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Review of Proposed Solutions for the Unaccompanied Children Crisis

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Proposed Solutions to the Unaccompanied Children Crisis

Yesterday Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) introduced new legislation to stop federal funding from going towards the Obama administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA ) program as a solution to the recent surge of unaccompanied children seeking to enter the United States.

DACA is seen by several conservative groups as being the chief explanation for why there has been a recent surge in unaccompanied children attempting to enter the United States. However the surge in unaccompanied children is better explained by an increase in violence in Central America and a desire for family reunification.

Even if DACA explained the recent surge, Senator Cruz should be aware that no federal funds go towards the management of the DACA program. The DACA program is funded by user fees; currently set at $465. The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), which administers DACA, is unique in being funded almost entirely by user fees. If only that were the case with the rest of the federal government!

In short this means the Cruz’s proposed legislation would not affect the operation of the DACA program. It would nonetheless harm several migrants holding humanitarian statuses. The second portion of Senator Cruz’s legislative proposal is worded in such a way that it could deny work authorization to both DACA recipients and holders of Temporary Protected Status (TPS).

Senator Cruz may prefer that less humanitarian migrants reside in the United States but surely he should agree that so long as they are here it is preferable that they work to maintain themselves instead of being forced to rely on government welfare. Why then does he wish to force humanitarian migrants to rely on government welfare? So long as these humanitarian migrants are with us they should be allowed to work to pay for their own expenses and minimize taxpayer burden.

The Texan senator is not alone in granting proposals to solve the recent surge of unaccompanied children. The Obama administration has requested an additional $3.7 billion in funding to increase border enforcement, hire additional legal staff, provide for the care of these children, and other expenses. The chief problem with this proposal is that it focuses almost entirely on the short term and, as a libertarian, I’m extremely doubtful of its cost efficiency. $295 million of the emergency fund would go towards addressing long term issues driving humanitarian migration from Central America but no accountability mechanism exists and actual details of the long term plan are missing. What guarantee is there that these billions won’t end up being misused?

The Obama administration has also mused with proposals to use expedited processing for these unaccompanied children. Currently Mexican nationals receive expedited processing and are sent back almost immediately after being presented to US border patrol authorities, but non-Mexican nationals are processed differently under the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA). While expedited processing may work with Mexican nationals, whose home nation borders the United States, it is less appropriate when dealing with Central Americans and other non-Mexican nationals. Significant portions of the unaccompanied children are eligible for relief under existing humanitarian migrant programs and many of them would find themselves denied access to these programs under expedited processing. The current process may take longer but that is a worthwhile price to minimize the amount of humanitarian migrants being denied entry.

The Obama administration is not alone in calling for expedited processing of the unaccompanied children. Senator David Vitter (R-Louisiana) and Congressman Bill Cassidy (R-Louisiana) are introducing a new bill today which will do just that in addition to raising the bar for unaccompanied children to be granted access to a humanitarian migrant status. This is all too reminiscent of how Australia has been handling its own humanitarian migrant crisis; instead of accepting more refugees or creating programs to quicken their integration into civic life the country has pursued a policy of making it increasingly difficult for these migrants to enter lawfully. Will the US also follow in Australia’s footsteps and try to relocate these migrants into ‘a safe third party country’ like Haiti?

Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Congressman Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) have introduced a similar proposal, the HUMANE Act . Representatives Chaffetz (R-Utah) and Goodlatte (R-Virginia) have both already made a similar proposal, the Asylum Reform and Border Protection Act ; Alex Nowrasteh of the Cato Institute has a review of that particular proposal up for those interested. The text of these proposals differs only cosmetically and all suffer from the same conceit that the answer is to simply deny lawful pathways for migration.

The best response in the short run is to advocate for the Obama administration to re-designate Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador for TPS. As I have noted previously, most of Central America has received relief under the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program previously. A significant portion of Central American migrants in the US are present under the TPS program and if the Obama administration re-designated these countries then the children could enter lawfully and reunite with their families here.

TPS Designated Countries

Some might be skeptical about using TPS to resolve the present crisis; might it not encourage further waves of migrants from these countries? El Salvador and Honduras have both been TPS designated countries and are significant sources of accompanied children. Then again Nicaragua received TPS designation at the same time as Honduras and provides a negligible amount of unaccompanied children. Guatemala meanwhile has not been designated TPS eligible. Previous designation of the TPS status may have had some effect on the number of migrants trying to enter from those countries, but it begs the question of why there are so few Nicaraguans among them .

