Ep. 52 - There Isn’t Any Nice Or Pleasant Way To Enforce Our Immigration Law
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
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Summary
I ve been on vacation this week, which means I ve been missing a lot of important news, like the border crisis, immigration reform, and much, much more. Here s what s been going on, and why I don t think it s a good idea.
Transcript
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Well, I've been away on vacation this week, and I'm actually going on vacation again a week from now.
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So what I'm going to do is I'm just going to take a vacation every other week in perpetuity.
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Well, that would be nice anyway. I'd love if I could do that.
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Now, we decided to take our two weeks this way, two weeks of vacation, but breaking it up in this weird way for some reason.
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We were at a lake in Pennsylvania this week, and then in two weeks we're going to be at a lake in New England.
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And as part of our fascination with lakes, I have developed a bit of a fascination with fishing, an interest in fishing anyway.
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The problem, though, is that my interest in fishing does not include so far a corresponding talent for fishing.
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So when I say that I've been fishing, I've been fishing all this week.
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But when I say I've been fishing all this week, what I really mean is I've been casting hooks into the water.
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I don't mean that I've been catching fish all this week.
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But this is what I've discovered when it comes to developing a hobby is that in the early going, and this is why I think a lot of people have trouble developing hobbies and why I do as well, is that in the early going, you have to enjoy the hobby while being terrible at it.
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And it's hard to like something when you're bad at it.
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But if you can push through that phase, then eventually I think the payoff comes.
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So I have therefore missed most of the discussion over the separation of families at the borders.
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By the time I got back, Trump had already effectively reversed the policy, at least to the extent that he could legally.
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But I do want to say just one quick thing on this, because I haven't really chimed in on the issue yet.
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I know that the whole world has been waiting with bated breath to hear what I have to say about it.
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If we are going to enforce our laws and protect our border, and I think we should do both of those things, then there has to be some kind of legal penalty for those who break our law and sneak across the border.
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And if we're going to prosecute them and send them back, which is the penalty, at least for the first time across, it's a misdemeanor.
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So if we're going to go through that whole process, then we have to detain them in the meanwhile.
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We have to lock them somewhere, keep them somewhere, while that process of prosecution and then eventually shipping them back is carried out.
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If we don't, then they're just going to disappear into the ether and we'll never see them again.
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So we can't say to them, oh, you're in trouble now, mister.
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So just go do what you want, but check back in two weeks.
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I want you every three days, I want you to give us a call just to check in, all right?
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Honor system, don't disappoint us by disappearing like everybody else.
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If we do that, then it's just there's no point.
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Um, so you see how the, there's kind of a logical progression here where if we're starting
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with the proposition that it is good to enforce our laws and protect our border, then I don't
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Once we get like two or three steps into it, we are inevitably going to get to the point
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where we have to detain, confine, lock up these people for a period of time.
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The only other option, as far as I can tell, is to not enforce the law or to enforce it
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in a way that is so incompetent and ineffective that you may as well not enforce it.
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And if an illegal alien family, if an illegal alien family comes across and they claim asylum,
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then they're still the same, the same issue where that asylum claim has to be investigated
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And in the meanwhile, you've got to detain them somewhere because claiming asylum is not
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Because if that was the process, then everybody would claim asylum and it would be anarchy.
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But asylum is a very particular thing for a very particular situation.
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And if we are going to detain them, if we have an entire family, and we've got thousands of
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entire families that are streaming across the border all the time, if we catch an entire
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family with parents, kids, everything else, and we're going to confine all of them while
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we go through this process, then we run into some complications.
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First of all, we run into all the different laws that govern the detainment of families.
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We also run into the fact that there is a different process for parents or for adults than there
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So there are all these kinds of bureaucratic loopholes and complications.
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And I'm all about streamlining that and taking the bureaucracy out of some of this stuff
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I'm all about doing that in every facet of American life, especially when it comes to
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So if that's what we're going to do, I say, great.
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And then there's also an issue of resources and capabilities.
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We do not have infinite resources and an infinite capability to detain and care for and provide
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But if it were possible, legally speaking, and in terms of resources, capabilities, logistics,
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laws, everything else, all the things you got to take into consideration, if it were possible
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to detain entire families together, I would be in favor of that.
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I'm not a fan of separating kids from their parents.
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I don't like the idea of kids being traumatized and so forth, especially when you consider that
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because this is a bureaucracy, we're talking about bureaucracies are very clumsy.
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Bureaucracies are very inefficient, ineffective.
