USCCB Condemns Separating Immigrant Children from Families

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o_mlly said:
Often, what we ought to do as a community is morally the same as what we ought to do individually.
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Sometimes, and sometimes the analogy fails, as it does this time. If you cannot figure out why, I will explain further.
 
pnewton said:
If you cannot figure out why, I will explain further.
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  • You look in the cupboard and now it’s bare.
  • One outside your neighborhood has surplus and, although they won’t allow anybody into their home, they will lend you their surplus if you promise that your children and their children pay them back.
  • What do you do?
If you cannot figure out why, I will explain further.
 
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Since you are going to continue with this silly analogy, then I will clarify. The scale you give, once or twice the number in the house arriving needing help, would be one quarter to half a billion immigrants arriving at the border on one day. That is the scale that would be required for your analogy to be valid. The amount it would cost would be a huge chunk of the GNP, not just a few billion. And then in a few days, do it again?

That is why the analogy does not work. The scale is off.
 
Augustinian said:
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LeafByNiggle:
Then you should read some of the case histories and learn about that suffering instead of ignoring it.
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Anecdotal stories are fine, I have no doubt that such cases exist and some of them are legitimate.

My question is why the sudden spike off the charts in the number of asylum requests- far beyond what the government can process- at this point in time? Is the world this much worse abroad, or is the US this much better under President Trump than we were just a few years ago?
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The former. Around central America and Mexico there has been a huge rise in violence, and corruption. Watch the international news.
 
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pnewton said:
That is why the analogy does not work. The scale is off.
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The scale does not change the analogy. Perhaps you think it silly because you would not do in your own house what you want others to do in theirs.
 
Augustinian said:
My question is why the sudden spike off the charts in the number of asylum requests- far beyond what the government can process- at this point in time? Is the world this much worse abroad, or is the US this much better under President Trump than we were just a few years ago?

Or is there something else at work here?

What should America do, just schedule people for their asylum hearings when they come in, and ask them to show up 3 years or 5 years in the future to have the determination made? And then, if it turns out they are human traffickers associated with MS 13, they can be tossed out then, with full due process?
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I don’t know why there is a spike in the number of asylum requests. My suspicion would be that it has not been all that long ago that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the law enforcement part of government (Obama admin then) could not keep children with their detained parents. Not thinking it had any alternative, then, the Obama administration just released parents and children into the population of the U.S. upon their promise to return. As we know, few actually ever do.

Trump decided to enforce the law. That resulted in detention of parents by ICE and turning over the children (only one out of six claims to have a parent here) to HHS. Why HHS? Because it’s “welfare”, not “law enforcement” like ICE.

Notwithstanding that the Obama administration had previously detained children and adults separately before the Ninth Circuit decision, the Trump administration caved in to public pressure and, to my best knowledge and belief, returned to “catch and release” (open borders).

In the last few days, a District Court in the Ninth Circuit said the government couldn’t hold the parents separately from the children. So the Courts have now decreed that the government can’t hold the parents, period, with or without their children.

Of course, some of the children don’t actually have parents here. Most of them don’t. Some adults who claim certain children appear not to be their parents. Free DNA testing to find out has been refused.

So, once again, the U.S. is acting out of a humanitarian feeling without actually having any way to deal with the problem itself other than just allowing anybody to come into this country and disappear who wants to do that.

If the Trump administration has some other plan in mind, I have not seen it.
 
Ridgerunner said:
So, once again, the U.S. is acting out of a humanitarian feeling
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Acting with humanity is better than acting stupidly and without consideration of the consequences. This was an immoral act. Every moral leader in the country has called it so. One cannot take immoral action for some other good. It may be this was not an act of evil, but of stupidity and ignorance, in which case the public will need to decide if it wants either a morally deficit president, or a stupid one.
 
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It happens every day with citizens who are incarcerated, rightly or wrongly. And not only people who are incarcerated. It happens every single day. And I am not aware of any “moral leader” demanding that it stop.
 
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I am coming at this as a Catholic. The Catechism refers to the obligation to help others, as a nation, using the phrase, “to the extent they are able.” So scale does matter. Hey, if you think your analogy holds, that is your business. I will disregard it for the reason I gave.
 
Ridgerunner said:
And I am not aware of any “moral leader” demanding that it stop.
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They are now. So, is everyone wrong, or is something different here. If this was a smattering of a few partisan voices, it would probably be worth considering that they may be in error.

It is not.

Arresting is not immoral. Sending kids off with CPS when an arrest is made, and must be made (a crucial element) may be moral. This is immoral.

I know this particular argument is an appeal to authority, and can be fallacious. In this case, it is still not a valid argument for those who are either moral relativist or believe that God has no authority on Earth in human form, as in the Catholic Church. I would think it would valid though on a Catholic forum.
 
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LeafByNiggle said:
The former. Around central America and Mexico there has been a huge rise in violence, and corruption. Watch the international news.
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Well, right now, there are too many asylum requests for our government to process in the time allowed for them, and the backup is getting greater every day.

It leaves two options. One, release all of the asylum requests into the general public and hope they attend their hearings when ICE can determine if their claims are legit. The problem with this is that it encourages more people to make the trip, and puts current US residents in peril with the MS 13, traffickers and others being released.

Or two, hold the families in custody until the hearing.

Of course regardless of the reason- President Trump definitely needs to do two things. Streamline the process and get a final decision on asylum requests within hours not years. And two, summon the despots of Central America to Mar a Lago for a dressing down to force them to address the violence in their realms. The Roosevelt Corollary allows America to use military force if needed to insure order throughout the Western Hemisphere.
 
pnewton said:
I am coming at this as a Catholic. The Catechism refers to the obligation to help others, as a nation, using the phrase, “to the extent they are able.”
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Read the rest of your citation: “Immigrants are obliged … to obey its [host country’s] laws.” Obligations run both ways. You have not advanced the argument.
 
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Augustinian said:
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LeafByNiggle:
The former. Around central America and Mexico there has been a huge rise in violence, and corruption. Watch the international news.
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Well, right now, there are too many asylum requests for our government to process in the time allowed for them, and the backup is getting greater every day.
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Is that the fault of the victims? Yet they are the ones being punished by this state of affairs, which is why the US bishops have condemned that especially egregious punishment.
 
LeafByNiggle said:
Is that the fault of the victims? Yet they are the ones being punished by this state of affairs, which is why the US bishops have condemned that especially egregious punishment.
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It’s no one’s fault.

Are you going to vote for the tax increase to expand ICE so that backlog can be handled?
 
I have not desire to produce an argument. Trump stated he could stand on Fifth Avenue and shoot someone and not lose voters. That sort of inflexibility cannot be gainsaid.
 
Pup7 said:
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LeafByNiggle:
Is that the fault of the victims? Yet they are the ones being punished by this state of affairs, which is why the US bishops have condemned that especially egregious punishment.
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It’s no one’s fault.
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Then my question still stands. Why are we punishing the victims who the Church says we should be welcoming?
Are you going to vote for the tax increase to expand ICE so that backlog can be handled?
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That depends. Are immigration judges part of ICE? If so, then yes. Hire more immigration judges.
 
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