The immigration debate rages on with a Congress that won't fix anything (despite the fact that we're not in an election year) and a president looking to solve the issue with limited authority. When do you think the immigration debate will end in this country? It started before there even was a country, with Ben Franklin warning about all those Germans in Pennsylvania.
Today's problem is easy enough to understand: Too many migrants seek asylum in this country. Their reasons are many, while our resources are not.
President Trump is looking to reduce the number of migrants seeking asylum here by changing the rules. And one new rule might sound familiar. Though you might need another paragraph or two to recall exactly where you've seen it before. Here's more from The Wall Street Journal:
"Under the rule published online on Monday, with limited exceptions, migrants who passed through another country first would be ineligible for asylum at the U.S. border. They would instead be forced to seek it in another country through which they passed."
That is, a migrant from El Salvador passing through Guatemala would have to seek asylum there first instead of continuing on to the United States. And where have we seen this rule before? Answer: Over in that conservative bastion known as the European Union.
Not long ago, you may recall that Europe was facing a migration crisis of its own, with people fleeing the Middle East and Africa to get into safer countries like Germany and France. Migrants are still trying to make it into their countries every day, crossing the Mediterranean to do so, but thanks to a deal struck with Turkey, that pressure has lessened. A bit.
The EU has this policy called the Dublin Regulation, which says that asylum seekers have to apply for asylum in the first EU country they enter. It turns out democratic societies have limits on how many people their tax dollars can accommodate. Gentle Reader may remember what overwhelming numbers of migrants did to Greece. Few Americans want that happening here, thank you.
We can be sympathetic with the plight of migrants fleeing poverty, war and death. But we can also admit that we have limits on resources, enforcement, courts, etc. And the harder truth is that the sympathy of Americans can decrease when asylum seekers break the rules, determined to get where they want regardless of policies and laws of the nations they seek help from. Even going as far as to sue in our courts to force our system to disregard our laws.
Democratic socialists often point to nations like Sweden and Denmark for the perfect models of what our nation should be like. They like the expanded social safety nets (even with higher taxes) that are a normal thing in those countries. But how did those socialist utopias handle the influx of migrants?
Sweden continually tightened its migration policies as more people tried to get in. Some highlights of the country's migrant problems a couple years ago included increase of infections like tuberculosis, shockingly low numbers of migrants looking to further their education or seek work after arriving, and so much more. It's all a Google search away.
The most outrageous thing we read was migrants hiding to avoid deportation after their asylum claims were denied. Apparently the Supreme Administrative Court of Sweden actually had to rule said migrants had no rights to welfare benefits.
A tipping point for citizens of that socialist utopia might have come when a leaked government memo showed that spending cuts to all public services had become necessary because of the escalating costs of the migration crisis. Seems at least some taxpayers are happy to welcome asylum seekers until their own services are put in danger. Once again, Margaret Thatcher is proven correct: The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other peoples' money.
Turning back to this country, it's understandable that a good number of taxpayers don't want to see the United States get into an even worse immigration mess. The situation grows more frustrating when you realize that the asylum system was designed for small numbers, and is now being gamed by some economic migrants and treated like some fast lane into El Norte. That's not why it was created.
Democrats want Medicare for All in 2020? Good luck paying for that and free college when asylum seekers pile in by the hundreds of thousands, each looking for the same benefits. It's one thing for a government to provide public services to taxpayers that fund them. A few asylum seekers are still manageable. But flood the system with migrants and goodbye public services.
If people are truly seeking legal asylum, they can do so in the first country they come to. If the true objective is a safe place to live and not specifically American benefits, this shouldn't be an issue.
Editorial on 07/17/2019