U.S. juries have agreed our authorities can shoot people through the Mexican border.
In our outrage about Trump's Border Patrol teargassing rowdy asylum seekers near San Diego, this should not get lost:
So long as intolerable conditions persist in Central America, people will keep on coming. Any of us would if our loved ones were being murdered and simply living was no longer possible. The tiny chance that we might luck into asylum would look better than sticking around to be slaughtered. Without more law and more justice in Central America, the flow of desperate people isn't going to stop.PHOENIX -- An Arizona jury [last week] acquitted a U.S. Border Patrol agent of manslaughter in the shooting of a Mexican teen through a border fence, sparking a protest in downtown Tucson following the second loss for federal prosecutors in the second trial over the 2012 killing. Jurors in Tucson found Lonnie Swartz not guilty of involuntary manslaughter but didn't come to a decision on voluntary manslaughter.
The verdict comes months after Swartz was acquitted of second-degree murder by another jury that had deadlocked on manslaughter charges, allowing prosecutors to pursue the case again.
Border Patrol agents are rarely criminally charged for using force. But the killing of 16-year-old Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez sparked outrage on both sides of the border and came at a time when the agency was increasingly scrutinized for its use of force.
9 comments:
Since they were offered jobs and a chance to stay in Mexico, you really think this is about jobs? Seriously?
I don't mostly think migration is about jobs -- people leave their homes on dangerous journeys when they feel they have no alternative. Think all the folks who left homelands for good to populate this country.
The NYT has a decent article on the complexities of the situation in Mexico where a new president who was elected by the poor and others sick of elite corruption has to figure out what to do with people who leave Central America because life there has become unlivable.
What's happening here is much larger than Trump's use of the border for politics.
He isn't using it for politics any more than Obama used health care. He ran on this as an issue. He asked Congress to fix immigration including DACA. The ones using it are our leaders in both parties. The ones who paid for this migration are using it for their own cause-- no borders.
I keep hearing people on the left say the migrants aren't being paid. That's not the right question. It is who paid for the food and sanitation that it took to bring a group this size this far? With the payment were there demands-- like you better rush the border and be sure kids are in the forefront for the cameras. Humans operate on emotions more than issues or facts (one fact being what kind of parent would let their child be used that way when it was obvious the risk? My answer would be one who was forced by fear of someone in the caravan or someone so self-centered they didn't love their kids-- yes, that does happen. Parents come in many types, and I am sure the migrants are no exceptions).
To come, other than in these big caravans, usually migrants pay coyotes, but even then, when it's $$$$, where did poor people get that kind of money in nations where there are supposedly no jobs? Some probably comes from relatives already here but even then there could also be outside help from traffickers. With the caravans, the outside help is known both from down there and up here-- charities that want no borders.
To me, the issue is: is it possible to stop the illegal crossings, make the legal immigration work for the jobs needed (with a path to citizenship), and then figure out how to let the ones already here come out of the shadows to get green cards and that path to citizenship if they live up to the rules?
When for political reasons, neither side of this divide has wanted to actually fix it, when some Americans like the cheap labor that comes with illegals, to want to fix it is to be in a minority especially in politics-- talk gets them donations and votes. Even some of my good liberal friends (and I mean that word literally) worried their groceries would cost more if we stopped the illegal influx. I think Trump did/does want to fix it because it fits his ego to think he can fix things-- check them off in his great column00 but he might be the only one in the political realm who does.
The ones who want no borders at all know what that would do to the poor already in the US. They don't care. There are millions who would come here if they could, and if they could, what kind of country would this be with no controls at all on anything in the end. Controlled borders could work for us but would not solve growing issues with climate change in other countries. We send them aid but too often, it doesn't go where it's needed-- it lines pockets. Businesses that might've gone to say Honduras fear unrest and violence. A functioning border, letting in those agriculture/construction/service workers to be here legally, would leave some outside but would make it work for those who came in. Some don't benefit, like anarchists, from that.
This is bigger than Trump although he gets used along with using.
Rain -- though we disagree with many details on this (I believe that people who have nothing don't have to be paid to undertake terrible, dangerous and usually fruitless escapes), I agree completely that our political leaders have failed to deal sensibly with immigration over a 20 year span, creating a humanly devastating situation both at the borders and within the country.
we also need to make sure those in these countries can easily apply for asylum in their own countries at our embassies, and then why don't we bus or drive them up. It should not happen up here but there where the truth can be investigated.
or better yet, if there are enough, fly them up and cut the coyotes out of the business
The thing on the current system of paying someone to come to our border is it blocks true asylum seekers from being recognized. If we only allowed such applications at our embassies and made the process smooth, it'd cut out those hoping to profit from someone else's misery or worse get into human trafficking. There are answers but currently the powers do not want them. I think for globalists, the real goals are hidden and asylum seekers are collateral damage for what it hurts them.
Our lifeboat is full. We cannot take care of the people we have. Plus we have a huge national debt. One day this will come back to us.
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