The above proposal is ultimately only a keyhole solution for the immediate future. In the long run TPS and other humanitarian statuses should be reformed to allow lawful family reunification. Contrary to what some conservative commentators believe, a significant portion of non-citizens from Central America are not illegal aliens but instead hold TPS and other humanitarian statuses. A new pathway should also be created to allow minor children to be sponsored by their extended relatives or to make adoption easier. Families will try to reunify regardless of what barriers are placed between them and it is therefore best to promote policies that provide a legal way to do so.

An earlier draft of this post was posted at California College Libertarians.

Open Borders and the Child Immigrants from Central America

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As the arrival on the U.S. border of thousands of minors from Central America has consumed the attention of U.S. politicians and the media, open borders is rarely suggested as a policy option.  One exception is the Libertarian Party, which has issued a strong statement in favor of open borders  for these children, as well as most other would-be immigrants.  Another, noted in a previous post,  is from Ross Douthat of the New York Times: “One answer, consistent and sincere, is that the child migration really shows we need an open border — one that does away with the problems of asylum hearings and deportations, eliminates the need for dangerous journeys across deserts and mountains, and just lets the kids’ relatives save up for a plane ticket.”

As Mr. Douthat suggests, open borders would release the government from spending enormous amounts of money detaining Central American child migrants and adjudicating their cases. (President Obama is requesting billions more for these purposes.) Open borders also would help the child migrants and their families immensely.   Families could be more easily reunited and wouldn’t have to pay thousands of dollars to have their children smuggled into the U.S., and the children wouldn’t be exposed to dangers on their long journey to the border, nor would they have to endure often miserable stays in U.S. detention.  The children also could escape horrendous conditions in their home countries, without the fear that they would be deported back.

Related to the inability to consider the open borders option for these child migrants are references to the situation as a “crisis” (here and here) or a “problem.”  Apprehending, detaining, and adjudicating the children is a self-imposed policy choice Americans have made, and it is this interference with the migration flow that is creating the strain on government resources.  Without this interference, the “crisis” or “problem” wouldn’t exist for the government.  The child migrants would travel safely to the U.S., disperse throughout the country, link up with (or arrive with) family, and start new lives. Some schools may see an increase in their student populations, which would involve some strain and expense for school districts, but eventually the children, like their U.S.-born peers, would become working members of society.  (See here for information on the economic impact of immigration on the receiving country.)

Beyond these self-evident advantages of open borders in addressing the child migration flow, here are three additional thoughts about the flow and the commentary surrounding it.  The first is that given the dire conditions and limited resources for children in Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala, the source countries for most of the recent child migration, the U.S. should facilitate their migration, in addition to opening the borders.  Loans could be provided to families or individual children to use for air transportation to the U.S., and once families are working they could begin to repay the loans.  This support could be provided exclusively by private organizations and individuals, but in a previous post on facilitating migration, I noted that the government may be in a better position to help than private entities.  As previously mentioned, this would allow poor families to avoid ground transportation through an often dangerous Mexico.  It also would enable them to quickly escape the violence and poverty endemic in their homelands.  Graphic descriptions of the dystopian conditions in the three aforementioned countries have appeared in recent articles and reports, including the following from the New York Times about conditions in Honduras:

Narco groups and gangs are vying for control over this turf, neighborhood by neighborhood, to gain more foot soldiers for drug sales and distribution, expand their customer base, and make money through extortion in a country left with an especially weak, corrupt government following a 2009 coup… Carlos Baquedano Sánchez, a slender 14-year-old with hair sticking straight up, explained how hard it was to stay away from the cartels.  He lives in a shack made of corrugated tin in a neighborhood in Nueva Suyapa called El Infiernito — Little Hell — and usually doesn’t have anything to eat one out of every three days. He started working in a dump when he was 7, picking out iron or copper to recycle, for $1 or $2 a day.  But bigger boys often beat him to steal his haul, and he quit a year ago when an older man nearly killed him for a coveted car-engine piston.  Now he sells scrap wood.  But all of this was nothing, he says, compared to the relentless pressure to join narco gangs and the constant danger they have brought to his life.  When he was 9, he barely escaped from two narcos who were trying to rape him, while terrified neighbors looked on.  When he was 10, he was pressured to try marijuana and crack. “You’ll feel better. Like you are in the clouds,” a teenager working with a gang told him.  But he resisted.  He has known eight people who were murdered and seen three killed right in front of him. He saw a man shot three years ago and still remembers the plums the man was holding rolling down the street, coated in blood.  Recently he witnessed two teenage hit men shooting a pair of brothers for refusing to hand over the keys and title to their motorcycle. Carlos hit the dirt and prayed. The killers calmly walked down the street. Carlos shrugs. “Now seeing someone dead is nothing.”  He longs to be an engineer or mechanic, but he quit school after sixth grade, too poor and too afraid to attend.  “A lot of kids know what can happen in school. So they leave.”

