I was asked to join Radiotopia’s EAR HUSTLE and explain my support of citizenship as sacred and not to be discounted by a general amnesty for the over 11 million undocumented currently residing in the United States in Future on ICE.
HARD CHOICES: Immigration in America
I think the source of our mutual frustration on the show was the different ways we make hard choices.
The immigration debate continues at a fevered pitch. I was asked to join Radiotopia’s EAR HUSTLE and explain my support of citizenship as sacred and not to be discounted by a general amnesty for the over 11 million undocumented currently residing in the United States in Future on ICE.
We were going round and round and I was as frustrated as everyone else was. Why?
I admit that prison has made me a hard man; not cruel, but hard. I work every day to keep my passions in check. Prison is full of men who can’t control their passions.
I think the source of our mutual frustration on the show was the different ways we make hard choices.
Often we use competition to make choices. Even a democratic vote is a type of competition. Prison has taught me much about competition. Humans are emotional and we like to win. I can be so caught up in winning that I fail at communicating. I do not want to ‘win’ a dispute on immigration. I want a fair discussion of the issues so we can make the hard choices necessary for our country.
We create institutions to give us the means of controlling these emotions/impulses. We have laws against murder not just to stop the FIRST act, but also to stop the cycle of revenge all too common on the street. Each side JUSTIFIED in quenching its thirst for PAYBACK.
My crime taught me more about myself than I ever wanted to know. I took a life with my crime and the old tribal commandments say “A LIFE FOR A LIFE.” The state judged my crime and gave me the mid-term of 7 years 8 months.
- Is it fair?
- Not to the family that lost their mother by my crime.
- Not my children that lost a father for a time equal to their young lives in length.
BUT IT IS THE LAW.
The point of courts and laws is to distance the individual from the act — to tame our passions, both revenge and mercy. It is the best way the United States knows to make hard choices.
THIS SAME STANDARD SHOULD BE APPLIED TO THE IMMIGRATION DEBATE.
We must struggle to keep our passions in check. The psychological term for our reaction to any suffering is “identifiable victim” effect. It wrenches us when we see the smiling face of Molly Tibbetts or a family separated at the border. We have all shared the emotional impact of these electronic-enhanced images. This sharing of social consciousness, now possible on a media-enhanced global scale, is the cause of guilt-feelings and compels society to act — often in unpredictable ways.
Any important decision — criminal justice, diversity policies, immunization programs, gun control, or immigration — will inevitably have winners and losers. Decision-makers should resist the pull of emotional empathy and identifying with EITHER SIDE OF THE ISSUE. This is counterintuitive. For example, a felon furlough program might lead to an overall drop in crime. However, it can take one news report of a furloughed prisoner assaulting someone to trigger the emotional empathic response that drives a society to shut down the program. It’s hard to feel emotional empathy for a statistical shift in crime rates.
Allowing emotional moral mathematics to guide our legal, ethical, or political decisions can lead to perverse outcomes. Recent research in neuroscience and psychology shows that emotional empathy makes us biased, tribal, and often cruel. For example, empathy shuts down when you believe someone is responsible for his or her own sufferings. Look at the delay in addressing the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s as a recent example.
We face the same with the current immigration debate.
OTHER WAYS TO CONTROL PASSIONS
I feel lucky enough to have lived in different countries. Each one relies on different mechanisms to make hard choices and keep emotions in balance.
In Argentina, it is the Catholic Church. The government even pays the salaries of the Catholic priests there and abortion is still illegal. Faith is a traditional tool to control emotions, but it has costs.
When I lived in Korea, I discovered they use respect of elders and positions represented by titles. Korea taught me the value of titles as a means of control. You do not ever question the expert and always respect a person by calling them by their title.
If you watch Korean dramas — much more popular in prison than one might think — on SUNNY AGAIN TOMORROW, titles allow for people with good reason to dislike each other to work together in peace. In MARRY ME NOW! No one would question a doctor’s diagnosis.
In the United States, we rely upon laws. We have more laws than any country in the world — or at least more lawyers!
We regulate the impact of emotions on our civic life with laws. Institutions make laws that we are to follow in order to not overreact — either in punishment or in mercy.
IMMIGRATION
Citizenship is one thing I know we can all share. The current immigration debate seems controlled by a never-ending attempt to engage the emotions of either “Look at my pain/need” or “Justify my fear/anger.” No one wants to let others suffer or be afraid. I take no pleasure in it.
Considering immigration, as of 2019, the current distribution of the U.S. population by race and ethnicity:
White: 60.1% (Non-Hispanic)
Hispanic: 18.5%
Black: 12.2%
Asian: 5.6%
Multiple Races: 2.8%
American Indian/Alaska Native: 0.7%
Native Hawaiian/Other Pacific Islander: 0.2%
Note that the U.S. totals do not include Puerto Rico.
