<p>[Feds</a> probe S.F.'s migrant-offender shield](<a href=“http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/06/28/MNCU111QM7.DTL&tsp=1]Feds”>http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/06/28/MNCU111QM7.DTL&tsp=1)</p>
<p>Am I the only one that thinks this is insanity?</p>
<p>No, you are not. There do appear to be plenty of people in gov’t & law enforcement who believe that human rights should properly compromise safety of self and community. You’re right, it’s insane. I don’t call that liberalism, either. I call it lack of self-respect and lack of common sense.</p>
<p>If it’s true that they were trying to protect criminals it makes it that much worse. I have to wonder about the decision making ability of people who think this is a good idea. Perhaps we should buy them tickets as well…</p>
<p>Yeah. Just cause they snuck across the border somehow and were here without any of the legal papers doesn’t make them illegal. Call them whatever you want. Be as PC as you can. They are here illegally.</p>
<p>Btw,
My understanding of the supposed rationale behind the idea of “sanctuary” (which can only in the broadest, weakest definition be called political sanctuary) is that human values (the moral law which supposedly supercedes civil law, and clearly supercedes criminal law, LOL) dictate provision for economic opportunity (hey: crack cocaine’s a trade) as well as all the other opportunities of a free society. </p>
<p>Seriously, in theory I don’t have a problem with the concept of compensatory opportunity for Third World immigrants/migrants. I merely have a problem with the practical application & availability of that. You see, the laws of physics and economics have some finite boundaries. Space is finite. The globe wants to come here. We would compromise not just the health & survivabilty of our own citizens but those of immigrants as well, if we had no enforceable immigration laws & borders. At what point does one stop? How is it that a rural resident of Latin America can properly consider SF a “sanctuary,” but one from the Middle East or Southeast Asia cannot? </p>
<p>In the attempt to establish a hierarchy of “justice,” to compensate for what the immigrant’s native country does not provide, further injustices, both locally & internationally (by default) are created. There is no morality to such a “system,” which is really just rationalization based on accident. I cannot respect it.</p>
<p>What’s even more ironic is these countries they are fleeing from think we are terrible for not accepting their castaways but in turn have some of the most draconian immigration laws around. It’s much worse for an illegal in Mexico than it is here but Mexico wants us to accept everyone. These feel-good people somehow miss the irony in that. We have to be pragmatic and realistic about this situation. Turning a blind is one thing…actually helping them beat the system is another.</p>
<p>^^It’s worse than that, though. Vincente Fox & Company absolutely love the millions of dollars pumped into the Mexican economy – as well as the subsistence money sent to Mexican residents – by virtue of illegal US immigrants sending cash south. What it does is absolve the gov’t of creating economic opportunity WITHIN MEXICO for their struggling, semi-starving rural population, and further, it reduces political unrest, which keeps the greedy s.o.b.'s in Mexico happy & sustained in their billion-dollar mansions. Oh, I see, that’s “social justice.” You bet.</p>
<p>Earth to SF officials (& any other such ill-advised officials): This is not “revolutionary.” It’s counter-revolutionary. Otherwise known as protecting the evil status-quo in Mexico. Get it? (No, I thought not.)</p>
<p>Whoops, correcting self: Not Fox but now Calderon & Company. Who cares? They’re all in bed together in the same eternally corrupt system, fed by the U.S. via illegal immigration. </p>
<p>Note to Bleeding Hearts: Illegal immigration on the scale in which it is (wink, wink) overlooked in the U.S. is immoral on a grand scale. It fixes nothing, but sustains immorality in TWO countries, not one. And by implication denies or devalues immigration desires from other countries.</p>
<p>Epiphany has a great point about some illegal immigrants being favored over others whom are trying to get legitimate residency in the U.S. I’ve seen interviews on the TV news where recent and would-be legitimate immigrants (I admit it’s a somewhat ackward term) complain and ask why are illegal Mexicans immigrants morally entitled to an advange that no one else gets? I’ll wage the Haitians in detention centers in Florida can tell tragic stories about survival (or lack thereof) that exceed the distressed situation in Mexico.</p>
<p>As long as it continues, we are participating in ethnic cleansing in these countries, as well as the destruction of families.</p>
<p>Not another immigrant bashing thread. May I remind you that this country was built with the entry of people who decimated the native Americans.</p>
<p>Obviously you didn’t read the article. I hate to break it to you but unfortunately coming and pushing other people out is pretty much a human nature kind of thing. Think we wouldn’t be under a different set of rules if Germany or Japan had prevailed?</p>
<p>“Not another immigrant bashing thread.”</p>
<p>Not another infinite-immigration response. No one said that every previous conquest behavior, let alone immigration policy & treatment of immigrated individuals, was moral. But neither does an immoral response to previous immorality make moral sense. I’m tired of officials being cowards about this. I’m tired of the PC-nature of it all. I am especially tired, as a Catholic, of the Catholic Church’s ill-developed supposedly “moral” stand on this, which is morally not cohesive.</p>
<p>People with true compassion would understand that permanent solutions to massive poverty & underdevelopment will not be solved by massive immigration to a single country (ours). Some of us are a lot more radically inclined toward 3rd World empowerment than some people on this board can imagine. The lack of creativity in the developed world, toward easing deprivation outside its borders is really appalling. The First World prefers the lazy, band-aid way out: which is to encourage abandonment of the countries (often countries sitting on considerable underdeveloped resources) instead of incentives to foreign governments to create wealth within their own lands. At one point in history – not that long ago-- the US had considerable leveraging power in that regard. With the economic & political rise of rival nations (sleeping giants), in many cases we have lost prime opportunities.</p>
<p>What SF is doing is the most humane way to deal with an existing problem. The larger problem of rooting out the cause of immigration, i.e., poverty, is beyond the resource of a city. </p>
<p>What I do find irrating is to extrapolate anecdotal problem such as the one reported but ignoring the larger and more positive role of a sanctuary city.</p>
<p>The cause of illegal immigration is the abuse and exploitation of the most vulnerable populations by corrupt governments, particularly in Latin America. What I find irritating in the extreme is the people who feel the need to act as apologists for this hideous, grotesque mistreatment of human beings. It makes me crazed when they pat themselves on the back for encouraging illegal immigration. Illegal immigration hurts people, destroys families and anihilates indigenous cultures.</p>
<p>^ Even when people do not act as apologists for mistreatment, to believe that massive global immigration to a single country is the best & only solution for such mistreatment, is self-deception. The varieties & scope of such mistreatment, world-wide, is far more than the US could even uncomfortably manage to absorb within its borders. </p>
<p>I definitely agree with the bit about the annihilation of indigenous cultures. But it pains me just as much to think about the abandonment of the land & its resources & its potential.</p>
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<p>I’ve thought about and dealt with illegal immigration for years, but I swear I’ve never considered that point. It is, of course, most valid.</p>
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<p>Yes, humane in the same way that placing a tiny spare band-aid you carry around at the bottom of your purse on a gaping, hemorrhaging wound, and calling yourself a Good Samaritan for it.</p>
<p>If I were an American cocaine dealer arrested in S.F., I’d file an action on Equal Protection grounds to be flown home to my family at the City’s expense in lieu of prosecution.</p>