The New York Times piece adds that “asking for help from the police or the government is not an option in what some consider a failed state. The drugs that pass through Honduras each year are worth more than the country’s entire gross domestic product. Narcos have bought off police officers, politicians and judges. In recent years, four out of five homicides were never investigated.”  (See also here for information on conditions in El Salvador and here for conditions in a number of countries.)

The second idea is that the emphasis that some are putting on ensuring that the child migrants receive due process to determine if they are refugees, while possibly helping some immigrants stay in the U.S., is harmful to the open borders cause.  It helps to legitimize the exclusion of those who are not determined to be refugees. Sonia Nazario, the author of the aforementioned New York Times piece  describing conditions for children in Honduras, urges the creation of refugee centers in the U.S. where the children’s cases can be adjudicated.  She emphasizes the need for officers and judges to be “trained in child-sensitive interviewing techniques” and that children be represented by a lawyer.  However, she doesn’t hesitate to condone deportation for economic child migrants: “Of course, many migrant children come for economic reasons, and not because they fear for their lives.  In those cases, they should quickly be deported if they have at least one parent in their country of origin.”  Similarly, Jana Mason, a United Nations employee, states that “… these children, if they need it, should have access to a process to determine if they’re entitled to refugee protection.  If they’re not, if they don’t meet that definition, we fully understand, then they’re subject to normal U.S. deportation or removal procedures.”  Their implied message is that if the children get a fair examination of their refugee claims, they have been treated fairly, even if they end up being deported.

So what Ms. Nazario and Ms. Mason are saying is that if the only problem Carlos, the previously mentioned 14 year old, has in Honduras is that he only gets to eat two out of every three days and lives in a tin shack, he shouldn’t be allowed to emigrate to the U.S. And some children do want to migrate for economic reasons.  In a recent survey of Salvadoran children who wish to migrate to the U.S., some cite this reason for wanting to migrate.  Referring to children living in the most impoverished areas of the country, the survey’s author writes that “this desire for a better life is hardly surprising, given that many of these children began working in the fields at age 12 or younger and live in large families, often surviving on less than USD $150 a month.”  Ms. Nazario and Ms. Mason also imply children shouldn’t be allowed to migrate if their sole reason is to reunite with family already in the U.S., but again many want to migrate for this reason.  According to the survey of Salvadorans, about half have one or both parents in the U.S., and about one third identify family reunification as a reason for them to migrate.

John has noted that this effort to exclude non-refugee migrants can result in the exclusion of refugees.  Notwithstanding Ms. Nazario and Ms. Mason’s emphasis on a pristine asylum process, the process of identifying who qualifies can be flawed, especially if you consider the history of asylum adjudication.  As I’ve written previously, asylum is very narrowly defined under the law, and it is easy for asylum applicants to not qualify.  Furthermore, when politics intrude, asylum decisions can be tainted.  During the Cold War, asylum seekers from Communist countries were favored over those from non-Communist countries, including El Salvador and Guatemala, according to Bill Frelick and Court Robinson (International Journal of Refugee Law, Vol. 2, 1990)  And the recent arrival of immigrant children has become highly politicized, with “pressure on the president from all sides,” according to The New York Times.  The Times reports that “… administration lawyers have been working to find consistent legal justifications for speeding up the deportations of Central American children at the border…”  In addition, the outcome of an asylum case can depend greatly on who is adjudicating the case.  Finally, as Ms. Nazario suggests, if the U.S. doesn’t make it easier to apply for refugee status in Central America, refugees will still have to make a dangerous journey to the U.S. to even be able to apply for asylum.

The larger point is that it is immoral, with some rare exceptions, to stop people from migrating, regardless of their reason for doing so. There is, as John suggested recently, no justice in “an immigration system which arbitrarily excludes innocent people purely because of their condition of birth…”  Similarly, the group No One is Illegal, which supports open borders, suggests that it is morally impossible to bar some immigrants while allowing others to enter: “… the achievement of fair immigration restrictions — that is the transformation of immigration controls into their opposite — would require a miracle.”  Refugee advocates like Ms. Nazario and Ms. Mason, by emphasizing a distinction between those who deserve to be allowed to immigrate and those who do not, do harm to the effort to achieve the ability of all people to migrate freely.