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So there's also the difficulty of reuniting the families after the kids have been separated.
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And I'll fully admit, I'm a sucker when it comes to things involving kids.
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You know, I don't like the idea of kids being upset, traumatized, separated from their parents.
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I mean, I hate that because I think about my own kids.
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I think about like my five-year-old kids being separated from us.
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I look at that and I say, no, let's, if we can figure out another way, let's do it.
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But the other way cannot be just not enforcing the law.
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The other way cannot be, oh, you have a kid with you?
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Throw open the doors to anyone who happens to wander across the border with kids.
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Because then you have the situation that we're facing right now, which is kids are used as
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get out, you know, get across the border free cards.
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And I think that that is much more dehumanizing than detaining them.
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So that is a, that situation is bad for our country.
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So it's also in the kids' best interest for us to enforce our laws and to have this disincentive.
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To make it clear to people, it's a, it's a bad idea to bring your kids across the border
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So the only other option, if it's possible, is the keys to detain the families altogether.
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Keeping an entire family detained is still upsetting to a lot of people, just as we've
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seen, because even, even after Trump, even after Trump reversed himself on this, said they're
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going to change the policy, he's still being criticized by the media and by the left because
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they're saying, well, it's not good enough because even if you detain the families, you
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confine the families together, you're still confining kids and confining families.
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So what they're really trying to get to is let's not enforce our laws.
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They don't have a problem necessarily specifically with separating kids.
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So that's what this discussion is really about.
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And here's the reality that you run right into when we're talking about this, that there
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is not always a nice or polite way to maintain and protect a civilization.
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If we are going to have a civilization, if we're going to have a country, then we have to enforce
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And that, as I've established, is going to involve catching the people when they're coming
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across, confining them in some sort of locked environment, okay?
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And then prosecuting them and shipping them back.
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That's the only way we can have a country and a civilization.
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But there are not always nice, polite, and pleasant ways to maintain a civilization.
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We have this really childish, ridiculous idea, this utopian idea that we can just erase the
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borders and get rid of all the laws and just say, everybody live where you want.
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And you have all these people that grew up listening to that stupid, horrible John Lennon
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song, Imagine a World Without Borders, Without Countries, and so forth, which is just people
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with the mentality of five-year-olds who think that sounds like a good idea.
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In fact, I had, and also the other problem is you have a lot of people that have never
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read a history book and really know nothing about the world whatsoever.
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For instance, yesterday on Twitter, someone said to me, and I know I've heard this a million
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Somebody told me on Twitter the other day, they said, yesterday, they said, well, America
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America was founded on open borders, which that's not, that's literally impossible.
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You cannot found a country with open borders because founding a country with open borders
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The process of establishing and founding a country means drawing a border and probably
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That is an essential component of founding a country is the border.
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It's like saying, you know, I built my house without walls.
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There's no such thing as a house without walls.
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In fact, when you look at the history, the early history of the United States, when you
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look at the 18th and 19th century of history of the United States, what you find is an endless
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series of wars, battles, and other armed conflicts that were fought in order to define, establish,
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You find men who are willing to fight and bleed to defend, establish, define, expand the borders.
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And that's what you find everywhere in the world, in every civilization.
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There has never been a civilization that established itself and established its borders by talking
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politely and nicely to the civilizations around it.
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And saying, say, do you mind if we draw our borders here?
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You could draw it further back here and have some of ours.
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And then they all shake hands and they have tea and crumpets together.
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Now, that doesn't mean it's, this is not an ends justify the means situation.
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That doesn't mean that everything a country does in order to protect, define its borders
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We should still strive to be humane and just while we, while we set out to do that.
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And that should be one of the things that separates America from other countries is that we care
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But you can, you can do something that's humane and just.
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And yet, at the same time, is kind of upsetting and unpleasant.
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It's like just because it's upsetting and just because it makes you feel icky inside and
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just because it's unpleasant doesn't mean that it's inhumane and it doesn't mean that
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I mean, the idea of enforcing any law is kind of unpleasant.
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The idea of locking anyone in prison for breaking a law, that's an unpleasant idea.
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I mean, it doesn't make me feel good when I think about people in prison, even when I
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I, it's, it's, it's, it's not like it, it, it fills me with, with just happy butterflies
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I'm just so happy thinking about people locked in prison.
