Understanding The Complicated Road to Fixing Illegal Immigration Policy and the Political Infighting that isn’t helping

Over the course of the past three years, we have seen the immigration issue, in America, bubble from a conversation into a full blown argument — with neither side of the aisle willing to fully compromise, to create a solution that ensures longer term success — Not just for Migrants, but Americans alike.

A little over 20 years ago, President Bill Clinton signed into law the policies that have created the deportation machine and current quagmire that we are experiencing in America today.

According to Vox:

The ’96 law essentially invented immigration enforcement as we know it today — where deportation is a constant and plausible threat to millions of immigrants. It was a bundle of provisions with a single goal: to increase penalties on immigrants who had violated US law in some way (whether they were unauthorized immigrants who’d violated immigration law or legal immigrants who’d committed other crimes).

IIRIRA greatly expanded the types of crimes that could result in the deportation of a foreign national. This included lawful permanent residents. And the Clinton bill made those changes retroactive, thereby boosting the number of possible (probable) deportations.

That situation became more complicated across the Bush administration, As the original border wall was voted on, passed and implemented — with the bipartisan support of 26 Democrats including Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer.

Under Bush, we still had deportations but a move towards increased national security along the border — related to the influx of gangs and the occasional terrorist actor.

So, as we moved into the Obama administration — we had a complicated border policy that turned away the majority of migrants attempting to come into America illegally, As well as part of a border wall (About 580 miles) And border fencing extending barriers to 700 miles

Under the Obama administration, things got more complicated — and the question of moral hazard was thrown away by the Democrats.

You see there’s two arguments that we have today — one is that it is amoral to exclude people who are suffering from coming into America even though they’re not pursuing coming into America through the legal process. [This is the argument that representative Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (#AOC) and her Justice Democrats posit.]

However, for 8 years, under the Obama administration — deporting illegal immigrants and their children Was seen as OK and not amoral.

Again, for Democrats — That perspective has changed today.

In fact, there’s very little in the press during that time that condemns the deportations — and Obama himself was rather adamant that children should not try and migrate to the United States illegally.

Today, the complicated challenge that we have is that the Democratic Position on the morality of deportations has changed.

This is largely due to their parties shift from the perspective of closed borders Under Clinton and Obama to a new perspective of open borders, as a response to Trump.

As their policy shifted so did their moral perspective on what they found permissible.

On the opposite side of the aisle, The Republican perspective has always been rather uniform.

“You probably shouldn’t extend your table to allow others to come in, if you can’t afford to pay for those at your table today — Oz Sultan, GOP District Leader NY 70 AD”

That is a perspective that was shared by Democrats and Republicans alike well into the Obama administration.

In fact in 2008, then VP candidate, Joe Biden not only advocated for a border wall, to stop drugs from coming into the United States — but actively advocated for the deportation of illegal migrants.

Biden was also a proponent of the border wall.

A changing demographic base for the Democratic Party, And the nomination and confirmation of a Latino leader for the #DNC, Tom Perez, led to some complicated policy shifts within the Democratic Party.

So to recap to this point:

The republican view that not providing for Americans is a moral hazard, as:

• We have millions of underprivileged black children Living in near poverty
• We are not providing adequately for our veterans
• Our current healthcare system, that includes a mixture of Medicaid, Medicare and the ACA (or Obamacare), Is stretched horribly thin
• We have millions of poor white and Black citizens in rural communities, That are underserved
• America’s needs are for skilled labor and technical employees that can fill the 16,000,000+ open job openings that we have for cyber security and technical infrastructure — As well as millions of skilled positions in technical welding and infrastructure building (bridges, roads, et al)

While Democrats new view is that not providing for Illegal immigrants is a moral hazard, largely Due to their new perspective That no human is illegal.

So this is a good time to segue and ask a simple question:

In the past week the former head of the EDL, #TommyRobinson, Came to the border and tried gain entry to the United States are using a false passport.

His crime of illegal entry is a similar crime to that of illegal immigrants.

So, what exactly is the yardstick for assessing an illegal immigrant and determining whether or not they have a case to stay?

Further, because of the complicated back-and-forth over legislation with the DREAM act, As well as DACA — The path for illegal immigrants, Who have successfully cross the border and entered the United States — Is largely in limbo.

Additionally what is not paid attention to is — that of the tens of thousands of deportations that happen every month, Not all of them are “Poor Latinos facing difficulty back home”.

Because, there is very little coverage of other groups of illegal immigrants, such as the Irish, who have been caught up in the ongoing ICE dragnet.

The illegal immigration challenge that President Trump inherited is a complicated landscape that asks many questions that don’t have easy answers.

Firstly, data has shown that a large number of illegal immigrants to the United States suffer at the hands of some absolutely horrific hells Under the coyotes (or smugglers) who bring them to our borders.