The third idea is that the U.S. may bear some responsibility for the violent conditions in Central America.  In the case of Guatemala, the U.S. helped overthrow a democratic government in the 1950s, leading to a succession of repressive regimes and a civil war with massive killings of civilians by the government.  While it is difficult to prove causation, this legacy may account for some of the country’s current violence and poverty.  In addition, the U.S. deportation of Central American immigrants in the 1990s apparently has contributed to violent conditions in El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala.  Matthew Quirk, writing in The Atlantic six years ago, explained this link:  A small number of Salvadoran immigrants formed the MS-13 gang in Los Angeles in the late 1980s,

but MS-13 didn’t really take off until several years later, in El Salvador, after the U.S. adopted a get-tough policy on crime and immigration and began deporting first thousands, and then tens of thousands, of Central Americans each year, including many gang members.  Introduced into war-ravaged El Salvador, the gang spread quickly among demobilized soldiers and a younger generation accustomed to violence.  Many deportees who had been only loosely affiliated with MS-13 in the U.S. became hard-core members after being stranded in a country they did not know, with only other gang members to rely on… MS-13 and other gangs born in the United States now have 70,000 to 100,000 members in Central America, concentrated mostly in El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala.  The murder rate in each of these countries is now higher than that of Colombia, long the murder capital of Latin America.

Finally, the Libertarian Party has pointed out that “… U.S. government policies have caused the conditions that some of these Central American children are fleeing. The War on Drugs has created a huge black market in Latin America, causing increases in gang activity and violent crime.”  (For more information on connections between the drug war and immigration, see here.)  While U.S. contributions to problems in certain countries may not support a case for open borders, it does add another layer of U.S. responsibility for doing what is just for migrants from these countries.

In conclusion, establishing an open borders policy, combined with U.S. facilitation of migration, is the only moral and pragmatic response to the influx of Central American children.  Efforts to aid only a portion of the children in their quest to stay in the U.S. are morally insufficient and help to justify immigration restrictions.

What we can learn from Glenn Beck’s humane gesture and the response

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Glenn Beck (website, Wikipedia) is a political pundit in the United States who’s been described as a conservative with libertarian leanings. Beck has a large fan following. His shows can be quite mesmerizing, even if you don’t agree with him. He’s able to convey a mix of curiosity and honesty even when his statements are all wrong, and one often gets the sense that he’s sharing his own inner struggles with his viewers.

Beck has a streak of independence from mainstream wisdom that can be both an asset and a liability. On the one hand, this independence attracts him to conspiracy theories that most people dismiss, and that are often false, and exaggerated even when true. On the other hand, he can sometimes stick his neck out to courageously make an important and true point despite the fact that this would be detrimental to his ratings and subscriptions.

The story

In late June 2014, there were a couple of stories in The Blaze (a website owned by Glenn Beck) about Beck asking his audience to show compassion to the children who had been crossing the U.S. border illegally. His foundation, Mercury One, was accepting donations to help feed and house the children, and was targeting to raise $300,000. One article noted:

Beck has stated that the Obama administration is “directly responsible” for the recent flood of illegal immigrants from Central America. And though he believes every person who crossed into the United States illegally must be sent home, Beck and the charity he founded, Mercury One, have chosen to do all they can to help ensure the refugees have basic necessities like food and water.

An earlier article noted:

Beck said the American people have to make a choice. They could “run down to the border” and secure it themselves, but “that doesn’t fix the humanitarian crisis, and we have to err on the side of humanity.”

“If we’re going to be Americans, a choice has to be made. And we always make the right choice,” Beck said. “As people, we always do. We would rather extend ourselves and see the life of a child protected than err on the side of being silent, still, and [seeing] harm come to a child. … Acting in a compassionate way is what makes us human. It’s what makes us Americans.”

Beck said the tens of thousands illegal immigrants flooding our border “have to be sent home,” but that we can’t stand by while so much suffering is happening “on our side of the border.”

“I’m not talking about, we’re going to send them into our cities,” Beck said. “I’m saying, can we please get them port-o-potties? Can we get them portable showers? Can we feed them? You want to show the world what it means to be an American? Then let’s do that. Let’s put the well-being of others on the highest pedestal.”

On July 8, 2014, The Blaze published an article by Erica Ritz about Glenn Beck’s announcement that he would be “bringing tractor-trailers full of food, water, teddy bears and soccer balls to McAllen, Texas on July 19 as a way to help care for some of the roughly 60,000 underage refugees who have crossed into America illegally in 2014.” Here’s the video segment:

Issue Hawk noted (based off of the same video):

Beck plans to go to the border on July 19, bringing with him, according to Mediaite.com, “tractor-trailers full of food, water, teddy bears, and soccer balls.” He will be joined by religious leaders and two Congressmen who could stand a lesson or two in compassion, Reps. Mike Lee of Utah and Louie Gohmert of Texas. He then said this decision has cost him money (vis-à-vis subscriptions/donations) and garnered “violent” hate mail from his audience.

