garrettauthor:

“The Trump administration’s framing of the Central America asylum seeker crisis is that they must engage in the mass detention of children (either separated or with their parents) because that’s the only way to ensure compliance with the law. And it is true that if they subjected asylum seekers to a less intrusive monitoring regime while they await their hearings, probably some people will simply not show up for their day in court. This demand that the system be made foolproof underlies the rhetoric of “zero tolerance” as well as the demands for an impenetrable physical barrier on the border and much of the White House’s other thinking on immigration policy. Perfect enforcement is not, however, a standard that we apply to any other area of the law. Stealing bicycles is, for example, illegal. And the illegality of bicycle theft almost certainly has practical benefits in terms of increasing the security of people’s property. That said, it’s also clear that bikes are getting stolen and people are getting away with it and the government isn’t really doing much about it. The penalties for bicycle theft are not especially severe, and few police resources are dedicated to catching bicycle thieves. That doesn’t mean we have an “open bicycles” regime, that personal property in bicycles is a myth, that roving gangs of bicycle thieves are operating in the open, or that laws against stealing bikes are pointless. It simply means that in the scheme of things, bicycle theft is not that big a deal and pouring more and more resources into addressing the problem isn’t worthwhile. The White House consistently tries to raise the stakes on immigration enforcement by bringing up the fact that some small share of unauthorized immigrants murder people. They harp away at this even though immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than natives, and even though cities with more immigrants have less crime rather than more. And it’s true, obviously, that some people who break immigration laws go on to later break the law against murder. By the same token, some people who steal bicycles later go on to commit murders. But nobody thinks a “zero tolerance” regime for bicycle theft would be a good way to prevent murders.”

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The pernicious myth of “open borders” | Trump is obsessed with a wild mischaracterization of the status quo that fuels extremism.

A longer read that is worth your time. We are being presented with a false choice on immigration and borders.

(via wilwheaton)