Moms and kids tear gassed at southern US border

[zapatos]

42 minutes ago, Raider5678 said:

100,000 people pass through that border a day. If you start housing them, there will be a backlog. Further, into this thread, you say "as long as it takes to rest their tired feet." What about when it becomes months? The backlog, if it lasts for just 10 days, could mean housing up to a million people. That is a major logistical concern, as it could me housing a relatively sized area like a city. Do you want to know what happens when you put more than a million people in tents? 

People die. Sanitary measures don't work so well living in tents. You know what else happens? Human trafficking. I don't know about you but I'd rather not see kids being taken out of tents to be trafficked because we couldn't secure it well enough. Tents don't stack. You're talking about thousands of acres of land if you want to do tents. That's not something that's simple to secure. Additionally, what about waste management? Millions of people can pose a serious risk of massive infection. You think it's bad shooting tear gas? Wait until they're dying by the thousands due to a rampant disease that we were not prepared to take care of. Showering isn't something simple either. You need to sanitize them to a degree that you would not believe to prevent the risk of things like foot fungus, etc, which will be especially prevalent due to your brilliant idea of tents.

I brought up a valid point. If we want to house them, we need to do it right. You're free to treat me like some jackass who doesn't care about anyone and is just making up excuses, but frankly, that doesn't change the fact that if your idea is a stupid one I should point it out. 

You say we need to treat them better by giving them food, water, shower, and a place to rest.

I point out that to give them a place to rest we're going to have logistical issues.

Your immediate response is to say I'm just trying to search for problems rather than solutions and to become ridiculously defensive and say we should just screw them all because of me simply mentioning the fact that there will be logistical issues in doing that. Grow up. This is the real world. I'm sorry, but if your grand idea is to house them in tents it's a ridiculous one and I'm going to tell you. It'll kill and ruin the lives of far more people then it'll prevent from being tear gassed. 

I think it should be done. But quite frankly I don't care if it looks to you like I'm just searching for problems and it pisses you off that I don't automatically jump on board with your idea and say it's great without first working out some reasonable details. I'll continue to "search for problems" if it means doing it the right way, regardless of how much it may offend you that I do so.

 

50,000 people a month is much less than 1,000,000 people a day with hundred thousand leaving and a hundred thousand coming every day, with the backlog ever growing by thousands of people a day. A magnitude of 60,000% more people(total number of people and the difference in the time). And keeping large groups of people doesn't scale up linearly, it becomes exponentially more difficult. God forbid if I simply mention this fact without me suddenly becoming a naysaying trump loving immigrant racist.

Epic. Monumental. Colossal. Prodigious. The logistics of erecting a straw man of these proportions is truly something to behold. I'm in awe.

52 minutes ago, Raider5678 said:

You're free to treat me like some jackass who doesn't care about anyone and is just making up excuses...

Actually I was treating you as someone who is terribly naive and not very Christian, but perhaps you are right.

[LaurieAG]

From Google.

What age do babies stop wearing nappies?

Keep using nappies until your child show signs that they are ready to start toilet training, including: Age – your child needs to be between 18 months and three years before they are mature enough to recognise the urge to use the toilet.

[MigL]

I respect you too much not to give you the opportunity to explain, Zap...

You have la belled Raider's misgivings an enormous strawman, and accusations of logical 'fallacies' get tossed about rather freely in the politics forum. Never does anyone explain what the error in logic is, that leads to the misguided fallacy. It is often simply used as a way to dismiss an opposing argument without analyzing the argument itself.

I would like an explanation for labelling his argument a 'strawman', when it can be backed up by obvious examples.
You do remember the 30000 people evacuated from the New Orleans flooding to the Superdome, and the ensuing chaos, after hurricane Katrina ? How did that work out ?
And why do you think the situation would not be repeated at the border ?

PS: I am an immigrant and have always been pro immigration.
       What is happening at you southern border could and should have been handled differently.
       ( but, hey, its YOUR country )

[iNow]

9 minutes ago, LaurieAG said:

From Google.