Beck’s attitude on immigration is much different than is currently espoused on conservative media. “The best way to secure our borders and to make America a safe place,” he says, “is to make it accessible to all those fleeing poverty, oppression, and violence. Anybody in search of a better life.” He mocked those (like Sarah Palin) who claim that this is solely the President’s fault (or part of a secret agenda).

Beck’s announcement met with a lot of critical pushback in the comments on the Blaze story, mostly expressing strong disapproval of Beck for lending any sort of helping hand to the “illegals”. It was also covered in a few other sources:

  • The Huffington Post also published the story, and responses there were mixed: some viewed Beck’s approach as cynical and insincere, some expressed reactions similar to those common on the Blaze, and some expressed admiration of Beck.

  • Gawker covered the story with the title Glenn Beck Angers Conservatives by Being Humane to Immigrants, pointing out how Glenn Beck’s humane gesture got heavy pushback from conservatives, including legislators.

  • Jonathan Topaz covered the story in an article titled What Glenn Beck fears could destroy him for Politico, July 9, 2014.

  • Over at Big Journalism, John Nolte offered a more sophisticated criticism of Glenn Beck, arguing that showing compassion to the illegal immigrants only incentivized more of them to cross, and to risk their lives in the dangerous journey. While his own criticism was prima facie reasonable, Nolte seemed oblivious to the statements of other critics of Beck, as evidenced in this paragraph (emphasis mine):

    Beck’s desire to help kids caught in a geopolitical crossfire through no fault of their own is laudable. We all want to help. I’ve yet to hear anyone argue that it’s wrong to use American taxpayer dollars to feed, house, and offer medical care to these children. No one opposes that.

    Beck thinks more needs to be done.

    Fine.

  • In a post on Hot Air titled Glenn Beck, the border crisis, and the Republican Party’s empathy gap, Noah Rothman argued that conservatives had the problem of being and/or giving the impression of lacking empathy for suffering people, and Glenn Beck’s gesture was a good counterexample, but the pushback against him illustrated the problem again. He also pointed out many instances of lack of left-wing empathy, but said that conservatives needed to take more proactive steps to turn the narrative around.

  • In a post titled Glenn Beck Trucking Supplies to Border for Illegal Immigrants, Surprising People Who Base Their Opinions on Stereotypes at Reason‘s Hit and Run blog, Ed Krayewski wrote:

    Beck appears to be the only prominent figure, left or right, interested enough in the crisis at the border to do something himself and not just use it as a political opportunity to push for his preferred policy solutions. It shouldn’t surprise anyone who’s paid attention to Beck over the years.

  • In an article titled What Glenn Beck Got Right About The Border Crisis in The Daily Caller, July 11, 2014, Matt K. Lewis praised Beck’s humanitarian decision, and also noted:

    Personally, there are a lot of things I like about what Beck is doing. Conservatism shouldn’t be just about politics, and, of course, it isn’t. Conservatives (even the evil Koch brothers!) tend to be charitable — at least, in terms of giving money.

    Nolte argues that Christian charity should be done in secret, and to a certain extent, I agree. But isn’t there something to be said for leaders who are willing to set a positive public example? Isn’t there something gained from Glenn Beck challenging his audience to put aside politics and anger — and instead react to a humanitarian crisis simply as humans and people of faith?

    […]

    Additionally, isn’t it possible that Beck and Gohmert and Lee will — having seen the plight of these refugees — come away changed or have a different perspective? One wonders how bad things must be in Guatemala or Honduras for a mom and dad to pay a coyote to smuggle their child into a foreign land. Perhaps this will result in some introspection.

The analysis

  1. Whether Beck’s approach will actually help the children he intends to help, and whether his method of doing so is cost-effective, are questions I have no idea on. I am generally skeptical of gifts in kind, and I also have no reason to believe that Glenn Beck has a good track record of effective use of charitable donations. Finally, even if it were effective, an altruistic donor should still compare it against other, perhaps even more cost-effective ways of doing good. I have no specific evidence against Glenn Beck, but my general Bayesian prior suggests it’s highly unlikely to be a good place to donate money.

  2. The main value of what Beck is doing is symbolic: it raises the status of the issue, and makes the point that private individuals can (and arguably should) extend a helping hand. It elevates the humanity of migrants over their “illegal” status. Seeing a major figure (hitherto) respected by a large number of restrictionists make this point publicly has huge value, even if his specific actions are not that helpful.

