Quote:
Originally Posted by spence
Immigration law is federal jurisdiction, I think the local police can determine what works best in their municipalities. If you have an undocumented person working and paying taxes, hell maybe they even have a few kids that are US citizens, deporting them and breaking up the family because they got a speeding ticket isn’t going to benefit the community, even worse if they can be a witness to a crime they’re afraid to report for fear of deportation.
Need comprehensive reform.
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device
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In spite of your use of official, harmless sounding phrases like "undocumented," and meaningless ones like "Comprehensive reform" to indicate that you might consider that something is a wee bit wrong with what you consider much too harsh to call "illegal," what you say here, if you were explicit and "comprehensive," is not really different than what I said: "immigration laws are . . . useless and unnecessary. What's all the fuss about reforming immigration laws? Just scrap them. Who needs a wall when their is no reason to keep people out. If they're violent, the local police will take care of it." "If they're not committing violent crimes they have the perfect right to be here." After all, as you say, "local police can determine what works best in their municipalities."
The bread crumb you throw to the federal bureaucracy: "Immigration law is federal jurisdiction" is superfluous, irrelevant, even a contradiction to your saying " If you have an undocumented person working and paying taxes, hell maybe they even have a few kids that are US citizens, deporting them and breaking up the family because they got a speeding ticket isn’t going to benefit the community". What you said is an affirmation that they have a right to be here. That there is actually no reason to stop them from coming here.
And if it is, as you say, "even worse if they can be a witness to a crime they’re afraid to report for fear of deportation," that even more supports the idea that they have the right to be here. After all, they shouldn't, as you suggest, have to be afraid of deportation for doing the same thing that a "documented" or "legal" person would do in reporting the same crime.
So, for you, if immigration is ultimately not a question of law but of procedure, documentation (and even that is not really necessary if the "undocumented" haven't committed a violent crime) then border enforcement and immigration law are a waste of resources. If no law is broken by crossing the border without being documented, and staying here indefinitely, and being here in no way different than "legally" residing citizens with all the inherent rights and privileges, then little needs to be done to "comprehensively" reform immigration law other than scrapping most of it, if not all of it.
On the other hand, if law is broken, then penalty must follow. If we can impeach a President for misdemeanors, who among us, especially law breakers, should get a free pass?