I would rather not have to think about it at all, but with Schumer possibly ready to trade funding for a wall in return for DACA hostages... feel like I need to know what I support. In this area there are people living in fear... ICE has been coming to public schools to inquire about 4th graders, etc. It seems a more pressing issue now than it was last year, and maybe this is a chance to open up the discussion while people are paying attention. Plus there isn't that much time until 2019... a year is hardly long enough to educate oneself on an issue of this complexity.
Is a wall that may cost at least $15 billion (GOP estimate) and possibly $67 billion (Dem estimate), or more, a good use of our resources to solve the problems that immigration presents? Obviously I'm biased against the wall but I'm not ready to discount it altogether. Seems impractical, but kinder than deportation.
Are you against deportation of any in this country illegally or just some them?
I'm not against every deportation. My gut feeling on it is very conditional and along a continuum.
Things to consider would be how long they had been in the country and how old when they came here, criminal record, etc. For instance, I favor deportation of violent and repeat criminals. But what about the guys who came here because they were adopted as babies, but the paperwork wasn't properly processed by their adoptive parents?
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/02/world/asia/south-korea-adoptions-phillip-clay-adam-crapser.htmlOf course those seem to be extreme cases but there ought to be room for an exception.
But, suppose that we had a great immigration system where every family had a chance to be reunited within, say, 2 years. Suppose we were able to accommodate at least every endangered child refugee and an adult caretaker for at least a 5 year period during which time hopefully their home country would be stabilized with the help of the international community. Suppose we streamlined the process for employers to sponsor workers to fill true gaps in the labor force, and these workers would have equal pay and rights to native workers, until they were sent home at the end of the labor shortage.
Then in this ideal-ish world, that would leave only adult refugees and recent economic migrants come to work under the table. Then I think I would be okay with deporting adults who had lived here less than, arbitrarily, 7 years. Maybe the time scale could be more lenient for adults from dangerous countries. For immigrants who had been there longer, I think I'd favor some sort of amnesty with a sliding scale of fees maybe by wage garnishment to penalize them for line jumping, as well as any unpaid taxes, but not so much as to ruin them entirely. But of course designing a fair, watertight system would be as hard as building a secure 2000 foot wall.
I think the advantage of a pay-for-amnesty solution is that it would hopefully pay for itself or even become a source of revenue for the US, unlike the wall. The thing I don't like about this plan is that it would either favor richer immigrants (if a flat fee) or would incentivize people to hide wealth (kind of like taxes.) I'm sure there would be tons of loopholes and the poor slobs of life would lose out as always.
Are you against the wall because you don't think it will work, is wholly unfeasible, or are you just against the concept of immigration control?
From what I have heard about the existing barriers, the wall doesn't sound like it will provide a good value. Most people are flying in anyway and overstaying their visas. It might work to some extent but basically a good ladder will render it useless unless it's manned, so that would be a repeating cost. Drug dealers will just dig tunnels. Suppose we also do a better job of tracking overstayed visas. Then how about the Canadian border? Will we have to build a wall there, too?
There are other reasons to dislike a wall, too. Effect on wildlife, and also the optics of it. I remember when the Berlin Wall was still standing. It and the DMZ were such symbols of distrust and basically, failure. I also remember when the Berlin Wall came down and the joy and hope everyone had at the time (and I would guess that most Germans today would say it was a good thing.)
But no, I'm not against all immigration control. I
don't want everyone who wants two cars and a flat-screen TV to flood into the US. But my intuition is that if we don't want people coming over here to stay illegally, it would be more effective to work on the reasons why. I mean, what if we spent the wall money to create jobs (infrastructure?) and to train/move US citizens to where the jobs are, or enforce legal employment? If there weren't the jobs, the economic immigrants wouldn't come.