A bit of a long read, and a good one. It did not start with Trump, although it is accelerating with him. And if you can take a long term view, this problem is just starting and it will get much worse over the years when more population are displaced due to climate change, which our military said it is one of the biggest risk to national security. Spoiler One of the biggest risks posed by climate change is the potential for massive population displacement. This possibility is particularly concerning because people who are forced to migrate due to the effects of climate change do not currently meet the definition of a refugee, meaning they are left without the rights and legal protections conferred by such a classification. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) has since proposed three classifications of “environmental migrants” to differentiate this unique subset: emergency migrants (people who temporarily flee a sudden environmental disaster), forced migrants (people who are currently directly impacted by long-term environmental factors), and motivated migrants (people who seek to avoid future environmental hazards).35 Climate change threatens to dramatically increase the number of both refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs), creating additional strains on the humanitarian and economic capabilities of the United States and other countries around the world. Climate change is also unique in that the losses inflicted upon a population's homeland (whether from sea level rise, desertification, flooding, or a surge in deadly heat conditions) is most likely permanent. While refugees of war may one day be able to return, environmental refugees could face permanent displacement. https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/06/21/some-suburb-of-hell-americas-new-concentration-camp-system/ On Monday, New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez referred to US border detention facilities as “concentration camps,” spurring a backlash in which critics accused her of demeaning the memory of those who died in the Holocaust. Debates raged over a label for what is happening along the southern border and grew louder as the week rolled on. But even this back-and-forth over naming the camps has been a recurrent feature in the mass detention of civilians ever since its inception, a history that long predates the Holocaust. At the heart of such policy is a question: What does a country owe desperate people whom it does not consider to be its citizens? The twentieth century posed this question to the world just as the shadow of global conflict threatened for the second time in less than three decades. The dominant response was silence, and the doctrine of absolute national sovereignty meant that what a state did to people under its control, within its borders, was nobody else’s business. After the harrowing toll of the Holocaust with the murder of millions, the world revisited its answer, deciding that perhaps something was owed to those in mortal danger. From the Fourth Geneva Convention protecting civilians in 1949 to the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child, the international community established humanitarian obligations toward the most vulnerable that apply, at least in theory, to all nations. ...
The central question given in the article is so important: "What does a country owe desperate people whom it does not consider to be its citizens?" We need sincere bipartisan work from our elected leaders. I don't agree with you, OP, that we need to list climate change in there. For the near term, the problem will be bad enough just because of so many failing or struggling governments in our hemisphere and around the world. Democracy, negotiation and stability seem to be on the decline. So you'd predict lots of desperate people will be fleeing bad situations and trying to find more secure lives.
But what is driving those failures? Will we see a continuing uptick or are we seeing a temporary one? It does look bad recently and 2018 is a record year with 70.8M people displaced worldwide. However, 41.3M of those are internal (meaning they located elsewhere within their country) due to weather disasters, so those don't count toward the migrant seeking life elsewhere outside their country. That number is 25.9M refugees and 3.5M asylum-seekers. For the 25.9M, some are absorbed, but many are to be returned to their country once it has stabilize. That has been the best practice, which means the host country is usually hosting the majority of them on a temporary basis. But overall, I don't think the displacement due to traditional failure of state, war, conflict and persecution will keep going up and will eventually average out to that of past decades. What will drive the continuing uptick, and at some point, if we continue forward as is, a surge that the world isn't at all ready to handle is massive displacement due to climate change, the displacement of which is already happening at a relatively small scale and as mentioned, locally. When people are displaced permanently from a region, it isn't going to be in the 20s of M but 100s of M. There is no temporary basis of hosting them as there is no return for them. What will nations do at that point and even now? These people are not within the traditional category of refugee (escaping persecution, violence, war) and thus has no clear rights enjoyed by traditional refugee (at least they used to). The central question - what does a country owe desperate people whom it does not consider to be its citizens is then so much more relevant especially considering the nations that contributed most to climate change and the nations that so far has wanted to dealt with it seriously? Whatever that answer, the more practical problem is even if nations want to help, it is almost physically, psychologically and economically impossible to absorb such large number. The best solution of course is to do what we can to reduce the risk of massive migrants due to climate change. People who are already upset with the current situation, hopefully see how worthwhile it is to reduce that risk, instead of ignoring it. We do need sincere bipartisan work from our elected leaders for the current issues and for our future.
We don't owe them them anything. They've done nothing for which we have incurred any debt to them. If our own humanity, decency and compassion for other people is not enough to compel us to be better than this, then damn us all. We've finally proven that American exceptionalism was, all along, the result of luck. The coin finally landed on tails and we elected someone who reveals the true nature of many in America. Let's be 100% honest here. If it came out tomorrow that we were going to start executing illegal immigrants in these camps, what would the reaction be? Outrage on the left, demure objection from some on the right and lustful cheering by others. Any on the right who went too far in their outrage would be a RINO.
While I think we generally underestimate the depths to which we can sink, it’s hard to believe that summary executions of illegal immigrants would be tolerated by anyone except the extreme right-wing fringe. I guess it depends on how successful the campaign to dehumanize these people have been.
It feels like it's been pretty successful to me. People on the right have read these reports of what's happening in these summer camps and have responded with some combination of "It's Obama's fault for not fixing the system before it got to this" or "I don't believe it" or "They shouldn't have crossed the border illegally." My co-worker and I fought about this today and the response was "remember, whatever is happening now, the first step in this chain was that they crossed the border." Crossing the border has become the equivalent of raping a child for many.
I very much hope you are wrong. But I'm not sure where the line would be exactly. Clearly, having people in squalid, unhealthy conditions is okay, even with our own citizens. So I'm not surprised people are shrugging at that.
Americans (as in this case we are talking about Americans) will in general excuse and tolerate horrible behavior as long as the economy is humming and they don't have to personally witness the atrocities. We have elected someone that is willing to do the nasty business and then tell people it really isn't that bad. You cannot be serious. The far left and some religious organizations like the Catholic Church would protest and complain. the moderates would get in their cars and drive to work like nothing has changed. The Republicans would try to muddy the moral waters and re-elect the President. The few Republican politicians that took a stand would be destroyed by people like Lindsay Graham. When you strip away everything, there is no American Exceptionalism.
The response on Fox News when it was said that kids are dying in these camps was "Their parents shouldn't have sold them to some Coyote. They knew they might not live through this." When we've seen the mass "caravans" moving towards the border, what has the response been? Send in the army! They've openly called for them to open fire at the border if people try to cross illegally. Joe Arpaio (sp?) is considered a hero to them.
OT trying to be cute, pretending that he doesn't know the difference between temporary detention and indefinite detention
Cna't believe how many out of touch suburbanites we have on here... American Exceptionalism is no different than citizens in any country , at any time period, adjusting to the demands of the times. The system is overburdened, the quality of life for those who immigrate (particularily from latin america) and work tough jobs is no good and the more money created from them picking strawberries or building roofs does NOT go to them. It just increases the gap between the 0.5% and those struggling month to month. Strict border control is for the good of exisiting immigrants, poor and those cross illegally under some delusion. I do not say this as a "republican", these are the facts from people who actually deal with lower income immigrants. Those outraged would be better served working on income distribution... or donating their own time to getting better wages/working conditions for existing illegals.
I’m quite sure you’d be posting an “alternative view” from the Federalist explaining how it was perfectly in keeping with the Constitution and all Obama’s fault anyway.
