Pulitzer Prize winner: illegal immigrant

[TraneWreck]

It is interesting that some people say he is doing no harm, so that he should be allowed to continue to break the law. Imagine if I said I was entitled to evade the tax on making title 2 firearms. I’m obviously not harming anyone if I made a silencer without ATF approval, but that is a 10 yr/$10k risk that many people would insist I pay.

Ranb

Except you're not paying taxes, he was. If you get caught, you get fined. I think the same punishment is warranted in this case.

Make him pay another 1% on his income tax for the rest of his life.

 

[Ranb]

Yes, the terrible crime of getting an education and obtaining employment.

You know what his crime is, why are you claiming otherwise? Vargas altered his SSN card and is working/staying illegally in the country.

Ranb

 

[Ranb]

Except you're not paying taxes, he was. If you get caught, you get fined. I think the same punishment is warranted in this case.

Make him pay another 1% on his income tax for the rest of his life.

The point I was trying to make is that he is breaking the law and supposedly not harming anyone. Do you that other law breakers are going to get the same sympathy that illegal immigrants get?

Why is it too much to ask him to simply obey the law? It appears that he considers himself to be above the law.

Ranb

 

[mumblethrax]

Why is it too much to ask him to simply obey the law?

Because no salient argument can be made that he has any moral obligation to obey the law. He is American without being American--the obvious comparison would be to something like black people living in the Jim Crow South.

Now that he's come forward to break the law in full public view and has started an advocacy organization, his actions are best understood as a kind of civil disobedience. It's too much to obey the law because to obey the law would be to sweep a serious injustice under the rug.

 

[TraneWreck]

The point I was trying to make is that he is breaking the law and supposedly not harming anyone. Do you that other law breakers are going to get the same sympathy that illegal immigrants get?

Deporting him is like punishing speeding with a trip to GITMO.

Sure, it's a crime, just not a particularly damaging one. He's here, paying taxes, contributing to the system. Have him pay a fine, move on.

Deportation is bad for him, it's bad for the country.

Why is it too much to ask him to simply obey the law? It appears that he considers himself to be above the law.

Just out of curiosity, did you read the NY Times article? I would recommend reading the whole thing.

The world is not that simple of a place.

 

[AvalonXQ]

Deporting him is like punishing speeding with a trip to GITMO.

Asking him to pay a fine and allowing him to stay in the country is like giving a guy a ticket for speeding and then allowing him to drive off at 100 mph.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

Yes, the terrible crime of getting an education and obtaining employment.

And paying into Social Security and Medicare!

 

[TraneWreck]

You know what his crime is, why are you claiming otherwise? Vargas altered his SSN card and is working/staying illegally in the country.

Altering government documents is a crime about as serious as lighting a $1 bill on fire. Sure, it's illegal, but that limited act means very little compared to what is done with the documents.

Forging an identity to steal money from others or otherwise engage in harmful illegal activity is a problem.

Forging a SSN to go to public school, college, and get a job--not so much.

"Speeding" is always a crime.

Now compare going 35 in a 25mph zone with going 130mpg in a 45 zone and launching your car into a forest.

As is so often the case, not much can be discerned from a literal reading of a statute. The facts of the situation need to be considered.

 

[TraneWreck]

Asking him to pay a fine and allowing him to stay in the country is like giving a guy a ticket for speeding and then allowing him to drive off at 100 mph.

No, it isn't. It's recognizing that the harm of the illegal activity was not great and the contribution to society was larger.

You really think letting this guy stay in the country and continue to generate Pulizer Prize winning journalism is an on-going crime?

This may be a situation where our basic understandings of the world will never allow us to bridge the gap. This gentleman has contributed more to American that most people who were **** out of a vagina in a more fortuitous location.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

Asking him to pay a fine and allowing him to stay in the country is like giving a guy a ticket for speeding and then allowing him to drive off at 100 mph.

Not really. If "allowing him to stay in the country" means converting his status to legal status (and issuing him legal documentation), then it's not analogous to letting a driver speed off after being issued a speeding ticket. It's much more analogous to allowing a speeder to plea bargain his crime to a non-points violation in exchange for a higher fine (or attending a traffic school or whatever).

Even then the analogy breaks down because if he's allowed to become a legal immigrant, it's not possible for him to repeat the crime of entering illegally again, and he would have no motivation to falsify documents ever again.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

You know what his crime is, why are you claiming otherwise? Vargas altered his SSN card and is working/staying illegally in the country.

For the record, staying in the country illegally isn't itself a crime. It is a federal violation that makes one subject to removal, but not, in itself, grounds for any criminal prosecution.

But again, on the actual crimes, prosecutors are free to prosecute or not, to plea bargain, to grant immunity for any number of reasons. I've already pointed out that this is done fairly routinely with speeding. It's also done with any number of other crimes, for a variety of good reasons.