 

 

Laurie - Wonder if you’d please be so kind as to elaborate to whom or what you’re responding, or clarify why you decided to share best practices around diaper wearing age?

5 minutes ago, MigL said:

but, hey, its YOUR country

Gotta tell you, brother. It doesn’t always feel that way right now. I feel like I’m living through some dystopian Philip K Dick story sometimes, and I’m more fortunate and grateful than most. Can only imagine how others not so fortunate are feeling. 

[J.C.MacSwell]

2 hours ago, iNow said:

Perhaps, but from my perspective it doesn’t seem like that’s what’s happening here. 

I respect the argument you’re making, but feel that you’re trying to address something that isn’t the actual root cause. 

What is the root cause? Delaying processing of valid asylum claims. Failing to send more immigration lawyers and judges to help. Refusing to recognize the fellow humanity in these people and empathize with their plight. Not helping address the violence and poverty in their home countries. Etc. 

Focusing on immigration volumes strikes me as well intentioned, but misguided... tangential to the actual problem under discussion. 

Is that fair?

No. 

The root cause is either: 1. inability to take on more immigration

or 2. unwillingness to take on more immigration 

or some combination there of, with the threshold for 2 doubtlessly changing as immigration increases.

That would quickly become apparent if the processing was sped up. I realize that sounds sad, but that does not make it untrue.

Every country has to decide how much immigration they are willing to take on, and what process they wish to use to make it happen. There is no easy answer like processing immigrants faster. That would be a temporary fix only (though much better than tear gassing children, and temporarily better than paying $160/day average per detainee) and with it would come an unintended announcement of a race to your border. There are 7 Billion of us on the planet. How many would come if it was a totally open border? Do you want them all? What restrictions would you like to have in place?

How many do you think would be politically feasible, and how best to do that? How many can you have and assure they will be welcomed?

 

[zapatos]

28 minutes ago, MigL said:

I would like an explanation for labelling his argument a 'strawman', when it can be backed up by obvious examples.

This is what I proposed regarding those seeking asylum (not those going to work across the border each day):

"Meet them at the gate, give them some food and water, perhaps a shower and a place to rest, then either let them in or turn them away." 
"Presumably there is an entry point to go further into the US already. As far as I'm concerned we can just put up a tent in front of it and let people rest and get cleaned up while waiting."

"for as long as it takes to eat, shower, and rest their tired feet."

 

This is what Raider is arguing against:

"100,000 people pass through that border a day. If you start housing them, there will be a backlog. Further, into this thread, you say "as long as it takes to rest their tired feet." What about when it becomes months? The backlog, if it lasts for just 10 days, could mean housing up to a million people. That is a major logistical concern, as it could me housing a relatively sized area like a city. Do you want to know what happens when you put more than a million people in tents? 

 

I fail to see how my proposal in any way corresponds to Raider's depiction of what I suggested.

[iNow]

18 minutes ago, J.C.MacSwell said:

Every country has to decide how much immigration they are willing to take on, and what process they wish to use to make it happen.

Unfortunately, we as a country aren’t contributing to those decisions. A small cabal of white seemingly racist men with questionable intent and obvious lack of empathy / decency are. 

20 minutes ago, J.C.MacSwell said:

There are 7 Billion of us on the planet. How many would come if it was a totally open border? Do you want them all? What restrictions would you like to have in place?

To better understand my position, I encourage you to kindly please click the link that’s been in my signature for over a decade. Cheers, my friend. 

[beecee]

39 minutes ago, iNow said:

Unfortunately, we as a country aren’t contributing to those decisions. A small cabal of white seemingly racist men with questionable intent and obvious lack of empathy / decency are.  

Why are people so fearful that they must embrace racism? But year the problem appears world wide.

[iNow]

1 hour ago, beecee said:

Why are people so fearful that they must embrace racism?

Loneliness. Confusion. Amygdalas having deeper roots than prefrontal protrusions.

An ancient ancestry composed of tribal primates who required strong us/them mentalities to survive and thrive... Plus seventy four cubed other things I can’t think of right now off the top of my mind. 

