Thread by @YaelSchacher

Restrictionists have frequently said, we’re not letting you in for your own good! I wrote a whole paper about how immigration enforcement bureaucrats in the 1920s made themselves out into humanitarians this way.

https://twitter.com/sullydish/status/1380574003237126146

“letting in migrants is cruel” is really exactly what they said. Rather than question whether the humanitarian standards should be broadened, they dug in and blamed immigrants for asking too much, family members in the US for leaving others behind (separating themselves) etc.

It is so passive. The way policies are is the way they should always be. Restrictionist policies are natural and should not change.

It is voicing the perspective of the immigration enforcer. Pure and simple.

Pretending that it is humane is really chutzpah.

Why not maybe think about whether family unity or abject starvation should give you a legal pathway in? Rather than say: oh, you weren't threatened at gun point so it's cruel to let you in?

Same thing in 1920s after quotas in effect. Oh, you are stateless? Oh you are coming to join your husband? Sorry, we can't let you in temporarily (though Congress might later regularize you); better for you to live in limbo in transit port (where you have no one) than here.

Indeed, it's worse because even more restrictive policies are justified as preventing people from even undertaking the hard journey at all.

Restriction parading as humanitarianism leading to ever more closed borders. Deterrence as the epitome of humanity.

As all immigration experts know: what leads people to migrate is complex. Just because you don't meet our legal definition of a refugee doesn't mean you weren't forced to migrate. Limbo in the US can certainly be better than many alternatives.

The idea that people who have migrated in desperation will be psychologically crushed by being in the court backlog and therefore we should not let them in. Unbelievable.

We also literally have a status here--called TPS--which kind of leaves people in limbo. I don't think anybody in that status is feeling like they'd prefer not to have gotten it--that it is a psychological burden. They are instead pushing Congress to give them permanency.

Also, everybody with DACA. Please! Why not talk to one of them and ask: would you prefer we force you to leave?

Crocodile tears about"Exploitability" --oy. Just give people the legal authorization to work and they will be just fine. Again--if you are willing to consider giving people something, taking things away doesn't seem all that kind....

By the end we have deteriorated into it's the MORAL thing to do not to let anybody in. WOW.

Also, if you don't think the border is porous, you clearly have never visited Laredo, or Nogales, or anyplace really on the U.S.-Mexico border. Borders are not natural.

And you know what? I think we can fix the backlog and let people in at the same time. That's what I'm focusing on figuring out, rather than ways to keep people out.

Many hours later — just calling it “the immigration question.” Reminds me of other questions — that were actually ethnic groups— and really maybe that is what this is about. Incredibly sad, defeatist framing that I oppose.