Secondly, illegal immigration is also tied into gangs and cartel related human trafficking, sex trafficking and organ trafficking

The United Nations, has also begun compiling data on, what is a massive global crime industry — and now becoming an increasingly larger societal problem in America:

President Trump has been fairly vigilant on this issue — but tackling trafficking and breaking up organized human trafficking and sex trafficking rings, has been a more important for this administration than illegal immigration.

Thirdly, The Trump administration Took steps to separate adults and children in an effort to disrupt sex trafficking — Only to have the policy blow up in their face with the challenges that bureaucracy has, in managing large adult and large child populations in refugee centers.

What we have seen is that while the policy was well intended it has had some rather catastrophic consequences — Notably and inability of some of the facilities to provide fully adequate childcare — due to the sheer numbers of illegals crossing the border every month.

These problems are further compounded by a stalemate in between Democrats and Republicans, inside of Congress.

So while Democrats don’t see a clear path forward — we continue to have a problem that has gone from a small polyps to become a festering cancer in the side of the American public.

What is clear, at this juncture, is the continued grandstanding by Justice Democrats politicians such as #AOC, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib and defaming of the President, #ICE, #CBP, the Police and Government officials with over 30 years experience working on these complicated issues — Isn’t doing much more than fanning the flames of anger across the American populace.

Beyond that, Many of our freshman legislators haven’t taken a look at the history behind this issue — which is the necessity for this specific article.

#AOC Questioned former #ICE director Thomas Homan And what was an opportunity to ask questions about problems and discuss answers — turned into a bit of an inquisition coupled with a fishing expedition.

I understand that our freshman legislators are angry about these issues, and would like to figure out a way to pin blame — but that’s not how any of this works.

The illegal immigration issue has been ongoing for the better part of half of a century — and the culpability of what we’re dealing with now, from a policy perspective rests squarely on the shoulders of Presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama.

President Trump is culpable in creating a child separation policy — intended to disrupt the trafficking process but ended up creating his own private Idaho, in the process.

So what’s the solution? I think most Americans have been asking themselves this question for the better part of the last two years. There aren’t easy answers.

While American mayors, who have their cities designated, as sanctuary cities, want to allow for the provisioning of DREAM and DACA legislation to illegals — They don’t want to work with the administration to allow for mass resettlements of more illegals. The simple problem is that there isn’t enough money to provide for HUD, Section 8 for subsidized housing.

I know this for a fact, because I sit on a homeless coalition, that is pushing back against the Bill de Blasio administration — Who wants to pay private corporations $5000 a month to house existing homeless and recently incarcerated people in bunkbed shelters.

We don’t see how housing the homeless in neighborhoods where lunch cost $25, average, helps them or helps the community.

Additionally at a projected — project expenditure of $100 million they’re only going to provide for about 2000 homeless people a year.

Now do the simple math on that — and estimate what it would cost to re-settle say 200,000 or so illegal immigrants that we have in border centers (There may be more but we need to come up with some discussion numbers to start)

Let’s use the homeless coalition math of $5000 a month per person as a yardstick.

That’s $12 billion for one year.

Given that a large number of these illegal immigrants are unskilled — the cities that people are trying to move them into namely places like New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Houston — may prove more difficult for them to find adequate employment and / or be able to fully support themselves.

In addition to the cost of housing, there will also be the cost of getting them there — and a radical change that would be needed for the existing visa process.

That means that we would have to create an additional alien visa, for illegal immigrants — and an entirely new process by which they would have a path to either citizenship or stabilizing themselves to move elsewhere, in the future.

As we’ve seen with immigration reform — over the course of the past two decades — we’re still at a relative stalemate, in terms of the processes by which illegals can find a path to citizenship.

Therefore it’s reasonable to assume that were these people to be re-settled here — they would be in limbo until potentially 2030 — and that the cost that they would put on the American taxpayers could very well exceed $1 trillion a year if you were to allow that yardstick number of 200,000 people annually, then Begin to include the cost of healthcare, education, childcare and entitlements (Because were using yardstick numbers here — but it’s unlikely that you can have entire family is living in bunkbeds in homeless shelter housing models).

Now the numbers that were talking about, in reality, are not 200,000 a year — we’re talking more recently that we are exceeding 200,000 a month, that are crossing the border.

Illegals currently comprise somewhere between 3.2 and 3.3% of the total population of the United States. Which is why things like a citizenship question are kind of important to understand: Where do citizens and noncitizens live and what services they consume? What did they do and what could be beneficial to them in the future — in terms of government services, education et al.

So in between the perspective of the Democrats and the Republicans — Those being:

• the Democrats saying that no one is illegal
• the Republicans saying that if you can’t afford to have more people at your table, Then some people aren’t going to eat

We have a challenge.

What exactly could we do to solve this situation long-term?

The long-term portion of this is more important to understand because as countries in South America are facing a high degree of destabilization into the 2020s — Should Venezuela collapse, we could be looking at 400,000 illegal immigrants approaching our borders every month by 2026.