My suspicion is that even bacteria and single celled organisms were “racist.” By that I mean that those that survived and reproduced most prolifically were the ones able to more readily distinguish between ouch versus not ouch in their environments, or simply between food versus not food. 

That same ability to distinguish and group things in dichotomous ways... dark versus light and good versus evil... evolved and was selected for through the millennia and across vast epochs of time. The most successful more readily identified safe versus not safe. Mate versus not mate. Friend versus not friend.

It later complexified into us versus them, and sadly our genes haven’t yet caught up to our culture. Our reptilian minds can’t catch up to our problem solving brains and are lagging behind. 

So, here we are... left today battling between liberal versus conservative, left versus right, and... perhaps sadder still... between the much more inalienable brown versus white.  

Edited November 28, 2018 by iNow

[Ten oz]

6 hours ago, J.C.MacSwell said:

No. 

The root cause is either: 1. inability to take on more immigration

or 2. unwillingness to take on more immigration 

or some combination there of, with the threshold for 2 doubtlessly changing as immigration increases.

That would quickly become apparent if the processing was sped up. I realize that sounds sad, but that does not make it untrue.

Every country has to decide how much immigration they are willing to take on, and what process they wish to use to make it happen.

You post this as if these are unknowns yet to be determined. We already have laws on the books outlining how one applies and whom is eligible. 

Quote

 

The Immigration and Nationality Act, or INA, was created in 1952. Before the INA, a variety of statutes governed immigration law but were not organized in one location. The McCarran-Walter bill of 1952, Public Law No. 82-414, collected and codified many existing provisions and reorganized the structure of immigration law. The Act has been amended many times over the years, but is still the basic body of immigration law.

The INA is divided into titles, chapters, and sections. Although it stands alone as a body of law, the Act is also contained in the United States Code (U.S.C.). The code is a collection of all the laws of the United States. It is arranged in fifty subject titles by general alphabetic order. Title 8 of the U.S. Code is but one of the fifty titles and deals with "Aliens and Nationality". When browsing the INA or other statutes you will often see reference to the U.S. Code citation. For example, Section 208 of the INA deals with asylum, and is also contained in 8 U.S.C. 1158. Although it is correct to refer to a specific section by either its INA citation or its U.S. code, the INA citation is more commonly used.

https://www.uscis.gov/laws/laws-regulations-and-guides-immigration-and-nationality-act

 

 

6 hours ago, J.C.MacSwell said:

There is no easy answer like processing immigrants faster. That would be a temporary fix only (though much better than tear gassing children, and temporarily better than paying $160/day average per detainee) and with it would come an unintended announcement of a race to your border.

The Number of Asylum seekers who apply per month just within the last year range between 16,000 and 6,000 a month https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/asylum-applications. The number of people in the caravan does not pose any sort of new, unique, different, or etc challenge. If not for POTUS interjecting himself in the situation it would just be like any other week for our (U.S.) various immigration and border agencies. 

6 hours ago, J.C.MacSwell said:

There are 7 Billion of us on the planet. How many would come if it was a totally open border? Do you want them all? What restrictions would you like to have in place?

How many do you think would be politically feasible, and how best to do that? How many can you have and assure they will be welcomed?

 No one has suggested a "totally open" border which makes these 5 questions meaningless. 

[J.C.MacSwell]

20 minutes ago, Ten oz said:

 

 No one has suggested a "totally open" border which makes these 5 questions meaningless. 

Quite the opposite.

If you suggest "totally open" border, then you don't need to answer the questions.

[Raider5678]

10 hours ago, zapatos said:

Actually I was treating you as someone who is terribly naive and not very Christian, but perhaps you are right.

For Pete's sake man, what in God's name does saying we need apartment housing instead of tents for sanitary reasons makes me a terrible Christian?

10 hours ago, zapatos said:

Epic. Monumental. Colossal. Prodigious. The logistics of erecting a straw man of these proportions is truly something to behold. I'm in awe.

Fine. Forget it. You, the almighty Zapatos are always right, and the idea of using tents to house 1,000,000 people can't possibly go wrong in any way, and anyone who points out we should use actual housing is simply raising a strawman.