 

[BenBurch]

I know a woman who is an illegal alien.

She was born in London, and came to this country when she was two weeks old, and has been here ever since.

She has never been to England; America is the only country she has ever known. Her parents never filed the right paperwork for her to be here legally, and she cannot address that problem without being deported.

And she would never be allowed back in the country again, as she had a prostitution arrest 20 years when she was 19 and starving, and had no other work she could do.

And prostitution is apparently so much a danger to our national security that we put convicted prostitutes on the same footing as known terrorists...

So, what is she to do?

Nothing.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

As is so often the case, not much can be discerned from a literal reading of a statute. The facts of the situation need to be considered.

Well said.

And again given that the current federal policy of focusing enforcement resources on violent criminal illegal aliens has resulted in all time record high levels of enforcements (and removals), and given that there is a lot of discretion involved in decisions to prosecute, to offer plea bargains or immunity and even to grant pardons in ALL of criminal law, why is it that people still insist that "we do not enforce" our immigration laws? [see post #30]

This is a contrary-to-fact claim. But I wonder how it is they can make that claim about immigration law and not make it about ALL law enforcement?

[ETA: I confess, I don't really wonder about that. It was a rhetorical device. I believe they are simply ill-informed or ignorant of the facts when they make these claims. Or they mean to express an opinion but are disingenuously expressing it as a claim of fact: while they say that the federal government doesn't enforce its own immigration laws, they actually mean that they disapprove of the federal government's enforcement policies. But if they said that, they'd have to defend their own policies against the policy that has resulted in record levels of enforcements and probably has contributed to a reduction in violent crime rates.]

 

[mumblethrax]

It's interesting that people who are normally boosters for the free market, the "I'm socially liberal and fiscally conservative" crowd, change their tune when it comes to immigration. Social liberalism and fiscal conservatism both lead us to supporting reform in the direction of liberalized immigration and naturalization, especially in the narrow case of immigrant minors. Will Wilkinson, a libertarian and former CATO-institute fellow, has written provocatively on the subject, calling his fellow libertarians to the mat for their inchoate ideas on immigration. The whole debate is poisoned by irrational, anti-empirical tribalism.

 

[stokes234]

I wonder about the social security number he "borrowed." To whom does it really belong, and what has his use of it done to the real owner's taxes, bank accounts, whatever? What happens when the guy applies for retirement?

Show evidence of harm or potential harm, and we can start to consider some moral outrage.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

It's interesting that people who are normally boosters for the free market, the "I'm socially liberal and fiscally conservative" crowd, change their tune when it comes to immigration. Social liberalism and fiscal conservatism both lead us to supporting reform in the direction of liberalized immigration and naturalization, especially in the narrow case of immigrant minors. Will Wilkinson, a libertarian and former CATO-institute fellow, has written provocatively on the subject, calling his fellow libertarians to the mat for their inchoate ideas on immigration. The whole debate is poisoned by irrational, anti-empirical tribalism.

Good point.

I'd add that if they really want unlimited enforcement of federal immigration laws, it would require unlimited resources. And these are the same people who say they're in favor of "small government" or at least opposed to "big government"!

 

[Brainster]

I'm of the opinion that one of the biggest problems with immigration is that we don't allow more of it legally. However, that does not excuse those who have broken the law. I'm particularly amused by the media's reaction which can be summarized as, "He's immune to deportation because he won a Pulitzer Prize." I suspect they will be proven wrong.

 

[cwalner]

Yes, the terrible crime of getting an education and obtaining employment.

both of which were of much more benefit to him than to society and which he could only achieve through the actual criminal action of falsifying his identity. Also you have just answered who was harmed. The person who was not accepted to college because of his acceptance and every person that did not get a job that he did. He used his fraudulent identity to get a share of finite resources that properly belonged to somebody who did not commit any crimes regarding his/her identity (most likely a Latino immigrant that had real and honest immigration paperwork).

 

[stokes234]

both of which were of much more benefit to him than to society and which he could only achieve through the actual criminal action of falsifying his identity. Also you have just answered who was harmed. The person who was not accepted to college because of his acceptance and every person that did not get a job that he did. He used his fraudulent identity to get a share of finite resources that properly belonged to somebody who did not commit any crimes regarding his/her identity (most likely a Latino immigrant that had real and honest immigration paperwork).

He worked as a journalist, which is a creative industry. He was producing new work from scratch for a private industry selling to private consumers. If JK Rowling was an illegal immigrant and had been caught and deported, would someone else have written Harry Potter in her place?

 

[Ranb]

Because no salient argument can be made that he has any moral obligation to obey the law. He is American without being American--the obvious comparison would be to something like black people living in the Jim Crow South.

No moral obligation to obey the law? Where does it end? What laws should anyone have no moral obligation to obey? Or is there no moral obligation to obey any law?

Ranb