Of Course, We Should Deport Illegals
As the old saying goes, “If you don’t have a border, you don’t have a country.” On the macro level, if you can’t stop a foreign army from coming across, your country will become their country. On the micro level, if you can’t control who’s coming across your borders, it allows all sorts of undesirable people to come into your country. Criminals. Drug dealers. Gang members. Foreign agents. Terrorists.
Also, in a country like America, so many illegals can flood in that it can distort the labor market. You hear a lot of people claim there are jobs that Americans won’t do, but what they really mean is that Americans can’t afford to work as cheaply as illegals who have no medical insurance, no car insurance, and who cheat on their taxes. How much less could you afford to work for if you didn’t have to pay insurance and taxes?
In any case, controlling the border means controlling who comes across. It means allowing in people who come in legally and stopping people from coming here illegally. So, what should the punishment be if you come here illegally? Well, a good starting point with crimes is not to give the criminal what they want.
If someone robs a bank, you don’t let them keep the money for years until you can have a hearing to decide if they get to keep it forever. If someone breaks into your house, they don’t get to just potentially pay a small fine and live there from now on. Yet, this is what a lot of very morally confused people insist we do with illegal aliens. You were caught here illegally? Okay, we’ll just let you go wherever you want in America and see you in two years for a hearing IF you show up (wink, wink) to determine if crime paid off for you or not.
No.
If you enter the United States illegally, OBVIOUSLY, you shouldn’t get to benefit from your crime. You should be held in custody, processed, and deported. No one coming here illegally should be allowed to file for asylum or go wherever they want. They’re a criminal who was caught in the act. Criminals need to be punished.
Especially since every person who came here illegally without question knew that what they were doing was illegal and that the punishment was deportation. They might not say, “I was hoping that I might be able to exploit the system and stay in the United States” or “I was hoping that I would get away with breaking the law,” but they knew they were disobeying our laws, and they knew what the penalty was for it.
So, why would we not deport illegal aliens?
There are no good reasons for it, but there are foolish and selfish reasons not to do it.
Liberals tend to view illegal aliens as potential future voters who they can easily capture with welfare programs. There are also business owners who view illegals as a source of cheap labor whose costs can be passed on to the rest of society. That’s why bringing these same people in legally via a work program instead of illegally doesn’t appeal to these business owners. It would cost them a lot more money. You also have NGOs that have been paid staggering amounts of money to work with illegals in one form or another. These are the selfish people who don’t give a damn about the country or anyone but themselves.
However, there are also foolish people. They make arguments like, “But, they’ve been here for a long time,” as if getting away with breaking the law for years means the law can be ignored. Others say things like, “Well, if I were in the same position as them, I’d break the law to do the best I could for my family.” This may be true, but you’re not in the same position as they are. If you’re an American, you’re supposed to look out for your own family and your own country. If someone breaks into your house, you don’t say, “In their position, I might break into a house as well,” you tell them to get the hell out of your house.
The arguments about children who break the law are similarly foolish. “Oh, we can’t split up families.” Well, of course, we can. Families are split up every day of the week when someone’s mom or dad goes to jail. We don’t go, “We can’t put that guy in jail for mugging people because he has a kid at home, and we’d be taking him away from his son.”
Similarly, if you give children a pass for coming into the country illegally, it encourages large numbers of people to send their children here illegally. What do you think would happen if we said, “We won’t arrest people under 18 who shoplift?” We’d have millions of new kids shoplifting tomorrow. This is exactly what has happened as a result of foolishly catering to the “Dreamers.” We have millions of kids being sent here who otherwise wouldn’t be crossing our border illegally.
What it all comes down to is that if we want to have a border, we’ve got to enforce it. The simple way to do it is exactly that. We shouldn’t willingly allow people to cross into our country illegally, we should detain the ones who do and then deport them. Don’t create exceptions to the rules. Don’t subvert the law. Just do it instead of ignoring the law and letting tens of millions of foreigners break our laws with impunity.
Best treatise on our illegal alien problem I've ever seen. You've addressed all points of the situation in a sensible fashion. There'll be some hard-core America-hating liberals who'll never be persuaded; but, just perhaps, some in the opposing camp might see the light and realize that without enforced borders, we lose our sovereignty as a nation.
Yes, this is the logical and ethical way to handle the entire situation. Instead of lying in the weeds and sniping at the motives of Americans, we must expect those people who enable or endorse the practice of allowing illegal aliens to stay to look at the cost shifting they are demanding. If I don't pay my taxes, I will lose my home and be sent to prison, like Al Capone, who got away with everything else. Catholic Bishops telling me that I have to tolerate those who don't obey the law or that makes me a bad person? Compassion without law is violative of God's will, c.f. oh, the Bible. Unfair, unsustainable and unethical but how dare we fix it? It enrages me at some level, and I think it's a just anger about those who choose to flout the rule of law and claim higher moral authority.