On average, the USA has accepted more than one million legal immigrants since the late 1980s. Legal Immigration to the United States, 1820-Present
The Department of Homeland Security estimates that 11.4 million unauthorized immigrants were living in the United States on January 1, 2018. Slightly fewer than 50 percent of the unauthorized immigrants in 2018 were from Mexico, compared to nearly 55 percent in 2015. About 15 percent entered since January of 2010 and 40 percent reside in California or Texas.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) encountered migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border without authorization 1.66 million times in fiscal year (FY) 2021 (a number that rises to 1.73 million when interactions at ports of entry are included), much is being made of the fact that these numbers top the 1.64 million apprehensions that occurred in FY 2000, making this the highest year on record. More than 2.1 million unauthorized migrants would have crossed into the United States without being apprehended in FY 2000, based on that year’s estimated 43 percent apprehension rate. It Is Too Simple to Call 2021 a Record Year for Migration at the U.S.-Mexico Border
I admire those who seek to make a better life for themselves and are willing to overcome any obstacle to make it happen. Yes, even if they break the law to come here. However, I do not condone such actions. The law is the law.
9–11 still echoes in the American consciousness. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) only came into existence during our current 9–11 mindset. The federal government folded the Naturalization and Immigration Service into a new ICE after 9–11; before, America hadn’t treated immigration as a policing problem. Now we have chosen to criminalize the undocumented.
What policy can rationalize the separation of families seeking asylum at the border or unchallenged entry of the murderer of Mollie Tibbetts?
Comprehensive immigration reform will require hard choices. The danger we now face is that loyalty to a truth seen as disloyalty to some supposedly higher interest.
Nevertheless, America has to make them. This is why we use institutions to make and enforce our laws. Much of what I have heard from the disband ICE crowd is an attempt to circumvent any dis-passionate critical thinking on the issue by appeals to emotion. This is not the way to govern a country or determine comprehensive immigration reform.
We use our institutions and laws to control emotions, both revenge, and mercy.
- Every year 15 million apply for a visa and only 50,000 are given.
- We do help those in harm’s way — America accepts an average of 100,000 a year as refugees or asylum seekers.
- How many should we take?
- Everyone who wants to come here?
Institutions and laws are designed to check emotions — revenge or mercy both. Government institutions should allow the cooler heads to prevail to make the laws we are to follow.
I think our institutions are weakening. The Church no longer holds sway as the authority in Argentina, respect for elders and titles means less in Korea, and we here don’t trust our laws or the institutions that make and enforce them.
I have been San Quentin schooled. I’ve used the circle to learn to acknowledge and respect an individual’s emotions with groups like VOEG and NVC. At AA and Restorative Justice, I’ve discovered how to make hard choices for society. I respect emotions, but I will not submit to allowing emotions to make my hard choices ever again.
Because we Americans rely upon laws and lawyers, we believe that full-throated advocacy is an obligation — not a reasoned discussion. I am sorry for my inability to break out of this habit of advocacy/debate.
I have learned a lot about myself here at the Q. I also appreciate the institutional failures to make or enforce laws in a fair or just manner. Still, that is our way in the US and we should use these institutions to resolve our disputes and achieve comprehensive immigration reform.
- Currently, we accept about a million migrants per year legally, should it be more?
- Double?
- Half?
- Citizenship or just temporary residency until a crisis is over?
- What should we do with the more than 11 million here without documentation?
- Their children born here?
I’m not sure how it will work out. To me, citizenship is sacred. I know for the United States, any effective resolution of the immigration debate will have to be accomplished through our legal institutions by making laws and enforcing them fairly.
WANT TO KNOW MORE?
An essay on the transformation of the undocumented from committing an administrative violation of immigration and naturalization laws into a crime requiring active enforcement is set out in “How ICE Went Rogue: Inside American’s Unfolding Immigration Crisis” by Franklin Foer in The Atlantic September 2018.
An essay on “The Problem of Wokeness” by David Brooks in June 8, 2018, The New York Times details the risks of seeing injustice in maximalist terms.
A book, “Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion” by Paul Bloom, details the consequences of reliance upon emotional empathy in the decision-making process instead of cognitive ‘Type-2 thinking’ rational compassion.
A book that sets out the role immigrants play in the American experiment “The Triple Package: How Three Unlikely Traits Explain the Rise and Fall of Cultural Groups in America” by Amy Chua and Jed Rubenfeld.
If you are curious about prison life and the real work that goes on there, read The San Quentin News or listen to Ear Hustle.
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