National Emergency? What
Emergency?
By Hank Silverberg
The government is partially shut
down, the stock market is on a roller coaster, and the President thinks the
1,954 mile border between the U.S. and Mexico is totally open and we are being
invaded. That, he says, is a "National Emergency." He has even hinted he may bypass Congress and use that declaration to take money from the Department of Defense to build a border wall.
With that in mind, let’s take a closer look at this so called "National Emergency." The overall economy may be slowing down a bit, and that could be a concern. But the
stock market’s volatility may have been created by an unstable global market
tied somewhat to a series of punitive tariffs imposed by the Trump
Administration. The President’s incessant tweets criticizing the Federal
Reserve Board over raising interest rates has increased investor's anxiety.
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Russia and
China are playing the Currency Devaluation game as the U.S. keeps raising
interest rates. Not acceptable!
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The second part of this so called "National Emergency," the government shutdown, comes from
the inability of the President and his minions in the GOP controlled Senate to compromise on a border wall. They refuse to remove the
concept from legislation to fund the government. So those two parts of the
so-called “National Emergency” were created by the President himself.
The obsession over the wall is
based on faulty information, and Mr Trump's own stubbornness to admit he is wrong. The Department of Homeland Security, including the current leadership, says there are
about 12 million people in the United States who came here illegally. That represents just 3.5 percent of the total U.S. population, and 75 percent of them have been
here more than ten years. Those statistics are from the government, not immigrant groups or those who oppose the morality of a border wall.
Those figures have stayed relatively the same over the last few
years, and if you look deeper into government statistics, the flow of so-called “illegals” has gone down over the
last decade. About 303,000 people crossed the southern border illegally in 2017, way down
from a 1.6 million peak in 2000. More than 16 thousand agents are patrolling
the southwest border, almost double the number in 2000. This is an indication
that better patrolling may be cutting down on illegal immigration without a
wall. There is already a security fence on 654 miles of the U.S. /Mexican
border, mainly in urban areas.
In the last four years the border patrol has uncovered 75 tunnels built UNDER fences and buildings. They were used by drug smugglers, not immigrants. But they prove the ineffectiveness of such walls against the sophisticated and real threat at the border, organized criminals, not families with children who are often fleeing drug cartel violence in their native countries. We should be using those border patrol agents to stop drug smugglers, where there has been some success, and the human traffickers who take advantage of the downtrodden. Instead, the current administration has increased efforts against families and children.
https://www.factcheck.org/2018/06/illegal-immigration-statistics/
Some more government
statistics. In 2016, when Barack Obama
left office, the number of undocumented immigrants living in the United States
was at its lowest level in a decade. And those same statistics say Visa overstays
are now an increasingly significant share of illegal immigration. That means
someone who legally enters with a Visa simply stays in the country when their
Visa expires. A wall would not stop any of those people.
I could cite many more statistics,
including the over 600 thousand DACA participants, immigrants who were brought
into the country by their parents illegally when they were young children. They have
grown up in this country. But it’s clear the so-called “crises” at the southern border is no worse, and
maybe a bit better, than it was a decade ago and certainly does not constitute an invasion.
Mr. Trump has also used some high profile crimes committed by illegal immigrants as another reason for building the wall. But again, the numbers say that is more fear than reality. A study conducted by the "Sentencing Project" has found that in the 18-54 age group, who commit most of the crimes in this country, about 1.53 percent of the native population have committed crimes, while only .85 percent of undocumented immigrants fit that category--a much lower rate. While high profile cases like the recent murder of police Corporal Ronil Singh, in Newman, California, by an illegal immigrant are tragic, such crimes committed by illegal immigrants occur at a much lower rate than the rest of the population. Crime in general in the United States is trending downward, and singling out immigrants of any kind as contributing to a spike in crime just doesn't go along with the facts.
I have written before how
important immigrants have been to the growth and history of this country.
Before 1921, the United States did not have general laws against immigration. If you
got here, you could stay here, with a few exceptions. That’s one reason two thirds of ALL current
residents in the United States are no more than four generations removed from
their immigrant ancestors.
The first laws were passed because
of unsubstantiated fear. For example, in 1875 Congress passed The Page Act, which excluded
criminals and prostitutes. But it also prohibited Chinese Contract laborers from entering the
country. It was a reaction to
the thousands of Chinese who came here to build the transcontinental railroad, which continued as a major national economic engine well into the 20th century.
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| (The "Pens" at Ellis Island in New York Harbor where immigrants were screened between 1892 and 1943) |
Again, unsubstantiated fear about disease, poverty and crime was the motive.
If you look at the statistics and
then examine the rhetoric coming from the White House and some in Congress,
then history is repeating itself. Drastic restrictions on immigration in the
past did little to stop the Great Depression or to end it. They may have
actually contributed to World War Two and the Holocaust by encouraging
repression of minorities or the displaced in other countries around the world.
Before you fall for the rhetoric
of blaming the illegal immigrants for your own troubles, take out the family
photo album and look at the photos of your grandparents or great
grandparents, or great- great- grandparents. What would your life be like had they
been kept out of the U.S., and what would the United States look like now? Some of you will
argue of course that your ancestors came here legally. But how many of your
ancestors came here as refugees from war or political or economic turmoil in
their native countries? The answer is millions.
The Trump Administration's policy
is not just to build a physical wall to keep people out. It is a policy of
exclusion of anyone who doesn’t fit their idea of who should be an American.
They are also working on new laws
to make it harder to immigrate to this country LEGALLY as part of the so called “America First”
policy.
This effort is as cruel and un-American today as that first law against
Chinese laborers was in 1875.
(Your comments and suggestions are welcome. See section below.)
(My book can be purchased at Amazon.com, BN.com, hanksilverbergbooks.com or at a reduced rate with signature by emailing me at hsilverberg@gmail.com for instructions)
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