Moving on from your rambling now.

Edited November 28, 2018 by Raider5678

[zapatos]

1 hour ago, Raider5678 said:

For Pete's sake man, what in God's name does saying we need apartment housing instead of tents for sanitary reasons makes me a terrible Christian?

Fine. Forget it. You, the almighty Zapatos are always right, and the idea of using tents to house 1,000,000 people can't possibly go wrong in any way, and anyone who points out we should use actual housing is simply raising a strawman.

Moving on from your rambling now.

The only person who mentioned housing 1,000,000 people in tents was you. I suggested that the asylum seekers be allowed to take a shower. 

[CharonY]

I was quite confident that at some point this discussion is going to derail. Let's be clear about a few things. The current delay at the border is not due to an unexpected surge of applicants. It is the result of a rule set out by the Trump administration, which is currently facing lawsuits. Some points how asylum used to work:

If someone tries to enter the US without proper documentation, they are subjected to deportation, unless they claim asylum. If they do, they are entitled to an interview with an asylum officer. If the officer determines credible fear of persecution (which is a defined term and has been further restricted by Jeff Sessions) , they can go ahead  to a immigration judge hearing. However, that step can take years and asylum claimants can legally live and work in the US. Even if they are decided not to be eligible for asylum, but the asylum officer decided that they have credible fear of persecution, they can receive a withholding of removal that allows a stay in the US, but has not path to permanent legal status. Many Haitians were granted asylum under the latter category after the earthquake, for example. Note: none of these paths require detention. Detention originally was limited to folks that either have criminal convictions or other wise pose a threat to national security. And before anyone uses the same language as Trump to describe the process, the vast majority of asylum seekers appear to their court hearings.

The Trump administration employed new rules to make this process more difficult and creates delays: 

Quote

Before 2016, and in some cases as recently as six months ago, they would have had no problem and no delay. But for the last several months, the Trump administration has made a practice of limiting the number of asylum seekers allowed to enter the US each day — a policy it calls “metering.” It’s the counterpart of the Trump administration’s months-long crackdown on asylum seekers entering the US illegally — telling those who do try to come legally that there’s no room for them, and ordering them to wait.

They don’t say how long the wait will be. And there’s no line for asylum seekers to wait in — no official way for them to hold their spot or secure an appointment, no guarantee that they’ll ever be allowed to cross.

And so asylum seekers wait, for days or weeks or (increasingly) months: sometimes in migrant shelters whose capacity has stretched to the breaking point, sometimes huddling together on bridges, sleeping on the street, in the cold, vulnerable to the violence they hoped to escape in their home countries.

Going back to detention. Typically, detention was not used in a blanket format. Folks passing the credible fear test were generally scheduled for release. Under Trump, the release rate dropped almost to zero and has faced a lawsuit this year. In other words, all the malaise of horrible detention conditions, and folks trying to enter illegally are the direct consequences of the policies of the current government. This includes the separation of children from their families, which has been reversed. But it is blindingly clear that the situation is not caused by external effects, it is not due to cost. It is part and parcel of a cruel strategy with the sole goal to curb asylum seekers and falls under the same vein as the Muslim ban.What is striking is the mix of indifference and outright cruelty towards those trying to claim asylum, regardless whether they are ultimately eligible or not. In fact the administration is actively working to revoke the Flores settlement, in order to allow for virtually unlimited detention until their status is resolved . And just to make it really clear, there is no material evidence that shows an increased need for detention during the asylum seeking process. The appearance rate of families, especially if they are provided legal counsel is close to 100%. The group most likely not to appear seem to be individual men with no legal counsel. Those are also most likely held in detention when they have no documentation in the first place. 

