Thursday, July 17, 2014, 10am to 11:30 in the Meeting Room (behind the fireplace)
For the third session in International Affairs, we will discuss the broad topic of Immigration. To get the conversation started, here is a TED Talk by Jose Vargas, about the plight of Americans w/o Papers, aka Illegal Aliens. After that we can talk about any immigration issue of interest.
There are many topics we could cover, so if you have an immigration issue that you want to discuss, please leave a comment to reserve your spot.
The situation of the 50,000 kids on the southern border of the US.
ReplyDeleteBTW, Cesar Millan, the TV dog 'trainer' admits to being an illegal alien but is now a citizen, making the big bucks. . . .
The immigration of minors should be viewed as a humanitarian crisis, but it has become political. This youtube clip explains, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ph9-x39ytg
Delete"Actions are illegal, not people". That phrase is popular when dealing with immigration but I'm not convinced. People are referred to as kidnappers, murderers, crooks, bombers (Boston), terrorists, etc. for having broken certain laws. Why the exemption for immigration? If a US citizen enters a foreign country without permission, lives there for some period, breaks a law(get a traffic ticket), has no legal papers, then what is going to happen to him.
ReplyDeleteThe term "illegal alien" allows us to prejudge without examining the circumstances. Saying "Actions are illegal, not people" is a way of making us ask, what did they actually do. In the case of minors entering this country without papers, the minors are actually victims of an illegal act, not the perpetrators.
DeleteFinding the correct terminology for persons who find themselves in the US and who have not followed the proper procedures is an ongoing problem. This is from TIME magazine:
DeleteThe easy fix, one pushed by many immigration reform activists, is to use “undocumented immigrants.” But AP Stylebook editors, being highly concerned about the precision and accuracy of their language, rejected that adjective too. That term — the one preferred by anti-I-word campaigners like Jose Antonio Vargas, who wrote TIME’s June 2012 cover story on immigration reform — is still too imprecise, Kent says: after all, an “undocumented” immigrant could have all sorts of documents, like a driver’s license or a birth certificate from their home country.
I suspect what we end up calling them will be predicated by the media. For example, the abortion term - is is Pro-Life or Anti-Abortion? Those who are both tend to use the Pro-Life term, a broader term, while those who are not, use Anti-Abortion. I think the Anti-Abortion term is used more in the media nowadays - perhaps because the law permits abortion and that terminology should be positive.
DeletePerhaps we could make a list of all the terms at the meeting - illegal aliens (not from outer space), undocumented immigrants, etc.
Now they are proposing to use an Army Reservie building in Westminster that hasn't' been used for 20 years to house some of the kids. It might take a lot of renovation.
ReplyDeleteZoom-iners:
ReplyDeleteNorm was on target when he suggested we see what U.S. Policy is on immigration before we continue on discussion. I found a web site that laid out the basics of US policy. The web sit is: immigrationpolicy.org. The organization is the Immigration Policy Center. U.s. Policy is much more complex than I realized. The policy is also infused with much Executive discretion.I have come to better understand the difference between immigration 'law" and "policy."
and 'If you find other sources of information on policy please inform the group..
Vince