The New York Post has a tale that is guaranteed to make “Think of the Children!” fans and “They just want a better life!” defenders of illegal immigration swim in a lake of tears like shrunken Alice in “Alice in Wonderland.”
Ximena Arias-Cristobal, 19, was a Dalton State Community College ( in Dalton, Georgia) student driving without a driver’s license when she failed to obey to a “no turn on red” sign. After police pulled her vehicle over, she claimed to have an “international driver’s license” (Nice try, kid!). One thing led to another, and eventually it was determined that she was not a citizen, having been brought here illegally by her Mexican parents when she was four, that they were here illegally too and had been for 15 years.
The officer who pulled the student’s car over attempted to speak to the teen’s mom and “the owner of the car,” according to the arrest report, but neither of them spoke English. Arias-Cristobal was arrested and transported to the Whitfield County Jail, a partner of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s 287(G) program. She was processed through the federal database that confirmed she wasn’t a US citizen and taken to ICE’s Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia, where her father, Jose Francisco Arias-Tovar, is also being held. He owns his own company. Awww.
It appears that Arias-Cristobal’s mother—-who hasn’t bothered to learn the language of the nation she entered illegally in 15 years— will also be arrested and deported within a month while her other, younger daughters who were born here will leave with her to keep the family together.
All together now: Awwwww!
A neighbor has started a GoFundMe to help the family fight the deportation they deserve. Of course she has. Please note: I will feel a little bit sorry if the family ends up in Rwanda. OK, I feel a little bit more of a pang because the Democrats and the Biden Administration sent the message that good, law abiding (well, except for that license thingy) illegals like them were welcome to breach the border and violate our immigration laws on the “Everybody Does It” theory of ethics.
In related news, the Trump Administration will now pay illegal immigrants like Ximena and her parents to self-deport. What an excellent idea! I wonder why nobody thought of that before….
Ethics Alarms 
I think there’s a difference in feeling bad for the people in these situations, and thinking that empathy should translate into action.
You said it yourself: Fully half of your political class has been sending signals at people like this that their actions were not only permissible, but sometimes even necessary. I mean, who will babysit the children, or mow the lawn? /s
I can’t blame someone from a third world country to want to come to America. I can’t blame them for wanting to skip the line. I can’t find fault in any of their actions, really… Even not speaking English… That feels weird to someone in the American Northeast, but in Georgia? Something like a fifth of the state doesn’t speak English at home. Literally every decision the family in question made seems rationally self-interested given their environment at the time, and they did have to make sacrifices to make it happen. I do feel bad for these people. There but for the grace of God go I.
The step that progressives want us to take is “you feel empathy, therefore…. [insert some crazy policy prescription], and that’s what we need to reject. I feel sympathy for all kinds of people. Some lives are incredibly tragic, and there’s an ever consuming void of need out there… But we live in reality, where there are limited resources, and there’s a reason why airlines tell you to put on your own air mask before assisting others. We do what we can, with what we have, understanding that if we all equalized down to the lowest common denominator, we’d all live like the people we want to help, and that doesn’t really help anyone.
“…Georgia? Something like a fifth of the state doesn’t speak English at home.“
Supposedly, about 15% of households in Georgia, vs an average of 22% nationwide speak mainly some language other than English, so there seems little reason to assign their location as a particular mitigator of their status. (Though to be fair, that doesn’t mean the distribution of that population is evenly spread.)
Still, it’s hard for me to feel much sympathy for the resultant difficulties of someone who would live in another country for even a year and not make the effort to become at least slightly functionally fluent.
This problem should be laid directly at Obama’s feet. His DACA program gave the impression that DACA recipients had some sort of legal status and were not subject to removal. They did not acquire legal status, only their removal was deferred until some later date.
Under DACA, the individual must under 31 years old prior to June 15, 2012, entered the US before turning 16 years old, and lived continuously in the US since 2007. She may still qualify for deferred action but that will not help her parents, assuming they do not qualify for DACA.
DACA was a cynical program.
jvb
There seem to be more articles like this about illegal aliens than artickes about military deserters.
