Less heat, more light

@JonEHecht tweeted yesterday:

Kelly: We need to do it for security, but the kids will be fine, don’t worry.

Trump: We’re only doing this cause Democrats made us do it.

Sessions: The Bible told us to do it.

Miller: Hell yeah we’re doing it.

Nielsen: We’re not doing it! Fake news!

The Administration has dug a deep hole for itself since early spring by separating “unlawful” immigrant children from their parents. It appears to be doing this not only for people who cross the border illegally, but also for those who present themselves to border officials seeking asylum, claiming a well-founded fear of persecution if they return to their homelands. The above justifications, while not quotes, are reflections of what different Administration officials have said to justify a policy most of the US views as inhumane and unjustified, even if a Republican plurality supports it.

The underlying political purpose is all to clear: President Trump is using the separation and detention of children as leverage to get Congress to pass an immigration bill that is consonant with his priorities: funding for the border wall, an end to family reunification (he calls that “chain migration,” aka what his wife did to get her parents into the US), and replacement of the visa lottery (which ensures diverse immigrants) with a new system of “merit-based” (i.e. as white as possible) immigration. These changes are unlikely to pass before the November election, but if they don’t the Administration will use immigration issues to mobilize turnout of its increasingly loyal base.

There is room for lots of debate on immigration, which has always been a sensitive issue in the US and elsewhere. But it is important to distinguish between those who come illegally into the US and those who come seeking refuge, either as refugees or asylum-seekers. Neither are unlawful immigrants: they are people seeking to avail themselves of humanitarian provisions in US and international law. There are also remarkably few of them who make it to the US. This year we may not take in more than half the 45,000 refugees that the Administration has set as a ceiling. This is a small fraction of the about 1 million legal immigrants to US admits yearly.

I know a number of Syrian asylum seekers who have been here for years. While their cases have not yet been adjudicated, let there be no doubt: each of them would be at risk if forced to return to Bashar al Assad’s Syria. The defected diplomats and the leaders of early non-violent demonstrations for democracy in Syria would be obvious targets for persecution. The day may come when they can return, but only to a Syria where democracy and rule of law have replaced the brutality of a cruel and unforgiving personal dictatorship. There is no sign of that on the horizon.

In the meanwhile, my Syrian friends and many others who are admitted as refugees or seek asylum in the US are benefiting our country enormously: they help us all to understand what is going on abroad, they work hard to support their families once they get work permits, they pay their taxes, and they enrich our cultural and social life. They are people trying to survive a period of exile that will surely last longer than they would like, but that redounds to our benefit.

The bigger immigration issue concerns people who cross the border illegally, often for economic reasons. I understand people who worry about that, but the number of unauthorized people living in the US has declined since the beginning of the Obama Administration (which coincided with the depths of the financial-crisis induced recession). And they are not responsible for a disproportionate share of crimes, which are committed more often by those born in the US. To talk of them as “infesting” the US, as the President did today, is an effort to mobilize the Republican base, not an effort to encourage a reasonable approach to a difficult issue. Immigration needs less heat and more light.