Self-deportment

Ask not what your country can do for you . Ask when you can get the hell out of your country:

This is the right-wing’s answer to the question of how you deport eleven million unauthorized immigrants: You don’t. You force them to “deport themselves.” Although immigration reform advocates would prefer a solution that involves a path to citizenship for unauthorized immigrants already here, Romney and his top immigration advisers believe they can remove millions of people through heavy-handed enforcement that makes life for unauthorized immigrants intolerable. This approach is notable for its complete lack of discretion and flexibility. Unauthorized immigrant parents with citizen children who need to go to school? Americans who are married to an undocumented immigrant who needs medical treatment? “Self-deportation” hits them all with the same mailed fist.

I would ask what the ___, but that would seem as though I (or you) haven’t been paying attention to these heartless clowns. In fact, the horse meant to carry the rider that has some idea and concern about the future of North American society left the barn long, long ago. I have no idea what they want the country to be like in 10 or 20 years, other than some 1950’s theme park America, which, even if this could be done, begs only more questions. Needless to say, that wasn’t a good time for many people.

And also, the very idea of justice and opportunity as the connection to a better future for them/us seems to have no meaning for the fearful among us. Their right to be fearful, constantly re-enforced by being, and being reminded to be, fearful is in heavy feedback loop mode, I guess blinding some of us to the suffering our laws inflict on the recipients thereof. But the notion that perhaps we don’t mean to be so vindictive and cruel, in addition to being shortsighted and unimaginative, seems to give some us a bit too much credit.