Recently a police chief in New Hampshire decided when the federal government balked at enforcing immigration policies, he charged a man classified as an undocumented alien with criminal trespass.
I know immigration is the third rail of politics, an off limit topic in casual discussion, and this blog isn’t really political, but one statement caught my attention.
Police Chief Chamberlain said. “It’s basically a situation here where right now if you make it past the border patrol, you’re free and clear. There’s no interior enforcement for illegal immigration in the United States.”
His statement begs two questions. First, does INS enforce immigration laws beyond the borders? I don’t work for the INS, and I don’t know anyone who does, but deportations are rare events. The INS is a small agency relative to many others. Second, does the INS matter at this point?
From our founding, the United States has had a passive/aggressive relationship with immigration. Many feel there’s “too much”, but then, unless your last name is Bush or Kerry, odds are good your relatives first touched soil long after the Puritans ran aground on Plymouth Rock. In the same breath, we celebrate the country as a melting pot of cultures and ideas, a bulwark of diversity and ethnicities. Hundreds of years of immigration hardly destroyed this country.
So the question is, is the policy of non enforcement a conscious decision by INS, or does it reflect a national value? When Police Chief Chamberlain describes a “lack of interior enforcement” – is that merely a statement of fact, and we both missed a national debate, or is there a serious policy violation? Maybe it’s just cheaper to ignore the laws than adjust them.
A serious thought for hump day, I know.
