Expediting Deportation, Using Carrots and Sticks
By Ned Barnett www.americanthinker.com
How
do you deport the roughly twenty million individuals living illegally in the
United States? For a lot of reasons, this will be a huge challenge, and
likely a costly one – when was the last time the government did anything even
remotely correct without it busting the budget?
Well, for one thing, you could try offering incentives for people to make their
deportation easier than it might otherwise have been.
Trump and his new Border Czar have agreed that the top priority will be
removing illegals who either committed crimes before they came to the United
States or – and this is the top priority – those who have committed crimes
since coming to the United States. Since these are people likely to
strongly resist such deportations, this will represent a challenge to the
Border Guards and ICE Agents who will have to deal with it in practical terms.
But what about the other twenty million or so people in the U.S.
illegally? How about this:
First, offer them an option. Go home on your own, and you will be
eligible to apply for legal residency, along with anyone else who wants to come
to America and who hadn’t broken our laws to get here. To qualify, all
they have to do is leave – and on the way out, file documentation indicating
that they had been illegal residents, but were now exercising their option to
go to the end of the line and eventually be legally admitted to America.
That’s the carrot – and even though it might take ten years to gain entry, it
will be legal, and with a path to eventual citizenship, the one open to
everyone who plays by the rules.
What about the stick? Tell this same population that if the government
has to take actions to deport them, they will have to wait for more than the
current ten years before even getting to the end of the line for legal
immigration, lengthening the time before they can return to America, but this
time as legal immigrants. Since anybody here illegally has at least the
chance of running into legal problems and then forcibly deported, many will
leave voluntarily.
Now, how about those who are here illegally who had come from their native country’s
prisons in an “if you let me out I will leave” deal between them and their
home-country’s criminal justice system? Before we spend mega-bucks trying
to identify, track down and forcibly deport them, offer them a modified version
of the program (above) for illegals who arrived here without a criminal
record? Here’s the carrot: If you voluntarily leave the U.S.,
and file a notice of your departure while acknowledging your criminal record
prior to their illegal immigration, you, too, would be eligible to return,
getting in the end of the line in ten (or perhaps twenty) years.
That
would be a long wait, but likely longer than the prison sentence they got out
of by agreeing leave prison and come to the U.S. It’s not a great carrot,
but consider the following:
The stick would be, if you came here illegally after being released from prison
in your homeland for felony crimes of any sort, as well as violent
misdemeanors, and instead of voluntarily leaving you wait to be caught by ICE
or the Border Patrol, you will serve out your prison sentence – plus ten years
– before being deported; and once back in your home country, you will never be
allowed back into the U.S. under any terms. If you serve your sentence
here and then are deported, and sneak back in, you will be imprisoned for a
no-parole term of at least ten years before again being ejected from
America. Repeat offenders will face a life-without-parole sentence here
in the U.S.
Finally, for those who had been charged as criminals in their home country but
who had not yet been convicted and incarcerated, if you choose to leave on your
own, and – as above – you register with ICE regarding your status and reason
for leaving, you would be for return to the U.S. under the following
terms. First, to be eligible to get in line for legal immigration, you’d
have to the resolve the legal issues you’d fled to America to avoid, either by
going to trial and being acquitted, or for being convicted and having served
the full term imposed by the judge. At that point, and after ten years
post-resolution, you’d be eligible to return to the immigration line after ten
years.
The stick here is that if you have to be caught and deported, you would not be
eligible for legal re-entry until twenty years after the resolution of your
legal issues in your home country.
Obviously, certain types of crimes would make illegals ineligible for return
under any circumstances. Such exceptions might include anyone convicted
of murder, of sexual assault, or especially child sexual abuse, and other
violent crimes – and of course, gang members, either here or in their home
country. Such persons would be incarcerated in the U.S. for a period of
ten years before being deported without appeal. Any attempt to return to
the U.S. after being deported would be punished by from twenty-five years to
life without parole. For people who are murderers, violent criminals or
those who abuse people sexually – for whom recidivism is statistically almost
impossible – they should be punished for being here, then sent home, and
punished far more harshly if they attempt to re-enter the United States.
This will not solve the problems of mass deportation of illegals, not when
there are an estimated more than twenty million illegal immigrants residing in
the United States. But by offering a meaningful carrot – with hefty
“stick” penalties for those who break the revised rules for illegals who are
also criminals – we have a decent chance of vastly reducing the numbers of
people the government will need to search for, find and hold for
deportation. As President Obama proved, it is possible to deport at least
five million people without difficulty or harsh public outcry.
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