And while we are talking about deterrence, even with all the cruelty which should not baked into a process that was borne out of compassion, the actual asylum claims have been increasing. Let's make this part really, really clear. The policies that the administration enacts, specifically with respect to family separations, are targeted at those that usually have the strongest standing for asylum claims: family units with children. Apprehension of family units have been surging, by September 2018 the largest group consisted of family units with 90k total. This is the highest recorded number ever. So yes, the policy is not there to deter folks who may not have a claim. It is there to specifically reduce those who are eligible. And that is why tear gas on moms and kids was just a natural consequence in the progression of those tactics. Make no mistake, the immigration policies as created by the Trump-Bannon-Miller-Sessions strategies have been outlined early on and should not come as a surprise to anyone. It is not about a surge in immigration, cost, logistics or anything connected to that. The numbers clearly show that it is not the case. The policies clearly show that it is not the case, even if folks want to dance around them. It is all about keeping folks out from certain countries (Norway would be fine, though, so no worries) even, or perhaps especially if they have credible fear of persecution. By employing a tactic of making legal entry much, much harder and increasing the persecution of illegal entries, a home-made crisis can be presented to the public in an effort to outright undermine the right for asylum.

 

[Raider5678]

2 hours ago, zapatos said:

The only person who mentioned housing 1,000,000 people in tents was you. I suggested that the asylum seekers be allowed to take a shower. 

You also suggested giving them a place to sleep. You also mentioned doing so with tents. Don't pretend you never said anything like that by saying you also said you should give them showers.

[zapatos]

5 minutes ago, Raider5678 said:

You also suggested giving them a place to sleep. You also mentioned doing so with tents. Don't pretend you never said anything like that by saying you also said you should give them showers.

I did? I must be getting old. Can you please provide the exact quote where I said we should give them a place to sleep?

[Raider5678]

On 11/27/2018 at 9:05 AM, zapatos said:

Yes, it is of course more of a logistical problem to add showers and cots,

 

[zapatos]

1 minute ago, Raider5678 said:

Yes, it is of course more of a logistical problem to add showers and cots,

I used the words "cot" and "rest". For you to convert that to "sleep" and "house" for months, is a total misrepresentation of the words I used and the spirit of what I've been suggesting in this entire thread. Your approach is lacking in integrity.

 

 

[Raider5678]

55 minutes ago, zapatos said:

I used the words "cot" and "rest". For you to convert that to "sleep" and "house" for months, is a total misrepresentation of the words I used and the spirit of what I've been suggesting in this entire thread. Your approach is lacking in integrity.

 

You used the words "cot" and "tent." For you to imply that cot doesn't mean sleep and tent doesn't mean house is completely absurd. I'm not here to perform the mental gymnastics of what you mean by getting them cots and tents other than the idea for them to sleep in cots and live in the tents. 

Additionally, while you didn't say months, I explained very clearly what could happen that might result with people being there for months.

Your defense is lacking in reason.

Additionally, I've been saying the same point the entire time. At any point, if this was your position the entire time, you could have said "Wait. I didn't mean sleep or house them" instead of saying that it's entirely possible to do so and I'm just looking for problems in your position. 

Edited November 28, 2018 by Raider5678

[Ten oz]

4 minutes ago, Raider5678 said:

You used the words "cot" and "tent." For you to imply that cot doesn't mean sleep and tent doesn't mean house is completely absurd. I'm not here to perform the mental gymnastics of what you mean by getting them cots and tents other than the idea for them to sleep in cots and live in the tents. 

Additionally, while you didn't say months, I explained very clearly what could happen that might result with people being there for months.

Your defense is lacking in reason.

Than you should have read and accepted Zap's response as a clarification and moved own. There is no reason to continue this. No one here is calling for permanently or even temporarily housing a million people. 

[Raider5678]

3 minutes ago, Ten oz said:

Than you should have read and accepted Zap's response as a clarification and moved own. There is no reason to continue this. No one here is calling for permanently or even temporarily housing a million people. 

He implied that I was lacking in integrity by trying to misrepresent what he said inside of his clarification. I have the right to defend my integrity before I move on.

Edited November 28, 2018 by Raider5678

[Ten oz]

12 minutes ago, Raider5678 said:

He implied that I was lacking in integrity by trying to misrepresent what he said inside of his clarification. I have the right to defend my integrity before I move on.

Nothing in Zap's sentence you quoted said anything about housing people for any duration of time much-less a million people. 

What would you like to see your govt respond to the asylum seekers currently at the border?