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It's not, it's not a, it's not a happy, pleasant thing, but it's a necessary and just
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But enforcing our law, it's, it's nothing personal against these people who are coming
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If I lived in some dirt poor, drug infested, Central American country, and I had kids especially,
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and I couldn't really speak English, and I didn't understand the American system, and
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I didn't even know how to go about obtaining legal American citizenship.
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And I had heard all these stories about how difficult it is and everything else.
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And then I'd also heard stories about how easy it is to just sneak across the border.
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And I've already got family somewhere in, you know, Texas or wherever.
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Then, then if I were in that situation, I may well decide to sneak across the border myself.
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I may make that situation, that, that decision because I would be far, far more concerned with
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protecting my children than with obeying the law.
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On a personal level, I understand and I sympathize.
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You can sympathize with someone and yet still believe that they should face the penalties for
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Look, I sympathize with people who grow up in the gutter, you know, in, in, in the inner
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city and they have no parental guidance to speak of.
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They're just surrounded by gangs and violence and drugs all the time.
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There's, there's no moral format formation, no guidance, nothing.
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And, and they start selling drugs when they're 12 years old.
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And by the time they're 18, they're, you know, knocking over liquor stores.
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And I look at the situation that they're in and the way that they're, the trajectory that
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And I think I could very easily have ended up doing the same thing if I was in their
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situation, but we still have to enforce the law.
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So we still have to lock them in jail because the law matters.
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It doesn't mean that we're dehumanizing somebody.
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So these families are doing what they think they need to do.
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And we as a country have to do what we must do.
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And that's a lot of life, you know, that's, that's what life consists of.
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A lot of times is you have two people with competing interests who are both doing or two
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We can't have a country if we don't have a border.
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And enforcing the border is, can be an unpleasant process.
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You have to be able to remove emotions from law.
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Now that doesn't mean you remove morality from law.
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It doesn't mean you remove fairness from law, but you do have to remove emotions.
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Laws should be just humane, uh, fair, but they can't always be comfortable.
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They can't always be nice and they can't always be pleasant.
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And in order to have justice, in order to have order, in order to have a civilization,
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you have to have just fair, clear, understandable laws that are enforced.
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And it's going to be, as I said, unpleasant, no matter how you do it.
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If we can keep the kid, the families together, I say, let's do that.
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But we still have to detain them and they still have to face the penalty.
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And even that, even if we get rid of all the situations where kids are being separated,
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But still, we still are running into the, to, to, to, to the, to the fact that we're going
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to be, we have to catch these people, confine them, go through this legal process, and then
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send them back across the border to a country that is not a very nice place to live.
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And in the meanwhile, there's going to be tears and there's going to be, you know, there's
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going to be some, some, some level of trauma and people's dreams are going to be crushed.
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I mean, they were dreaming of, of living in America and escaping all of this.
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I mean, that's an unpleasant, tough thing to think about.
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It doesn't make me happy to think about, but it is necessary.
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And it is just, because it is the law and it is a necessary, just, fair law, the kind
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of law that every country has and must have, or it cannot be a country.
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The real problem is that many of the people who are shouting about the child separation
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issue, what they, when it really comes down to is they don't want to enforce the law at
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So they are not looking for a more just, a more fair, a more humane way to enforce the
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If that's what we were talking about, if we were just talking about, well, what is the,
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the best way to enforce this law, this necessary law that, that, you know, protects our border.
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If we were having that discussion, I would say that's a great, that's a great discussion
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Very productive, very fruitful, very important, but that's not the discussion.
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Instead, we're having a discussion about immigration law with people who don't think there should
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So it would be the same thing if we were talking about, you know, what, what are the most humane
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ways to deal with prisoners in the prison system?
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Uh, but it turns out that half of the people involved in the discussion think that there
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Well, then you can't get anywhere in the conversation because number one, they're really being disingenuous.
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I mean, they're, they're, they're, they're beginning the conversation by criticizing this
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particular policy, but then it turns out that they don't think there should be any policies.
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The open borders position is incoherent because it means the dissolution of our country.
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And in the process, it means dissolving the very thing that makes our country appealing
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to those people in Mexico and Central America and South America.
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If there's a way to keep these families together while you enforce the law and protect the border,
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I don't want to see kids separate from their families.
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I don't like seeing, but we cannot, what we cannot do is go back to a policy where anyone
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who crosses the border with a child, even if the child doesn't even necessarily belong
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It's not good for anybody, except maybe smugglers who profit off this whole situation.
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So if you want to talk about enforcing the law humanely, great, but enforcing the law
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Even if it makes our tummies hurt, we still have to do it.