The legal stench of immigration

Dear Readers, We have a schizophrenic approach to immigration.  We are a country of immigrants.  The Statue of Liberty proclaims, “Give me your tired, your poor. Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”  Indeed, millions of Americans-to-be poured through Ellis Island, making New York a thriving melting pot.  Most of us would not be here but for immigration.

Some of our greatest minds, Albert Einstein, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and Robert Pohls (to name a few), were immigrants.  We can thank immigration for famous Americans like Steve Jobs and Barack Obama, each with non-American parents.

Yet, stress exists between permitting “legal” and controlled immigration and community economic pressure from untaxed local services and medical care.  

Immigration is a “last resort” act of desperation; many immigrants love their home country. Everywhere there are disconnected native populations, there are people desperate for freedom.

I have visited Colombia, where my wife grew up; it is a beautiful country with a warm populace, despite the sadistic horrors of Pablo Escobar.  It is blessed with an abundance of natural resources, an economic hub of South and Central America.

It is also wracked by Narco-Traffickers, Venezuelan refugees, and revived Guerrilla para-military gangs.  The brutality of the drug trade and warring guerrillas destroys rural farming communities.  The National Government cannot be trusted because of its drug or guerrilla ties.  All the resources and effort we poured into it are flying apart; Colombians flee their country looking for an island of safety. 

The influx of Venezuelans overwhelms neighboring communities, as well as ushering in localized violence.  The United States offers a chance to restart a life from the rubble of ruin; a sanctuary, supposedly safe from corruption.  

Our immigration system has rules allowing Colombians into this country, fleeing pockets of unspeakable horrors, which is called “asylum.”  And, if they follow the rules, they can eventually pay for a green card and achieve legal status as a resident alien.  The same is true for populations from Central America to Venezuela and into the Caribbean of Cuba.

Until the Trump Administration stepped in.  It has unfurled a hatred of immigration, poisoning our national soul.  We are reneging on the rules and procedures we set in place.

We have been here before.  In 1939, as the Holocaust became a demonic reality, we (Cuba and Canada, also to be fair) turned away the SS St. Louis, a German ship carrying over 900 Jewish people, refugees from Hitler’s Germany.  We did this, so as not to be caught up in the conflagration in Europe and to “maintain our neutrality.”  The ship eventually returned from whence it came; many of its passengers were eventually imprisoned (and dead) in Nazi concentration camps.   

Once the war started, our paranoia overtook our morality.  Following the psychic blow of Pearl Harbor, fearing the threat of Japanese-Americans, over 120,000 (mostly American citizens) were rounded up into “relocation centers” (nothing more than concentration camps) in the Western U.S. – this was done by Presidential Executive Order.  Shamefully, the United States Supreme Court has never found this unconstitutional, although Chief Justice John Roberts has said that the main opinion has been “overturned” by the dustbin of history.

In our eagerness to curb the flow of immigrants, we are revoking green cards without notice, dropping removal proceedings for those with protected status (so that they can just be whisked away), and rounding up citizens in a terror campaign.  We are denying due process, removing legal residents to a foreign concentration camp, and arresting immigrants for offensive political speech (in violation of the First Amendment).  Americans – yes, even citizens – and legal immigrants are being beaten without cause and illegally isolated from their families.

Los Angeles is being treated like an occupied city by our ICE and National Guard.  ICE officials are wearing masks, like thuggish criminals, to vacuum up people living in the United States for decades, some knowing no other country. 

We are wearing our paranoid face.  Court orders are scoffed at as useless drivel.  We are reliving the fear of “others” from WWII, which drove us to commit atrocities and become mired in immorality.  We are becoming a lawless society, where the exercise of power has cachet and morality is banished from our lexicon.  

This is what happens when the government loses its moral authority.  This is also not America.  We obey the rule of law … or do we?

Warner Robins attorney Jim Rockefeller is the former Chief Assistant District Attorney for Houston County, and a former Assistant State Attorney in Miami.  Owner of Rockefeller Law Center, Jim has been in private practice since 2000.  E-mail your comments or confidential legal questions to ajr@rockefellerlawcenter.com.