I mean, I am sure there are a few deserters who are living quietly, raising families. Why not shine a spotlight on them?
So, I appreciate that this girl has spent almost her entire life here in the United States. On the other hand, she has to have known that she was not a legal resident or citizen. I’d be surprised if that wasn’t asked of her at some point in the college admission process (and was she getting student loans?).
I make an analogy to someone, let’s say a bank robber, who is living somewhere under an assumed name because he or she is wanted by the FBI. Even after a decade, that person would have an awareness that if he or she came to the attention of the authorities, the next stop might well be the slammer.
Ordinary prudence in both cases would dictate living one’s life based upon not coming to the attention of the authorities. I.e. one shouldn’t break traffic laws, shouldn’t speed, I don’t know the laws in Georgia, but there is a decent chance they would have issued her a driver’s license. She ought to have been able to get a matricula consular id card, which might enable her to get a driver’s license, and probably would get her an ITIN.
If she’d had a driver’s license, then even if she had been pulled over for a traffic violation, would she be facing deportation now? If you know that you are a nail, do you really want your head to be sticking up out of the board, just inviting a hammer to flatten you?
I actually sympathize with people such as her. I wouldn’t be opposed to a pathway to either permanent residency or citizenship. Right now — and in the recent past — is there anything they can do under current law to become legal residents? I don’t know the answer to that one.
“I don’t know the laws in Georgia, but there is a decent chance they would have issued her a driver’s license.“
Probably not. They’ve been pretty tough on ID requirements of legal presence for quite a while. A consul card is only a Mexican ID, and not proof of legal status, which they require for a DL.
When my (now deceased) mother moved here about 15 yrs ago, to get an ID for voting (same application process, but no driving privileges) it took considerable effort to round up proof of status (birth cert. from another state, marriage cert. for surname change, etc.) for her to get the card. She had her out-of-state DL, but it had expired, so they wouldn’t accept it.
This is on the list of reasons I suggest everyone to get a passport even if you are not traveling. Often the passport is easier than other forms of ID. For example, you don’t need to provide marriage and divorce certificates for name changes.
A passport is considered definitive proof of identity and citizenship. The only thing it is invalid for is proof of address.
“In related news, the Trump Administration will now pay illegal immigrants like Ximena and her parents to self-deport. What an excellent idea! I wonder why nobody thought of that before.”
Because it’s stupid and unethical. People should not be paid to leave the country just as they should not be paid not to commit crimes as some cities have tried in the past.
It might be unethical, but it’s definitely not stupid to test out a solution that would be significantly faster and cheaper than going about deportation using the normal method.
It is a pragmatic solution to incentivize self-deportation. That is how things work in politics, it is all about the results.
The AP article provides the following justification:
“There’s a reason it’s attractive to governments wanting to encourage migrants to go. It costs less to buy someone a plane ticket and some incentive money than it does to pay to find them, detain them if necessary, wait for the courts to rule on their case and then send them home.
The Department of Homeland Security said that it costs $17,121 to arrest, detain and remove someone in the U.S. illegally.
Voluntary returns also don’t require extensive government-to-government negotiations to get a country to take back its citizens, which can be a major benefit. There are a number of countries that either don’t take back their own citizens who are being returned by U.S. immigration enforcement officials or make that process challenging.“
The issue of paying people to self deport allows American immigration officials achieve the desired result at a cost savings of 70% said Scott Bessent.
The program helps identify those here illegally and gives them an avenue to return in a legally responsible manner. I am assuming this is designed to prevent the known backlog of cases in immigration court and to prevent costly time consuming appeals.
If ICE could just detain and deport any known illegal alien without affording the aliens all the due process rights citizens enjoy then I could agree that the idea is stupid and unethical but that isn’t reality and reality would indicate that at the rate we are going in the courts the aliens will die of old age before most cases are on the docket.
Are not military tribunals due process?