  3. Of course, one can read this cynically and say that Beck is just looking for publicity, perhaps sacrificing short-term financial interest for long-term gains with a new demographic or target audience. Another possibility is that Beck was influenced by a big donor who made donations to Mercury One conditional to Beck using the money to take these actions (Beck does indeed mention an anonymous donor who gave $100,000, but there’s no evidence that the donor provided explicit input to Beck’s decision). I don’t have enough inside information to know the extent to which either of these is true. However, it is largely irrelevant to the analysis here: I’m interested more in the symbolism of the action itself rather than Beck’s possible ulterior motives.

  4. On the other hand, as my co-blogger John Lee pointed out eloquently a few days ago, the issue is primarily one of justice, not compassion. The presumption of freedom of movement across borders should be built on basic rights rather than on special pleading based on extenuating circumstances. The Libertarian Party agrees, saying:

    Ultimately, the fact that many of these children are fleeing dangerous situations isn’t the issue. Even if they were coming to the United States for fun, we should still allow them to enter. All foreigners should be allowed entry into the United States unless the government can produce positive evidence that they pose a threat to security, health, or property.

    Beck, on the other hand, seems to be motivated largely by compassion. He urges us to “err on the side of humanity” and says that when America is no longer good, it stops being great. So clearly, Beck is quite far from an open borders advocate. But compassion can be an important first step in recognizing the humanity of other people. This isn’t to say that restrictionists don’t recognize the humanity of potential migrants in theory, but many of them seem to forget it in practice or deprioritize it relative to other considerations. By highlighting the issue, Beck is trying to force people to more explicitly confront the dilemma. Some, like John Nolte, rise to the challenge by arguing that the treatment of migrant children is unfortunate but is the lesser of two evils. The more common response in the comments is to continue to refuse to confront the dilemma, and to shout Beck down.

  5. All that said, Nolte’s general class of criticism is correct in a broad sense, although it may very well not apply here. Namely, being more welcoming to people who crossed borders without authorization increases the incentive to cross borders without authorization. On the other hand, raping people who crossed borders without authorization reduces the incentive to cross borders without authorization. Offering amnesty to people who crossed borders without authorization increases the incentive to cross borders without authorization, whereas shooting them on sight reduces the incentive. It may well be the case that the primary reason for the recent surge of child migrants was worsening conditions in Central America. At least that’s what Dara Lind suggests on Vox.com. The other hypothesis is that a 2008 law passed to protect sex slaves has meant that children are less likely to be deported, and therefore incentivizes more child migration (more here). Whatever the reason, there should be a Bayesian prior that changes to the level of welcome at the margin affect migration decisions.

  6. The above leads us to two closely related contradictions in the compassionate moderate approaches to migration championed by progressives and Glenn Beck. First off, it isn’t very logically consistent to show compassion to migrants once they have crossed the border, while having little concern for those outside (cf. territorialism). The inconsistency is even weirder if you simultaneously think of illegal immigration as morally wrong. Think about it: you’re saying that if somebody who does not matter does an action you consider immoral, he or she starts mattering a lot more! Related to the moral contradiction is the practical implication: territorialist compassion incentivizes more illegal immigration, thereby heightening the contradiction with continued emphasis on border security and the rule of law. These points were made by co-blogger Nathan Smith here and Joel Newman here.

  7. What I find personally heartening about Glenn Beck’s thinking is that even though he is clearly far from open borders, he is employing some of the core elements of reasoning used in establishing the open borders presumption, and his thinking appears to be evolving fast. As the quotes above show, on June 25, he was putting emphasis on the fact that after feeding people, it was important to send them home. But by July 8, he had dropped explicit reference to sending people home, and even suggested that, in an ideal world at least, the United States should be open to people fleeing poverty and oppression. This does not mean he favors open borders in the current world, but he seems to have acknowledged a presumption of freedom of migration, even if very vaguely and in passing. What’s perhaps even more encouraging is that this rhetorical shift occurred despite significant pushback from his fan following. Whatever Beck’s inner views, the fact that he saw an opportunity to evolve in a direction opposite to what his audience was incentivizing him to do suggests that his public statements on the issue might continue to try to push his audience to think of the humanity of migrants.

    All in all, I don’t expect Beck to become a champion of open borders any time in the near future. The best-case scenario I consider plausible is that he acknowledges a presumption of free movement, but rather than actively campaigning for it, blames politicians in a vague way for politicizing the issue for personal electoral interest. If pressed, he might retort with some of the reflexive libertarian retorts against open borders. Of course, I’d be happy if I were wrong about this and Beck went all the way to open borders, if he could do so while still retaining at least something of a public presence.

    At the same time, I consider it quite unlikely that Beck’s views, or his choice of emphasis, will move in a more restrictionist direction. It’s very hard to stake out a humanitarian position and then return to “illegal”-bashing rhetoric. Even if he wanted to, I think Beck (or anybody else, for that matter) would find it hard.

