For one thing, sending people away is cheaper than feeding, housing and guarding them for who knows how long. For another, if prison were the punishment for illegal immigration and seemed more attractive to some people than their current state, it would be a motivation for them to sneak in with the intention of being caught - like the guy who robbed a bank hoping to go to prison to get away from his wife. He was sentenced to house arrest LOL.
If order is to be maintained then illegal entry cannot be perceived to be a route to citizenship (even via a prison sentence).
Deportation makes it someone elses problem.
While also making it our problem by costing so much fucking money… but it looks like it makes it someone else’s problem. Everything around Trump is optics over reality.
This is the answer.
Imprisonment until when? Because at some point you’d have to let them out, and then you’re back to square one. Crossing a border to seek a better life isn’t a crime worthy of lifetime imprisonment.
They won’t give them a path to citizenship because of xenophobia, plain and simple. Immigration is good for the economy, and there’s no such thing as “stealing jobs”, so it only comes down to wanting to maintain cultural (or ethnic) purity.
This is more related to why there’s no legal pathways rather than “why deport”, but I could think of a few reasons that make it difficult to improve legal immigration:
- Bureaucracy in some countries (notable example being the US) makes it slow/difficult to pass new laws
- Since immigrants (legal or not) can’t vote, laws regarding improving immigration pathways aren’t usually popular among the voter base
- There isn’t a country in the world that has figured out how to “solve” the immigration problem, so there isn’t even a good reference point
- There is a global rise in right-wing and sometimes far-right sentiment, which are often targeted at reducing immigration, which makes improving immigration pathways even less politically appealing
I guess if legal immigration isn’t really an option then deporting someone might just seem like the “natural”, lawfully correct thing to do. I don’t exactly agree with this but I think that might be what’s happening
The outcome of a system is its purpose.
The goal is to create a slave class. We never got over our societal addiction to slavery. Slavery in the US never ended, both de facto slavery and legal slavery.
The goal of our immigration system is to create millions of workers who will accept low pay, long hours, and poor conditions with little options or recourse.
No. That would be better served by imprisonment.
Nope, imprisonment costs society money. This way all the migrants will be busy keeping their heads down and hiding, meaning they can be abused by employers as any resistance will be dealt with by ICE.
If working illegals was something the government wanted to stop, employers would be imprisoned if caught employing an illegal. Then it would stop overnight… but this is not the route chosen.
There are far too many illegal immigrants to jail them all and actually turn them into forced labor. The goal is to put enough fear into them that they accept slave conditions without having an actual overseer. The fear also spreads to legal but at-risk immigrants like H1-Bs who see the strictness of the immigration system and learn not to test it by fighting their corporations.
Imprisonment is extremely expensive, you have to house, feed, and to some level care for the people you imprison.
Giving them documents essentially means there’s no restriction on who can live in a country, and for desirable countries this would entirely overwhelm their economy (and other aspects of the country) when millions of people show up in too short of a timespan.
Killing them would be very bad, so getting rid of them via Deportation is the best remaining option.
The only other possibility I can think of would be giving them documents, but imposing harsh financial penalties (something like a permanent (or at least many years) 50% income tax rate or similar) that would both deter people, but also provide revenue to offset the extra costs to the system.
In like 2008 Hilary campaigned on deporting most illegals and some of them could stay if they paid back taxes and paid a fine. I think the “could stay” group would be people who had kids born here and the elderly.
Imprisonment is extremely expensive, you have to house, feed, and to some level care for the people you imprison.
Well, you don’t have to.
Because we’re a cruel people.
Deportation, and what’s currently being done, don’t have the same core existence.
Currently, deportation is being weaponized.
At its core, deportation is a perfectly valid thing. No country has to accept everyone that wants in. They certainly don’t have to allow them to bypass normal, humane methods of immigration, asylum, or temporary residence.
Deportation is saying that we aren’t going to treat you badly by doing things to you, but you can’t stay here.
Unfortunately, deportation can be misused, and it is being misused in an ongoing fascist takeover. It is bypassing all the humane and lawful processes that are supposed to protect people. It isn’t being done correctly, or for the right reasons. It’s yet another violation of human rights in the name of bigotry.
It’s like trying to enter a Costco without a membership. If they catch you they are gonna kick you out. Back to where you came from.
The legal immigration process takes time and if we just made them citizens when we caught them that would reward people for skipping the process. Not exactly a punishment. We
It’s obviously much more complicated than that, but that’s a simple way to look at it.
Racism. Lmao.
because it’s really about hating brown people. its simply racism
Imprisonment would also deal with the “hating brown people” part.
Extended periods of detention in substandard facilities with openly racist guards is often part of the deportation experience in America
Do you know how many Chinese people enter through the border? China is a hostile power, their citizens should not be allowed in without serious vetting.
No, I don’t - how many?
it’s a way of getting rid of people without significant legal follow up. everything that led to the deportation can be a sham, because once they’re out of the country nobody from the government gives AF any more.
Many undocumented immigrants would probably love to be documented and an official citizen or permanent resident. They probably don’t qualify though, which is why they are in the country undocumented. Its a very long process and not available to everyone, otherwise there would be a flood of people immigrating. There’s a gate for a reason, to keep the country an exclusive club members only.
Racism.
Deportation has always been about keeping the US white. The first immigration law in the US was called the Chinese Exclusion Act and was passed to keep Western states white dominated.
