On immigration, Democrats need to consider what they owe Americans.
Trump is saying Democrats have their priorities wrong. The best political response for Democrats is to have their priorities right.
Democrats have not yet pulled together a politically viable immigration policy. They are still stuck in the language of protest. Trump is wrong--by definition--they are clear about that, but it is not enough.
Two years ago Bernie Sanders had been speaking clearly for the need for strong borders and national identity, identifying the "open borders" position as one belonging to the Koch Brothers. But the trend among Democrats since Trump began his campaign has been to think internationally about our duties to the suffering people of the world, and to be reluctant to enforce borders. Andrew Sullivan wrote this week about this confusion among Democrats. Click. Andrew Sullivan and Click: Conversation between Bernie Sanders and Ezra Klein Sanders has the right message.
The problem for Democrats is that the enforcement of the policy and sentiment strike their base voters as cruel. They don't want to enforce their rules.
Let me introduce the guest post below with a disturbing bit of history. The Soviet Union's Red Army of World War 2 had a directive, 227. It said soldiers shall fight to the death and never retreat or surrender under any circumstances. Being captured was prima facia evidence of cowardice and disobedience of that directive.
When US troops captured German territory they came upon thousands of Soviet POWs who had been captured by Germans. We shipped them to the US, and brought them back to life. The Soviet army also liberated some American POWs. After the surrender we asked the Soviets to allow us to reclaim our soldiers. The Soviets refused. They said they would only release them as an exchange for our shipping back their soldiers. Presidents Roosevelt and Truman knew full well what that meant. The Soviet soldiers we had rescued would be shipped back, led off the American ships, and immediately shot. Soviet prisoners begged to stay in the US. The presidents sent them back. Their first responsibility was to the American soldiers held hostage.
I read this history with heavy heart. But as the son of an American GI, who was in mortal danger for 180 days of combat in Germany, I appreciated Roosevelt's and Truman's understanding of his first duty--to the American soldier held hostage.
Democrats need not be gratuitously cruel to asylum seekers, but American voters are looking closely at Democrats to see if they have their priorities straight. Their first duty is to Americans. Democrats need to show it, with demonstrable visible action, to be persuasive.
Thad Guyer is an attorney with an international practice, specializing in complex litigation representing whistleblowing employees.
Two years ago Bernie Sanders had been speaking clearly for the need for strong borders and national identity, identifying the "open borders" position as one belonging to the Koch Brothers. But the trend among Democrats since Trump began his campaign has been to think internationally about our duties to the suffering people of the world, and to be reluctant to enforce borders. Andrew Sullivan wrote this week about this confusion among Democrats. Click. Andrew Sullivan and Click: Conversation between Bernie Sanders and Ezra Klein Sanders has the right message.
The problem for Democrats is that the enforcement of the policy and sentiment strike their base voters as cruel. They don't want to enforce their rules.
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| Stalin directive: "Not a step back." |
When US troops captured German territory they came upon thousands of Soviet POWs who had been captured by Germans. We shipped them to the US, and brought them back to life. The Soviet army also liberated some American POWs. After the surrender we asked the Soviets to allow us to reclaim our soldiers. The Soviets refused. They said they would only release them as an exchange for our shipping back their soldiers. Presidents Roosevelt and Truman knew full well what that meant. The Soviet soldiers we had rescued would be shipped back, led off the American ships, and immediately shot. Soviet prisoners begged to stay in the US. The presidents sent them back. Their first responsibility was to the American soldiers held hostage.
I read this history with heavy heart. But as the son of an American GI, who was in mortal danger for 180 days of combat in Germany, I appreciated Roosevelt's and Truman's understanding of his first duty--to the American soldier held hostage.
Democrats need not be gratuitously cruel to asylum seekers, but American voters are looking closely at Democrats to see if they have their priorities straight. Their first duty is to Americans. Democrats need to show it, with demonstrable visible action, to be persuasive.