  8. Beck’s admittedly limited, confused, and compassion-heavy moves will probably do more for the open borders cause than other, more minor, political pundits (such as John Stossel or Andrew Napolitano) who embrace open borders far more completely. That’s because Beck connects with a larger audience at an emotional level. And going by Wikipedia views and Google Trends, Glenn Beck appears to be the most read-about and most searched-about pundit among top American television and radio pundits. Rush Limbaugh (website, Wikipedia) is the only other figure who performs comparably. So Beck is in a position to influence a lot more people than most pundits.

    There may be a lot of visible pushback against him right now, but Beck has set a precedent and next time around, there will be more open support for him from within the conservative flank (cf. Asch conformity experiments). Even if Glenn Beck fades out as a pundit himself (due to this issue or any other), it’s likely that future firebrands will pick up where he left.

Weekly OBAG roundup 21 2014

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This is part of a series of weekly posts with the most interesting content from the Open Borders Action Group on Facebook. Do join the group to weigh in on existing discussions or start your own (you might want to read this post before joining).

Blegs and suggestions for artistic and literary depictions

Opinions of others about migration: general points

Opinions of others about migration: specific observations (including links to videos, debates, etc.)

Specific current and historical situations

Site and community meta

I don’t care about immigration sob stories. This is about justice, not compassion

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To many, even those sympathetic towards it, I imagine liberalising immigration policy is just another pet bleeding heart cause — similar to saving the environment, helping battered women, aiding the homeless, etc. It can seem arrogant of open borders advocates to compare our cause to historical antecedents such as the abolition of slavery or apartheid. And I get these sentiments — in fact, I quite agree with them on a very fundamental level.

In the daily news, it’s rare to not come across a photograph or story of some activists fighting for an immigration-related cause. Sometimes it’s for the cause of allowing immigrants in the US to get in-state university tuition benefits; other times, it’s protesting the detention of asylum-seekers (whether in the US, UK, Australia, or elsewhere); most commonly, it’s a protest, somewhere in the US, demanding the cessation of deportations. Recently, the cause celebre has been, of course, the problem of children migrating to the US. Now, to be fully honest with you, I often look at these pictures and read these stories, and feel that I just don’t care.

Now, of course I do care very much about the issues at stake here: I spend a lot of time writing about open borders, for pete’s sake! So why do I read about immigration in the news and just go “meh”?

To add to the puzzle, this is actually a very personal and emotional issue for me. It’s impossible, actually, for me to understand migration without reference to emotion and personal experience. As a child, I lived for years knowing that my mother could be deported if she and my father were to separate, or even if she were to be widowed, thanks to my country’s immigration laws. As a student in the US, I wondered whether I’d ever be able to get a job here, with visa laws effectively banning me from taking a job outside investment banking or management consulting. And now as a US resident, I’ve seen my friends — and even my girlfriend — be forced to leave this country, thanks to its patently ridiculous laws.

So why then my disconnect from all these stories? My epiphany came when I read a story in the Washington Post about an American woman bidding her Bangladeshi husband farewell before his impending deportation. I’ve felt the same fears and worries they do and lived through similar frustration and farewells thanks to arbitrary immigration controls. I could put myself in their shoes.

Now this actually made me despair further: how can advocates of liberal migration laws win people’s hearts and minds with sob stories like these? Hardly any citizens will ever face the violent force of their own governments’ exclusionary immigration policies. How can citizens begin to care about the effects of their immigration laws, let alone be moved to support changing them? How, when even someone like me — one who deeply cares about immigration and demands open borders — can only be affected by a story that’s personally connected to my own?

Then, I read this comment on the Washington Post article:

Sorry, but she is making a choice here and it is not for her husband. If she is placing all these things before him, then it cannot be helped. If I were in her shoes there would be no way that I would not be on that plane with my spouse. I might miss Kansas, but I would make the necessary arrangements and I would be at his side.

Our actions reveal where are loyalties lie, and this lady appears to be more concerned with living in Kansas and the job she loves and all the rest, than in being with the man whom she married.

My reaction to this was anger. I fumed. To restate the cold logic here: “If the government forces your husband to live in a strange country where there are no jobs for you or him, and you choose to keep your job and the home you’ve both shared for decades, you clearly just love money and comfort more than your husband.” Pretty easy to say this when you’ve never had the government kick your partner out of the country — as has actually happened to me and to many of my friends.

After I calmed down, I asked myself why a commenter might react to the story in this manner. As a general rule, people are not randomly vindictive. So why the harsh reaction aimed at this woman and her husband? The obvious answer is that the commenter did not think to question the justice system’s decision to exclude someone; if the system has decided, the decision must be correct. Justice must be served.

