Border policies

It's a race against time! 2:26 and still 34 minutes to go, but trying to make it a good post too. So for AP Spanish we had to get recent news on immigration policy/laws in spanish, which was absolutely ridiculous, and then have a debate. Spanish teachers are crazy so we never actually had this debate (even though she has been saying "Proximo clase" for like 2 weeks now) but I know the issue pretty good now so I'll report on that. As this is the case, unless you want me to link to the article in spanish I won't have a link this time, but I promise this happened. Also, you know this is your chance to have one of your 3 comments just say "I agree! Spanish teachers ARE crazy!"

So basically the newer border policies are that over the past year or so our country has been abandoning the short detainment then deportation policy that we have been using for a very long time. Instead, somebody came up with the idea that if the detainment periods are much longer, than it might become more of a deterrent than the previous slap on the wrist, now go home. To tell the truth, only hearing this it doesn't sound like such a bad idea. Then I heard what the problems that came along with this. This policy, along with just the standard stricter border control, has led to an increase of over 30% (don't remember the exact number, so I'm probably undershooting it) in illegal immigrant inmates in United States prisons. Now, almost all of our border prisons are completely overcrowded. The Hispanic community is arguing that immigrants are being treated like they aren't even human in these places. Major American newspapers have reported abuses among prison guards specifically targeted at immigrant inmates, and unlike regular inmates immigrant prisoners can basically be transferred to wherever whenever. Part of the reason for these abuses is that federal prisons really try not to take on too many inmates (or they are already overcrowded) so these immigrants are being taken to private prisons where the actions of the guards aren't as strictly regulated. As far as the transferring thing, it has been said that some immigrants have been detained in Texas for a short period of time, then sent all the way to California for another short time, then sent all the way back to Texas for a little while before being deported. This is one of the ways that they are trying to deal with their overcrowding issue. Basically they are being treated worse than regular inmates, even though they really aren't regular inmates. Some people have brought up the fact that they really havn't broken any laws, so they shouldn't even be in the same prisons as regular inmates.

I can't say that I have a solution to these problems, but for now I think we should go back to our old policies on the border. I realized that they were flawed and not really a deterrent, but the results were much more humane that what we are working with now. And I guess that's all I really have to say about that. That was a nice, quality 16 minute post. Hopefully it gets credit.