The moment Donald Trump announced his candidacy for president of the United States, the issue of illegal immigration has been in the forefront. The American mainstream media has been flooded with sob stories about families entering the US without proper documents, purporting to have the right to stay in the country. Meanwhile, those outside the country are hearing echoes of the same sentiment and are believing the issue is not one about law enforcement and homeland security, but about utopian humanitarianism.
According to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, a division of the US Department of Homeland Security, entering the United States requires a valid passport and, if applicable, a visa. This is a primary basis of argument in the illegal immigration debate in the United States, did an individual enter either without the proper documentation or has their documentation expired and they are no longer allowed to stay in the US?
However, the argument has ballooned to so many issues, stemming from a variety of scenarios, when all of it should boil down to the question previously posed. In some cases, in their vigor to protect those that have broken a law upon setting foot in the United States, legislators (mostly from the left) have handcuffed police from enforcing the law, creating what have become known as “sanctuary cities.” The ever-present political fight is complicating what is a simple matter of enforcing the law.
In the Philippines, because of the superfluous issues that have been introduced, the definition of what is right and wrong has been blurred. When all that needs to be asked is, did my relative enter the United States with valid documentation and is it still valid. For those who answer “Yes,” there is no reason to worry; for those who answer “No,” there is no room for outrage when the said individual has clearly broken the law.
As President Rodrigo Duterte already said, “If you are not allowed to stay there, get out,” he continued, “If you get caught there and deported, I will not lift a finger.”
According to the Philippine Immigration Law of 1940, “Non-immigrants must present for admission into the Philippines unexpired passports or official documents in the nature of passports issued by the governments of the countries to which they owe allegiance” – similar requirements of the United States, along with nearly every other country in the world.
Why exactly is the United States always singled out as not being allowed to protect their borders? Speak out against illegal immigration and one is automatically labeled racist and xenophobic.
Jarius Bondoc wrote an editorial for The Philippine Star back in 2003, advocating for the US to grant amnesty to Filipino illegal immigrants.
Early in his piece, he contradicts himself, writing, “The illegal entrants work low-paying jobs,” but follows it up with, “They are able to send to the folks back home the bulk of overseas worker remittances to the Philippines.”
How exactly are the bulk of overseas remittances coming from “low wage” illegal immigrants in the United States? Either he is conflating his numbers by including the large number of legal migrants, which includes high-paying jobs like registered nurses, or he is merely trying to play the sympathy card – the one and only strategy undertaken by those advocating for illegal immigration.
His other main argument was using the US as a source for remittances. From the perspective of the Filipino family waiting around for money to be sent from their relative overseas, that idea is why the reality of the country sees more and more people choosing not to work and instead just wait around for money to come in from family members. It is with that money they go out and enjoy the fruits of their hard-working relative’s labor; and once it’s all gone, back to waiting for the next remittance.
From the perspective of the United States, they are seeing their money leaving the country, and given the volume of illegal workers in the country, that is a massive amount of dollars that, in the end, would become a great detriment to the country’s overall economy. If the roles were reversed and the Philippines was seeing more and more of its revenue leaving its shores than funding its economy, it is safe to assume the central government would crackdown immediately – especially under the current administration.
Following Trump’s election ABS-CBN ran a piece trying to build sympathy for the illegal Filipino immigrants who may face deportation.
They interview 26-year-old illegal immigrants Dean Santos, who said, “[Deportation] affects a lot of families, tears families apart, communities apart.”
While Immigration lawyer Ted Laguatan made the assertion, “To deport [illegal immigrants] goes against all kinds of notions of fair play and justice.”
There very existence of these illegal immigrants in a country in which they have no legal basis to be in does not give them the right to justice – they are not citizens, nor are they legal residents, of the country in which they have found themselves in. The action taken to evade the law does not lose its illegality the longer the individual stays in the country. For decades, politicians, both Republican and Democrat, have catered to illegal immigrants; Republicans want cheap labor and Democrats want to use them as their future voting base. The Trump administration does not adhere to those tenets and simply wants to follow the law of the land.
At its foundation, the illegal immigration debate is also an example of how one lives their daily life. Individuals go home, join their families, and lock the door to keep their house secure and to ensure others are kept outside. Much like a nation, the citizens of a nation are a family and, like any home, the door must be locked. There are times when others are allowed inside the home and, if permitted, there is no problem, but there is no tolerance for unlawful entry./WDJ