We’re not the only ones looking closely at U.S. immigration policy and the many facilities around the country that process deportations. Here are five of the most incisive pieces we’ve read recently:
- The New York Times: “Divided by Immigration Policy”
The deferral program initiated by the Obama administration in June puts strict definitions on who is — and who is not — eligible. Siblings, best friends, and spouses find themselves on either side of that line. - AP: Immigrants’ detention profits companies
Campaign donations and lobbying money from the three corporations in charge of most private detention facilities in the U.S. have added up to at least $45 million at the state and federal level over the last ten years. One of those companies is The GEO Group, which operates the Tacoma facility InvestigateWest and The News Tribune profiled this week. - NBC News: Immigrant detainees land in limbo in Alabama jail
Etowah County Detention Center in northeast Alabama costs ICE just $40 a day per detainee, compared to between $60 and $100 at the Northwest Detention Center. But critics say it comes at a price and that Etowah is one of the worst detention facilities in the country. - The New York Times: “Young and Alone, Facing Court and Deportation”
The number of unaccompanied youth in the deportation, some as young as 6 years old, has doubled since last year. Reporter Julia Preston looks at what that means for those facing deportation, and the courts that process them. - AP: “Parents deported, what happens to US-born kids?”
We wrote about Leticia Jimenez-Diaz, a mother of two U.S. citizens facing deportation at the Northwest Detention Center. The Associated Press reports on the nationwide trend: nearly 45,000 parents of children born in the U.S. were deported between January and June of this year.
Personalizing the immigration story by focusing on the lives of a few people misses what may be most important: the unsustainability of absorbing millions of illegal (and legal) immigrants per year adding to the clearly unsustainable population footprint that threatens the very survival of industrial society. What needs to be understood now is that strategic and necessary resources are not unlimitedly available, and that our lives are dependent on now-seriously-degraded ecosystems. Ignoring immigration laws in order to
accommodate an overpopulated planet containing many millions seeking succor from unsustainability is a recipe for disaster. The writers of the immigration story did mention costs (and thus a mention of impact)
involved….”a population one study at the time estimated at 5 million people who cost the American taxpayers a net $20 billion every year. Such costs, according to the analysis by Rice University economics professor DonaldHuddle, came from education, criminal justice and social services provided to immigrants, and lost wages to displaced U.S. workers”….BUT failed to note that at that time census was reporting 2-4 million illegals here, and the story misstated Huddle’s estimate of the cost incurred. It was $100 BILLION. And a
comparison of the costs then to now should be provided. The estimate of illegals (from 4 years ago, and not updated) is 12 to 30 million. Why not do story on the impacts this has? And why not query such a large increase in numbers in short period of time. One clue is when George W. Bush promised an amnesty in early 2000s, there was a huge increase in illegal entry. And then there are the many legislative rewards for coming here that have been enacted in the last 15 years, making coming here irresistable, significantly added to now by the Obama Administration. (Interesting that GOP opposes most of it, but U.S. Chamber of
Commerce supports Obama policy because it provides cheap labor and supports their assumed unlimited growth goals) Shouldn’t you focus on what has the most impact on this country? One simple effort might involve determining whether Huddle’s $100 billion had some credence in the 1990s and what the cost is now given the many factors creating unrecognized inflation by the government. Another is to research industrial unsustainability, and noting the systemic undermining of the word “sustainable,” as in “sustainable growth.”