Of course, street justice can be due process.
https://www.instagram.com/p/DJNoLJ0vW8_/?igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
Not unethical, ethical under utilitarian principles: it’s a net ethics win. The state wins by saving time and money not ahving to deal with multiple court appearances and “due process,” The public wins by getting rid of the illegal resident. The illegal resident gains by minimizing the pain of being forcibly deported and having some autonomy. Balance that against the ethically repugnant fact that a law-breaker profits from the breach, and it’s an easy net plus, hence “ethical” according to Mill and Bentham.
I thought of the comparison to paying kids not to commit crimes, but realized that it’s a poor analogy. This would be like paying criminals who already committed felonies to surrender and confess. That would save money, time, and increase justice in the system. A plea deal is not much different in principle. Paying Mexicans to stay in Mexico is the analogy to paying kids not to break laws: and yes, that would be stupid and unethical.
Paying someone to undo something they shouldn’t have done in the first place ending up being less expensive than forcibly removing them with all the attendant discomfort still undermines the message.
I think it’s ethically defensible to pay more to do it the legally forceful way and not the “let me bribe you to go back after breaking the law”.
Didn’t work with the Huns in the Roman Empire. Not gonna work here.
As I understand it (could be wrong) there are other conditions. Taking the deal would leave a path open for you to legally apply to immigrate at some future point, if you wished. Not taking the deal, then getting caught and deported would put you on a “never able to apply” list, and remove any chance of future legal status.
So we’re paying someone we know breaks rules to sort of undo the breaking of the rule and leaving open the door for a known rule breaker…
I think this bolsters my notion that it might be ethically more defensible to spend extra money doing it the painful way to prove a point.
I wouldn’t mind expecting someone to self deport on their own dime and maybe leaving a door open for them to do the process legally at the back of the line.
Again: utilitarianism wins. The objective is to get illegals out of the country as quickly and inexpensively as possible. The breach of principle is not insignificant, but secondary to the objective.
Principles matter. Let’s start bribing people not to steal while we’re at it.
Or more aptly. Start paying thieves to return stolen goods.
As in the movie “Ransom,” (1996) in which a kidnapper tries to collect the reward money offered—the same amount as the ransom he demanded—for returning a kidnapped child.
Mel Gibson was still glad he got his kid back, and that was a desirable result compared to the only alternative. AGAIN: Utilitarianism. Making it more advantageous for thieves to return what was stolen than to keep it can still be ethical, under special circumstances.
Sometimes you have to get rid of a fly with a sledgehammer. It’s not about the fly, it’s about the flies that are watching.
If the worst thing that happens to an illegal immigrant is that they get to be paid to leave with the possibility of returning legally, that’s a gamble that *many more* will be willing to take.
In a way, it’s sort of like a plea deal.
As I wrote in the comment above: “A plea deal is not much different in principle.”
(Slaps forehead) I should read more thoroughly!
PWS
That would be a crime, I think. But Democrats are all in for committing crimes to oppose Trump policies anyway now.
Circumstances are always taken into account when any given law is determined to have been violated and prosecution of the violation has been triggered.
What seems to be our struggle as Americans is the balance between blind application of the law(which is stupid and very British) and the motivation behind the law. We do not exist for the purpose of upholding the law/rules. The law exists so that we can seek restitution when someone elses behavior adversely affects my person or property.
This story highlights that even in these heartstring-tugging cases illegal immigration incurs costs on the society, such as driving without valid drivers licenses and insurance, identity theft, and tax evasion.
President Clinton said the following in 1995 SOTF:
“All Americans, not only in the states most heavily affected, but in every place in this country, are rightly disturbed by the large numbers of illegal aliens entering our country. The jobs they hold might otherwise be held by our citizens or legal immigrants. The public services they use impose burdens on our taxpayers.”
It’s possible her mother knows some English but chose to pretend she didn’t so she could avoid talking to the police. There’s nothing she could have said that would have made the situation better.
According to the the NY Post, her father was stopped for speeding last month and has been sent to the same ICE detention center so it’s not like she didn’t know the risk of breaking traffic laws.
Once again, if you know you can get deported if you’re pulled over for breaking traffic laws, shouldn’t that be an incentive for one to be a careful driver?
On a related note.
https://www.instagram.com/p/DJNoLJ0vW8_/?igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==