Revisiting Immigration

 Yesterday, at the school I work at, the campus minister announced that he was recruiting students for a protest against ICE, the agency that deals with enforcing immigration law.  ICE has taken a lot of flak for things, and as a result a lot of bad misinformation has been circulated about the agency that is simply ridiculous.  I mentioned the conspiracy theories being promoted even by leadership at certain schools that paint ICE as these predatory thugs who are swarming communities like vultures ready to pick off the first person they note saying "buenos dias" to their friends on the streets.  Thing is, within 5 blocks of where I work, I have yet to even see one ICE vehicle, much less a swarm of them.  This misinformation has created a lot of the violence that law enforcement has faced in many cities over the past year, and there are a few things I wanted to note to dispel a lot of the garbage circulating about who ICE is and what they actually do. 

Let me start with a story.  When I was doing my undergraduate work at Southeastern University in Lakeland, FL, I paid the bills by working for a large Pentecostal megachurch as a security officer.  In order to get a job working security in Florida, you are required to take a 1-week course to earn a license, and often those courses (as mine was) are taught by either police officers or county deputy sheriffs.  So, as a result, you get trained in a lot of police procedures, as essentially security work is a type of law enforcement that is privately contracted.  One part of that training was in traffic direction, and it included practicing directing traffic to park, and how to direct drivers to intersect thoroughfares.  In the classroom though, the deputy sheriff who was teaching the class was telling us how police monitor traffic, and what he told us was actually quite revelatory.  He noted the paranoia that the average driver has when a cop is behind them on a highway, and that often this paranoia is not warranted, and then he explained why.  Most cops, he noted, are just focused on their own safe driving and are not paying attention to normal motorists on the road - the only way you get a cop's attention on a highway is if you do something that actually attracts their attention.  Therefore, he assured us that the random cop who happens to be driving behind you at a stop sign is not randomly running your plates, and they are not even worried about you unless you give them a reason.  What the deputy explained to our security officer training class also applies to other law enforcement agencies as well, and that includes ICE.  Let me explain.

There are many immigrants in America, that is an undisputed fact.  And, many of them are not legally vetted to be here.  However, of those many, the majority just go about their day minding their own business.  So, this mythology of ICE posturing and ready to pounce on such unsuspecting people is just that, mythology.  The only way someone will get ICE's attention is if they are doing something they should not be doing, and then ICE will get them because as law enforcement that is their job.  That is why ICE actually will focus attention on serious criminals such as Islamic terrorists, MS-13 gang members, human traffickers, drug dealers, and other garbage of society who coincidentally may also be illegally in the country too.  If many of the ignorant hotheaded Leftist activists understood that, it would not be a problem.  The problem with the Political Left however is that they love to defend criminals, and they villainize the victims of the crimes, even if the victims are themselves immigrants. That has to stop, but the protests are actually doing other damage as well, which is what I want to discuss now.

The campus minister at the school I work at is a professed Catholic, but in reality he is a Marxist-influenced proponent of what is called "liberation theology," which was condemned by popes over the past two centuries as a heresy.  Because he is involved in this, faith is second-class to "justice" to this guy, and he sounds more like a Marxist in many instances than he does an actual spiritual leader of a school campus.  Just a day or two ago, he announced that he was organizing an anti-ICE protest here in Baltimore, and is trying to recruit both students and faculty to participate in it.  This is NOT a good idea, and I would like now to explain why.

When people start doing these silly protests, it can have dangerous consequences.  As I mentioned above, most immigrants who live here - even if otherwise illegal - are generally peaceful people who want to live their lives and mind their own business.  That being said, they are not doing anything that would warrant surveillance from the designated law enforcement agencies.  And, to be honest, they would probably be happy to obey the process and become legal, but perhaps some financial barriers or something else is preventing them from doing so.  Toward the end of this discussion, I am going to propose a solution, but at this point, these crazy protesters may be doing more harm than good to the people they are supposedly advocating for.  A neighborhood of immigrants, if they are having a spotlight like that shined on them, will automatically garner attention, and that will not be a good situation for them.  People like the very misguide campus minister are painting bulls-eyes on the backs of the people they are supposedly protesting for, and maybe that is their end game - by provoking ICE to react and then making them look like the bad guys, the protesters get the viral footage they crave and they can spend the narrative.  And, that makes our society even more chaotic because the real criminals take advantage of this, and thus they can murder people, traffic drugs, and do all the other junk they do.  And, the American citizen and taxpayer suffers as a result.  There is a better way, and I want to give a proposal for that now.

If people are so interested in advocating for undocumented immigrants, then at least do something constructive.  For instance, instead of protests where hard-working law enforcement officers are assaulted for doing their jobs, why don't some of these "protesters" instead provide ways to help undocumented people actually get documentation?  There are organizations - almost every Catholic diocese in the country has one - that provide aid to undocumented immigrants who really want to secure legal papers, so why isn't that encouraged more?  And, more non-profit organizations could be formed that focus on that aspect too.  Many undocumented immigrants are generally decent people with families who just want to live their lives and mind their own business, and the only thing they are missing is proper documentation.  The process can be expensive, and there are also language barriers, so I don't think it is so much that they don't want to be legal, but many they can't - this is where some outside help would be warranted.  A lot of that category of immigrant consists of people who could be a valuable asset to our society and our specific communities, so I don't think it would be a bad thing to help them make it official.  The problem is that some of the hardest crackdowns on immigration law happened under the Obama administration - I mentioned my friend, Assyrian-American attorney Robert DeKalaita, who was actually indicted by the Obama administration for helping Assyrians who were fleeing ISIS barbarians who were trying to kill them.  Fortunately, Trump pardoned Robert, but if the Left was really all that concerned about immigration, why weren't those people - who wanted to be legal - helped?  Simply, it didn't fit the narrative.  It is the same reason why Clinton was heralded as a hero for attacking Serbia during the Kosovo crisis by the Leftists but now those same Leftists think that the Ayatollah is their hero - what the hell, people??  The Left likes hollering about "justice," but their view of it is very selective - they are not after actual justice, but they are actually constructing a narrative, a very fictional narrative.  It's the same thing with true advocacy for undocumented immigrants - unless there is a ruckus to stir up, they are not interested in constructive solutions because the Left is interested in one thing and one thing only - they want to remake Western civilization in their own warped image.  And, they will do it by any means possible, including violence and showing no care for the people they holler about because that is not even a secondary emphasis for them.  If people had a more common-sense approach like this, it would solve so many problems - but the Left is not interested in solving problems, but rather creating them.  And, that is the fundamental issue.

I am hoping that a more common-sense approach to these issues is necessary, but if certain rabble-rousers have their way, this will be drowned out by emotion-driven activism rather than practical solutions.  Thanks for letting me share, and will see you next time.