But I Don't Even Speak Armenian!
Mike Riggs | June 6, 2008, 12:04pm
The Immigrations and Customs Enforcement Office is sending Arthur Mkoyan—who graduates soon from high school at the top of his class—and his family back to Armenia, even though neither he nor his younger brother speak Armenian:
"I haven't been in Armenia since I was 2, so I don't really know anything about the place," said Arthur Mkoyan, 17. "All I've seen is just videos my mom has watched on the Internet."
[T]he academic skills he has displayed in Fresno may not easily translate to college in Armenia. Arthur said he understands only a few words of Armenian.
Mkoyan's family fled Armenia after his family's house was set on fire as an act of political retribution. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decided that that wasn't a good enough reason to keep the family in the U.S.
They arrived in the United States in 1995 on six-month tourist visas, according to Virginia Kice, a public information officer with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The family settled in Fresno, where [father Ruben] Mkoian [who spells his name differently than his son] worked as a truck driver and his wife worked in a jewelry store. They set about living their lives, which soon included a younger brother for Arthur.
But after the visas expired, the family's application to remain in the United States was denied. In 2002, an immigration judge ruled that they had no legal basis to remain in the country, Kice said.
After their application to the Board of Immigration Appeals was rejected, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last year denied their petition for a hearing.
The court was unpersuaded by the father's assertion that he might still be subject to reprisal if he were to return.
For more reason on this phenomenon, click here, especially if you're capable of sniffing out the irony of deporting a 4.0 student with no criminal record while sparing a convicted felon.
Tracy | June 8, 2008, 12:28pm | #
>>Most people who are "illegals" in the country now came in "legally" and had their visas expire or the laws change to prevent any continued stay = a la the above armenian political refugee
::I know that. When I say illegal I meant people who overstay their visas as well as people that cross the borders.
>>Many of the people who sneak across the border want to work, make money, and go back to mexico to support their families. Thousands and thousands of seasonal migrant laborers.
::Ok. People who live in this country full time would also like the ability to work and support their families but are unable to because illegal immigrants take those jobs from them. Just to make this clear, I don't care why they came here illegally to work. I don't care if they have a paraplegic wife and 3 autistic sons. They are here illegally and I have no sympathy for them.
>>depending on which group you want to 'legalfy', the issue is different.
::That is definitely true but I think that stopping either route to being here illegally would allow for an increase in the amount of legal immigrants that we allow into the US. We can keep closer track of the people that are overstaying their visas and make sure people can't cross the borders.
>>You create a false problem by saying we can't do anything about legal status until we "control" the influx of people from outside the country. No wall will change anything.
::A wall and guards definitely can stop people from crossing the border. It's doing it right now but not very well because the wall is so short and the Border Patrol doesn't have the man power to patrol the whole length of both borders.
>>More restrictive visa approval wont change whether the ones who get it overstay or not.
::Also true but actually enforcing the laws for those that overstay would be enough. As an example, the father of a friend of my brother (this actually is true even thought it is starting out as a fried of a friend tale :) ) came over on a visa from Canada. While he rented an apartment and didn't move from tha location even after his visa expired. All INS would have had to do was go to his house and remove him yet it still took them almost 10 years to realize he wasn't supposed to be ere anymore. All I want are the existing laws to be enforced.
>>The simple question is, how many immigrants do we need, and how do we get them?
::Don't know and couldn't tell you. I never was very good with statistics and most math above trig.
>>The idea that we have to have illegal vs. illegal immigration is a semantic punching bag.
::God I hate semantics. People fight over a word rather than the concept behind the thought. The way I see it is that in both cases, whether a Visa overstay or a border crossing, they are illegal immigrants.
>>We need to make the system simpler so that there is no incentive for illegal immigration.
::But then what is the incentive to be a citizen? Why should a person stay when their country starts falling apart to help rebuild it if all they had to do was knock on the door to get in? I think one of the reasons for the tests and other qualifications that people need to pass to become a citizen is to make sure that they feel they now have some stock in the country they are now moving to.
>>Thinking of the drug war = did illegalfying pot do anything other than turn millions of nonviolent citizens into criminals? One might argue that we need to keep heroin or other really dangerous drugs illegal, and I may not squawk (others might). the same could be true of immigrants. Make the vast majority who want to come "legal", and spend the bulk of resources on limiting the *very few* who might present an unwelcome threat. Assuming all who "break the law" are the same when the law is already senselessly stupid ignores the source of the problem - not the lawbreakers, but the useless line we draw between the legals and illegals.
::Drug war is completely stupid. I agree with you on that. Illegal immigration on the other hand is not a victimless crime. When a noncitizen works, a citizen can't. When a noncitizen receives Government subsidies for anything from school to medical care, that is now money that could have went to help the citizens of this country.
>>Do YOU think the armenian should go back simply because of a technicality?
::It's not a technicality. They are here illegally on an overstayed Visa. A technicality would be if the kids citizenship papers would have come through in a week or someone messed up his name when they were putting it in a computer. Not, "I blatantly broke the law so let me stay here because I was a good boy while I did it."
>>Lonewacko thinks so because of his ridiculous "there's a limited supply!" meme. Whats your case?
::See above.
Pig Mannix | June 8, 2008, 1:15pm | #
The burden is on closed-border types to prove why increased immigration is a bad thing, not the other way around--because border restrictions are restrictions of freedom.