But why is it that we don’t think to question the justice of this system? Why does this story not move us to ponder whether the law here was just? Why do the journalists and activists putting these stories out there not explicitly question the justice of an immigration system which arbitrarily excludes innocent people purely because of their condition of birth?

I’ve come to think that the reason I don’t care when I see pictures of hunger strikers protesting deportations, or picketers demanding immigrant access to certain benefits, and so on, is because these stories have always been framed in terms of compassion — not justice.

This is not to say I consider myself heartless or lacking compassion, although I am not in any place to judge myself. Rather, it is that when I read about stories which don’t directly affect me, it is simply difficult to relate to them on an emotional level. And when these stories try to engage me by asking me to feel compassion for those affected, I only feel a sense of weariness.

There are a million causes in the world, and almost all of them seem to be asking for my compassion when I open the daily papers. Today it’s genocide in Darfur; tomorrow it’s children being kidnapped in Nigeria; next week, it might be people rendered homeless in the wake of a natural disaster (tsunami? hurricane? earthquake?); next month, perhaps another school shooting. I don’t have the time or energy to be emotionally invested in every single one of these issues.

And to the degree that I might choose to invest my emotions, there’s no particularly compelling reason to choose immigration as my humanitarian cause du jour over, say, victims of domestic violence or poaching endangered animals. You can tell me all the reasons why I ought to care more about immigration, but if you have to give me a 21-point list of reasons why I ought to care — if your sob story cannot speak for itself — then you’re not likely to win me over.

It may strike one as galling to so baldly rank and prioritise humanitarian or compassionate causes, but this is exactly what all of us as citizens and individuals do all the time. Virtually every one of these activism stories pulls at the humanitarian, compassionate angle, but none of us has the time to devote to more than a handful of such issues.

Now, the compassionate angle I think actually works especially well for many causes. But I think for migration it seems singularly unlikely to work; if anything, it can easily become counter-productive. Unlike with a cause like animal rights or famine relief — almost everyone’s played with a pet or felt the pangs of hunger before — few of us have experienced the feeling of being persecuted by the state under the aegis of arbitrary immigration laws. You can’t count on your audience to share the emotional experiences you might have as a migrant, activist, or journalist who has personally seen the horror of arbitrary immigration laws.

When you play up the compassionate angle in the story of a victim of deportation, what are you asking for? Unlike with many humanitarian causes, you are not asking for charitable donations. Rather, you are asking people to demand a change or an exception to settled law.

Now, we can certainly demand that laws be changed on compassionate or humanitarian grounds. But how convincing is this? If people believe the justice system has found someone guilty of a crime, are they going to believe the criminal ought to get clemency simply because we ought to have compassion for the criminal? In an ideal world, this could perhaps be true. But in the real world, people believe that if you’re a criminal, you ought to pay the price set by the justice system.

As a result, the constant framing of immigration as a question of compassion perplexes me. This is like asking for a slave to be set free, not because laws permitting slavery are barbaric and need to be repealed, but because poor Uncle Tom really needs to be free, and oh isn’t it such a shame that in this case the law is irrationally separating him from his family?

I mean, yes, the law is inhumane and barbaric and evil — but that’s the whole point! Asking for compassionate special pleading on purely humanitarian grounds, without ever questioning the barbaric law that is in place, simply throws your entire case away. Somehow, this is the modus operandi in how immigration activists campaign for liberal reforms!

Put more bluntly, the case for more liberal migration laws, and yes, open borders, cannot rest on compassionate grounds. Yes, one can make such a compassionate case. But there are a million things needing our compassion. What makes immigrants so special?

The point is not that immigrants are special. No, the point is that immigrants are just like you and me. The point is that our law owes them justice, same as the law owes any and all of us. We cannot use the force of law to exclude people from society in an unjust manner. We cannot allow our government to perpetrate injustice and oppression in our name.

That’s what makes immigration and open borders so compelling to me. I don’t see immigrants as some group in need of special pleading or special compassion from me or the government. I see migrants as ordinary people who, same as anyone else, need to be treated justly. The reason I care so much about this issue is not because I feel immigrants need my special attention — although I think there is a case for more compassion towards those who are strangers in our land. I simply believe that immigrants, like all of us, are entitled to just treatment under the law.

Rohingya being deported from Bangladesh

Immigration reform and open borders are not about making life better for a special, deserving class of people. They are about abolishing systems of injustice which unjustly oppress ordinary people. The woman who loses her deported husband does not need our compassion; she does not need a special exemption from our irrational laws. What she needs, what millions of others like her need, is justice.