Over the summer I was an intern at the Camden Center for Law and Social Justice, a non-profit law firm that does domestic violence and immigration work. I spent a lot of my time doing country condition research on the factors that drive immigration and translating client interviews. The film hit very close to home with me because these were situations I was familiar with. I have met dozens of people who made that same crossing and suffered through the same struggles.
My time at the Camden Center left me highly familiar with the violence and poverty that causes people to flee their homes. Much of my research focused on the Mara Salvatrucha and Barrio 18, the gangs responsible for terrorizing migrants on the way up to the border. Since most of our clients were interested in claiming asylum, I encountered a lot of stories about the havoc these gangs would wreak in the central American countries where their presence was strongest.
The story Maria told of a girl getting raped, shot, and having her breasts cut off was not uncommon at all. I had clients who were familiar with a gang in their home town murdering two parents who could not pay their extortion fees and leaving their infant child lying in his parent’s blood.
I had a client whose sister was tortured and murdered by a gang who threatened to do the same to her whole family. These gangs are responsible for massive amounts of child rape, extortion, murder, torture, femicide and any other violent crime one could possibly think of. One thing the film taught me was just how much this abuse continues as people travel up to the border.
I have my doubts that immigration is a net positive for the countries receiving and for the countries people are leaving. I don’t know if helping people to get out of Honduras makes Honduras better, or even if helping people leave Denmark makes Denmark better. But my experiences have taught me something that the film really reinforced for me. The major point that economic or nationalistic arguments about immigration frequently miss is that immigrating to the U.S is by far the best option for the immigrants themselves in almost all cases. Whether that creates a moral burden for our country to accept them or not is debatable, but what is undeniable is that every one of my clients and all of the people from the movie would have marginally better lives if they lived in the United States.
Every political party and ideology has a way to respond to this notion, but I would encourage especially those on the right to keep this in mind. I’m not saying that they should change their policy preferences after recognizing this fact. (I may agree with most if not all of their positions) I simply believe that any analysis of immigration as an issue, especially an analysis of immigration from countries where organized crime, judicial ineffectiveness, corruption, lack of security, poverty, and so on make living there hell for the average citizen should include a consideration of the realities on the ground for those who desire to immigrate.
9 replies on “De Nadie Reflection”
Oliver, thank you for sharing your experiences and information that you learned through your internship. It puts immigration and the issues that occur into more of a perspective. Reading about your experience and watching this movie has allowed many thoughts to enter my brain. Yes morally, allowing every immigrant to enter the United States is the right answer. However, the economical status for natives then comes into perspective. This overall discussion and topic is sensitive. I would love to hear more about your internship!
I agree that in order to get a more sensible view on the issue of immigration we must take into consideration the personal issues and struggles that most immigrants are trying to escape from in their home countries. By humanizing the issue of immigration I believe it will help people see the issue not simply as a decrease or increase to the countries GDP but as an issue that affects the lives of countless people simply looking for a better life. Looking at immigration as both an issue in regards to economics and in regards to the safety and well being of countless individuals helps us create the best solutions to the current problems regarding the issue.
Oliver, your insights into the mindset of the Modern American immigrant is not only thorough yet compelling. These tragic instances that encourage individuals to search for a better life in America have encouraged the same motivations that all of our ancestors, who came over willingly, had whether it be 50 or 150 years ago. It is the pursuit of happiness that aligns all Americans together, and this is why there needs to be a much more expansive, yet regulated legal immigration policy to allow these types of individuals a safe haven from there previous brutal lifestyle, while ensuring that these peoples are not overburdening our infrastructure and also ensuring a peaceful and productive assimilation. Hopefully, in the near future, our legislation will find a more productive way to manage American immigration that benefits as many parties as possible. A good way to do this may be by working with business to ensure a good amount of labor based positions that would be filled by these populations, another may be to offer skill-based training to American natives to open up positions previously held by the working class of America.
An unasked question here is this one: why does the United States have a responsibility to offer a better life to everyone outside the country who is deprived of resources, especially if those people have little education, few skills, and will if they come here ultimately be competing with poor Americans for jobs in the scenario described by Borjas? That is, what if bringing in lots of people who are in bad situations outside the US into the country means we exacerbate the bad situations of some significant number of American citizens who are in bad situations right now inside the country?
Another question we might ask here, following Borjas’ analysis from early in the book: it’s patently clear that, even if we do feel a moral obligation to let some of these people outside the US who are suffering in (this is a genuine question, as noted above–it is not a priori given in the principles of American government that we have any obligation to people who are not citizens of the country other than not to encroach on their basic rights), how do we decide which ones to bring in and which ones cannot be brought in? There are after all too many such people for the US to accommodate any more than a relatively small percentage of them without decimating the American welfare state and economy.
I agree with your point on the heavy effect of immigration and especially the immigration of more impoverished individuals on the effect of the American welfare system. I think a smart way to deal with this potential issue is to place a time barrier onto the welfare system so individuals must contribute for “X” many years before they are allowed to withdraw from the system.
I think the time barrier is a good solution aswell Nick. Currently, the system we have in place says that people who petition for a family member have to demonstrate a certain level of income so they can support the immigrant. If the immigrant ends up on welfare, the sponsers are liable for paying the govenrmetn back. This system sounds great in theory, but obviously, from the statistics that Borjas presented, it is not working well at all.
You write: “I don’t know if helping people to get out of Honduras makes Honduras better”
I think we know the answer to this: it makes no contribution whatever to changing the situation in Honduras. In fact, some countries with failed polities and failed economies basically rely on the fact that some significant portion of their most deprived citizens will leave in search of better prospects elsewhere, and this relieves those countries of the responsibility of doing anything to make conditions better at home for those people. Huntington talks about some of the evidence that exists showing that this has been something of an explicit policy of some recent Mexican administrations: i.e., advocate hard internationally for the ‘rights of undocumented migrants’ to leave Mexico and enter the US b/c this gets those people out of Mexico and relieves the Mexican government of the task of having to do anything to meet their needs.
Considering your points Professor brings to mind just how difficult it has been for our country to have an asylum statute that honors the time old tradition of Americans offering refuge to persecuted people but does not draw its boundaries so wide such that billions of people would meet the requirements. The Trump administration has been going back and forth with executive agencies who have been going back and forth with lawyers appealing administrative immigration decisions to federal appellate courts.
The asylum case I spent the majority of the summer working on was going to be based on a claim of persecution based on family, which we argued applied to the “particular social group” clause of the asylum statute. The U.S government considers persecution based on race, religion, nationality, political opinion, and membership in a particular social group as reasons that a migrant can be considered for asylum. The particular social group clause, being the most ambiguous, has been defined by Board of Immigration Case Law to mean a group that (1) shares immutable and/or fundamental traits, (2) is socially distinct, and (3) is particular.
Family membership is definitely immutable because it can not be changed, it is particular because there is a clear benchmark for determining who falls within the group and who doesn’t, and it is socially distinct because, in our clients home country of Honduras, people are separated into groups by family. (exactly like in the United States) However, in my last week there, the attorney general issued a decision that family would no longer be accepted as a particular social group.
The decision of who we should let into the country for asylum purposes and whether we have a duty to at all is as contentious as any other part of the immigration debate because asylum recipients have a path to naturalization available to them.
Oliver, your example is an excellent one. The issue is indeed highly contentious. Here’s a classic piece by Garrett Hardin that I’ve occasionally used in class to illustrate the material base underlying the arguments about moral responsibility and ethics: http://www.garretthardinsociety.org/articles/art_lifeboat_ethics_case_against_helping_poor.html. I think I’ll post it as a separate post too to be sure everyone sees it.