class in their home?

That's where the real care comes in. If you really care about refugees, you should concentrate on fixing what they are running from.

The refugees are the ones who could get away. Back home are all the ones who can't get away from that exact same danger. Those people are still in danger. They are still oppressed. They are still being exploited. Don't you care about them as well?

You may think there is nothing we can do or that it is not the responsibility of the United States to go fix those places. I would argue that the exact opposite is true. From the nineteenth century through the Cold War, the U. S. was constantly interfering in South and Central America.

Large corporations, particularly fruit companies, regularly got the U. S. government to overthrow governments and put corrupt, manipulatable puppets in place. When we got to the height of the Cold War, fear of communism meant the CIA was destabilizing everything. All the chaos down there can usually be traced to the damage caused when we did things, or the damage caused when we pulled out.

When the governments aren't just outright horrible, they are often at the mercy of drug cartels. Those same cartels get huge amounts of cash from selling drugs to people in the United States. There are still bands of "freedom fighters" in some places ready to kill or kidnap in hopes of being important enough some day to matter. These are the things the refugees are leaving behind, and what those who stay are living with.

If you really want to help refugees, you need to push for real intervention in these countries to cause stability. Imagine if you can quell the cartels and put in a reliable enough government that industry could move in. Then the refugees can have the same prosperity at home that they hope for, but will not achieve, in the U. S.

In the meantime, as long as ICE is only rounding up persons known to be in the country illegally (including non-Hispanic persons) and not getting grab-happy, they are doing their job. Entering the country without going through the process is a violation of law. It means our government cannot protect the citizens and cannot protect those refugees from being exploited. So, repatriation in that circumstance is the correct thing to do.