The entire economic systems of our southern states and the northern provinces of Mexico will begin to collapse at that point.

So let’s go back to understanding why this is happening.

Between bad policy, the war on drugs and efforts to stay dictators — over the past couple of decades — The #northerntriangle and some of the Latin American states have become difficult places to live.

This is coupled with the fact that gangs like MS 13, Which oddly originated in Los Angeles — But that’s another story for another time — Have managed to take over entire provinces in Mexico as well as provinces in the number of Latin American countries.

Add to this, that you have cartel warfare — which has been ongoing for the past 20 or 30 years — but has begun to escalate into full-fledged wars that make some towns in Mexico look like battlegrounds in Syria.

And on top of all of that, you have regional separatist movements — that come and go over the course of years — which increase the amount of violence, rape and lack of access to work or healthcare.

These aren’t separatists like Subcomandante Marcos — who terrorized Mexico’s Chiapas region in the 1990s — These are often times brutal organizations That will collect peoples ears, as trophies.

So in order to solve the illegal immigration problem — we’re going to have to tackle it at the source, which means we’re gonna have to figure out how we can help Latin America start building secure communities, that are defensible against the gangs separatists, and the cartels.

How the hell are we going to do that you ask? At this point you may be thinking — maybe the Democrats aren’t all that bad with wanting to just put everyone in America, even though it will bankrupt us in a couple years.

It’s a reasonable thought — but America hasn’t survived for over 200 years, by making decisions that are Against our own self interest — and leave less of a future for our grandchildren.

But where do we come up with a solution they can actually account for building sustainable communities while dealing with combat situations on the ground?

For that we’ve got a take A bit of a trip down memory lane.

The solution:

In the 1980s, Joanne King Herring, a Texas socialite and Republican — began to work with the democratic congressman Charlie Wilson, to try and find a way to help the people of Afghanistan — who were being slaughtered by Russians, very similar to what’s going on with the cartels in Mexico today.

What Joanne and Charlie accomplished — led to the end of the Cold War, and the fall of the Soviet wall in Germany in the early 90s.

Rebuilding took more of a zigzag course because after the Afghanistan war — America wasn’t really in the business of rebuilding countries anymore. That ended after World War II and considerable expense of the American taxpayer.

What Joanne was however able to achieve — was the rebuilding of a city in Afghanistan — that over the course of several years has proven to not only allow for women’s empowement, but job creation but full defensibility against the Taliban.

That’s city is Khairabad, And it’s the model for the Herring plan. Today it’s a city of over 30,000 people.

Joanne has a simple proposal — that is impressive in design and effective in what it could achieve.

Take what was accomplished in Khairabad — -The Herring model — Which is based upon five key Pillars of city development and defensibility. Take that model and work with the president of Honduras Guatemala and El Salvador — The three countries that comprise the northern triangle, And identify a border area where we could set up migrant processing and the ability to start creating defensible cities.

The cost of development of each city is under $1 million and would Provide housing and sustainable resourcing for up to 20,000 people. Building a network of the cities would allow for the creation of smaller regions and those regions could be tied into either the agricultural or industrial production sectors of Latin America.

Joanne also has made recommendations to a number of American corporations — these are companies that could easily become involved in creating not just trade opportunities — but long ranging training and job opportunities, that could quickly allow for the building of society.

Society, that supports Latin America while allowing for the northern triangle to become an increasingly important trade partner with the United States.

So here’s our proposal. The Joanne King Herring Foundation which was established earlier this year with a vision of helping migrants and displaced people around the world — Wants them to develop this as a bipartisan Policy aimed at solving the illegal immigration problem both now and into the future.

It also allows for the existing systems of migration and asylum seeking to work effectively — because you’re not trying to take every single person who is just looking for a better way of life, and try and force them through Asylum processes (that really should only be utilized for people who are being persecuted in foreign lands).

Further, it opens the doors for conversations around a new alien visa (For those of you that don’t know alien is the term that the government uses for anyone who is not American — We’re not referring to Area 51).

I’ve begun to work with Joanne on figuring out how we can turn this into a proper policy proposal — and I beseech all of you who read this article — share this with your friends, colleagues, and people within your party — Whatever party that is.

We need to come up with an American solution that allows us to provide for our communities; to invest in healthcare that helps our citizens — but at the same time help the downtrodden, in a way that doesn’t present an undue burden to us and future generations.

The last point I’ll make is a simple one.

But it’s another ask — This time for my democratic colleagues.

Please try and open the doors to conversations, in between your more senior leadership and your freshman congressman — Because having a white person telling a brown Indian person that they’re being racist against an American Indian person on Twitter, over internal discord, isn’t helping us get to a solution it’s breeding a ton of divisiveness.

Especially when it’s an official Twitter account yelling at AOC’s Chief of Staff.