subject: Is this Our Perspective on Immigration [print this page] Is this Our Perspective on Immigration Is this Our Perspective on Immigration
Within the last 7 days we've experienced some extremely unsettling immigration cases that illustrate the particular inconsistencies, injustice, as well as insufficient understanding society displays with regards to immigration offences.
The first ofa couple of incidents regarding adult females whose children sustained abuse at the hands of their biological father. In one particular scenario the wife initially sought counsel of her priest who instructed her that she should allow her husband to come back to their household and respect the sanctity of their marriage. The wife did so, for just two weeks, after which the woman consulted a social worker who with her agreement, phoned the authorities and got her husband arrested for abuse. Unfortunately the wife/mother was also arrested and the police convicted her of criminal negligence becuase she allowed the husband to return home for two weeks. Then the police passed her off to ICE and placed her in deportation proceedings, where the court convicted her of child abuse. Thus, she was ineligible for relief, and she was deported. The court failed to mention where her four US Citizen children should live while they recovered from their father's abuse.
While this case is a tragedy in of itself, but when compared to another recent child abuse case, where a lady's United States Citizen children were beaten regularly with wooden sticks by their father, to the point that the kids had welts and bruises on their bodies. Here, the mother and children fled from the abusive father. They were apprehended shortly thereafter and placed in proceedings by ICE. The mother applied for protection as the parent of children abused by a US citizen. However, here the court ruled that beating and bruising your children with sticks was not child abuse, so she could not receive relief and was deported. So, to clarify our country's policy on the matter:
- So you are guilty of child abuse if you allow your children to live with a child abuser for two weeks before calling the cops on him.
- You are not guilty of child abuse if you are the one repeatedly beating your children with sticks to the point where they bruise and welt (surprisingly the mother was not arrested for child abuse here for allowing this to happen)
Another frustrating case is one that concerns an unlawful reentry after deportation. The Obama administration in its "maybe if I give the bully half of my lunch money I will get to keep the rest" approach is consistently deporting more people than ever before. In one recent press release ICE brags about a 57 month jail sentence for a Mexican national who entered unlawfully after a previous deportation as a great success for the program. In the press release, they mention that the man was previously deported for drug trafficking 20 years ago and that he received 49 months in prison for that crime. So reentering unlawful deserves a 8 month longer jail sentence then drug trafficking. Additionally, the man's recent arrest was because he failed to identify himself to a police officer, basically a form of civil disobedience.
Now ICE sees this as a big victory, one that deserves a press release on their website, and one that the Obama administration will probably use to charm the Republicans into enacting Comprehensive Immigration Reform. Who knows whether this was a "win" for society or not, but ICE's time & resources could be better spent tracking current criminals not those from twenty years ago, and certainly not mothers trying to protect their children from abuse.