Maybe you'd like to consider the situation of the last group of nations to let themselves get convinced to open their borders by "tolerant cosmopolitans".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pw7XwexR2ec
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JJlI9swbsA
Enjoy your post-national, multi-culti, free-market future. Something tells me your tolerant cosmopolitan "libertarian" friends will likewise be just as disinterested in your input into how you're governed. If you can name me a single example of a situation where accruing a massive population resulted in greater freedom for said population, or greater control over the actions of their government, I'd like to hear it. Russia? China? India? Even the EU?
While "open borders" certainly has a political precident, it sure as hell
isn't derived from classical liberalism or libertarianism, the claims of Cato and Reason notwithstanding.
Secondly,
every right you claim imposes a corresponding restriction on somebody else's freedom. You're claim to a right to life is a restriction on someone else's freedom to kill you. You're claim to a right of property is restriction of someone else's right to have use of it. And, obviously, a nation's claim to sovereignty is a restriction on another population's right to occupy it's territory.
So perhaps before stomping your foot and whining, "But it's not
freeeee!!!" every time the laws of the land fail to deliver you your Christmas pony, it might be useful to provide a definition of what "freedom" might actually mean in the political sense. In lieu of that, I can just as easily argue you're promoting stripping the freedom of a sovereign population to self-determination. Obviously, you don't think a society should have the freedom to create rules which grant or withhold consent to anyone who cares to join it (aka "Freedom of Association").
I doubt I'll be seeing my definition any time soon, because there's no coherent definition of freedom comprehensive enough to legitimize the self-contradictory grab-bag of yanked-out-the-ass "rights" I see claimed in the name of "freedom" on this forum. Having to define what's actually meant by freedom would put the lid on that kind of crap, pronto. And something tells me not much of anyone is going to be in a hurry to provide a definition which risks delegitimizing their claim to their particular Christmas pony...
Pig Mannix | June 8, 2008, 9:16pm | #
Convenient of you to ignore the claims of the Libertarian Party as well.
Convenient of you to ignore that party platforms are generally compromises between factions, and are not necessarily the views of most, or even many, of the members or candidates of the party.
In fact, I already posted the views of John Hospers, who was, in fact, the very first Libertarian Party presidential candidate in 1972. Read them yourself:
http://mises.org/journals/jls/13_2/13_2_3.pdf
So of the 500-some economists who signed Alex Tabarrok's Open Letter on Immigration, you think the number of libertarians among them is zero?
Zero or close to it. Name them.
In any event, do I need to remind you communism was also an economic/political system designed by an economist? It seems Karl Marx ignored the same thing most of the economists who think open borders is a great idea ignore: that people don't necessarily want the things that economists think they should want, nor value the things economists think they should value.
I submit that the flaw lies with economists and economics. Not people.
This is a hopelessly broken way to derive a rights-based society or political system. If you can't resist using the word "freedom" in the phrase "the freedom to kill you", I recommend you not use it in such an argument.
"Freedom" implies the freedom to act. To kill someone is an action. I will continue to use the argument.
It is much more reliable to equate "freedom" and "right". If you do not have the right to kill someone, you do not have the freedom to. Much easier.
Based on what, do you or do you not have that right?
Here, however, you are stretching a "right", which applies to an individual, into a nation's "claim". In so doing you are ignoring the rights of individuals within the nation who do not consent to the nation's chosen immigration restrictions.
You've yet to establish that the non-consent of those who don't agree with a country's immigration policy constitutes a right. There is certainly no such thing as a right pick and choose which laws one feels like obeying.
But when people argue for general restrictions or quotas, the onus is on them to prove that the mere allowance of new people inside the borders is a grave threat to the society. Vague worries of demographic change don't cut it.
Given that a nation, like every other society from a bowling team to the United Nations, has the right to choose it's criteria for membership or use of it's facilities, it not only has the rightful authority to exclude based on worries of demographic change, but on economic concerns, cultural concerns, religious concerns, ethnic concerns, or if they don't like your necktie. It has the authority to establish whatever criteria it damn well pleases, for whatever reason it damn well pleases. Period.
Tracy | June 9, 2008, 4:18am | #
@Mike Laursen:
>>Tracy, in all seriousness, you would have literally no sympathy for someone in this situation?
::In all seriousness I don't. Too be honest about it I wouldn't have sympathy if they were citizens.
>>How much do you estimate it would cost to close the border effectively?
::A lot of money. I know and understand that. It has to be done though even if you subscribe to the belief that only criminals should be kept out because otherwise you have no effective ability to do that.
>>Are you saying that illegal immigrants do not pay into the system?
::No. I am saying that when a noncitizen receives something from the government, a citizen can't. There is only a finite amount of resources that the government can spread around so when the government gives some of those resources to a noncitizen then a citizen cannot receive any.
>>If you heard that someone from Alabama was moving to California to take a job there, would you assume that person was taking the job away from a Californian?
::And two citizens competing for the same job has what relevance to the question at hand? Competition is a good thing, it allows for the best person to fit a role. The problem is that illegal immigrants shouldn't be allowed to compete as they shouldn't be here.
>>Do you think there are millions of Americans who want jobs doing janitorial work and housecleaning, picking fruit, washing dishes, digging ditches and cleaning up construction sites?
::If the pay was right. Before you start in let me say something. People will do things if they feel the pay is equal to the task. When it isn't people don't want to do it. That is why non-labor intensive jobs such as Doctors, nurses, and teachers are in such demand right now. They do not get paid enough to want to do it. It's the same with labor intensive jobs. If you raise the pay people would do it.
Ok. Now you can start in on how having low paying jobs are better for America.