Thad Guyer is an attorney with an international practice, specializing in complex litigation representing whistleblowing employees.
Guest Post, by Thad Guyer:
American Citizens Qualify for Canadian and EU Asylum
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| Thad Guyer |
"Asylum-seekers flee gang violence. We are inundated with calls to “abolish ICE”. Federal judges have ordered the release of illegal immigrants, not just children but many adults claiming asylum. These judicial decrees have found US immigration detention facilities inadequate and inhospitable, and that some illegal immigrants are getting inadequate health care, forced medications, and even sexual abuse. Court cases are pending over challenges to whether illegal immigrants abused by their husbands get automatic border passes, as well as those fleeing gang violence and extreme poverty.
US citizens mistreated. In 1980, the public interest law organization I worked for sent me to the old Atlanta federal penitentiary where thousands of Cuban “Mariel Boatlift” refugees were being detained pending their asylum hearings. In the years after, I worked with other asylum seekers. But mostly we represented US citizens who were poor minorities. We filed civil rights suits over treatment of pretrial detainees, arguing they should be released on bail pending trial because they should not be separated from their children at home, as they were after all, presumed innocent. We had homeless clients filing suits that government had abandoned them to malnutrition, mental illness and abject poverty. We sued state and federal government health agencies for not providing adequate health care, and police agencies persecution and for not protecting minority neighborhoods from crime. We sued state courts for not protecting women in domestic violence cases, schools for racial segregation, and election officials for denying the vote and political persecution.
We painted accurate and bleak pictures of repressed US citizens. These same public interest law organizations I worked with back then still pursue exactly the same cases for US citizens today. Why? Because US courts cannot stop gang violence, police shootings and the abject poverty of homelessness any more than Central American governments can.
We painted accurate and bleak pictures of repressed US citizens. These same public interest law organizations I worked with back then still pursue exactly the same cases for US citizens today. Why? Because US courts cannot stop gang violence, police shootings and the abject poverty of homelessness any more than Central American governments can.
Gang violence--right here in America. It turns out that hundreds of my clients, along with millions of other American citizens, qualified for asylum in Canada-- or France or Britain if they could get there-- on exactly the same grounds as asylum seekers at our southern border today from their countries in the Americas. Protesters shut down major roadways in Chicago yesterday demanding mayor Rahm Emanuel resign for his failure to protect ghetto blacks from being murdered every day. Oakland groups are providing volunteer escorts to get people to their cars from the BART subway without being murdered. Gang violence is rampant in South Central Los Angeles and parts of New York City. Thousands of US citizens living in these grand blue sanctuary cities actually qualify for asylum in safer countries that don't turn their backs on the homeless dying in the streets, as does Seattle and San Francisco; or getting murdered in masse, as in Chicago.
The irony is bitter. All of us already know this, or can readily understand it. Trump knows it and his supporters are hyper-aware of it. In Tampa, Pennsylvania, Montana and Ohio rallies, Trump does not let go of the border and asylum issue. Simultaneously, progressives attract cameras calling for ICE to be abolished, brandishing labels of "ethno-nationalism" or "xenophobia" against Americans who disagree. Yet they completely ignore Obama’s speech on June 17, 2018 in South Africa where he cautioned:
Obama: “In the West’s current debate around immigration, for example, it’s not wrong to insist that national borders matter; whether you’re a citizen or not is going to matter to a government, that laws need to be followed... Those are legitimate things and we have to be able to engage people who do feel as if things are not orderly.”
Polls are showing increasing agreement with Trump’s claims that Democrats are obsessing over the needs of illegal immigrants while ignoring the needs of US citizens who statistically and literally, like my clients, suffer the same inhumanities. This is shaping up to be a potentially decisive midterm issue. He is threatening to shut down the government over it. We are entering the final 90 days before the November 6th midterms. Democratic leaders are not responding to the call "what about Americans in the same situation here at home?"
We need a Democratic response.
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