If you want a free plane ticket and a free pass on any customs laws you've broken, and you're an illegal immigrant, you're in luck.
Last Tuesday, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement began a new pilot program that allows immigrants without proper documentation to leave the country voluntarily, without being charged with a crime. Officials won't ask any questions, and will even cover the plane ticket back to the country of origin.
Operation Scheduled Departure will give more than 572,000 people nationwide who have been issued final deportation orders the opportunity to leave with no strings attached. This national total comes down to 5,700 in San Diego and Imperial counties.
Those who choose to take advantage of the program, which ends on Aug. 22, will be given 90 days before they are mandated to leave. This is odd, because it means that the final deportation order is not actually the final deportation order.
ICE representative Lauren Mack explained in The San Diego Union-Tribune that the program will help illegal immigrants travel to their home countries. Once they have left the country, though, there is no amnesty or program for them to enroll in to get back in to the country legally. They will still be subject to laws that prevent their legal re-entry for five to 20 years.
The program was implemented in order to… well, that's part of the problem. The goals and reasoning behind this operation haven't been made clear. Why would we choose not only to allow illegal immigrants to leave the country without legal consequences, but actually pay for their plane ticket? How could this possibly be beneficial to the United States?
The answer is simple: public relations. This country's customs enforcers' notorious deeds have been getting a lot of bad press. This is just an attempt to humanize the methods and strategies that ICE and other U.S. custom services use.
It's a well-known tale among immigrant communities. Officials breaking into peoples' houses in the wee hours of the morning, searching for people to arrest and deport. The majority of the targets are people who have broken no laws, except remaining here without proper documentation.
This serves as an example to those people who worry about all the tax dollars we're supposedly losing to people who aren't legally allowed to be here. Think of how much money our country is wasting in paying for these people to go back home - people who have lived here for years, work hard, have a family and have broken no other laws. They should have a way to legally remain here, with the lives and families they've built.
This "operation" is just the precursor to more serious and draconian searches that will shortly follow. ICE will use this short-term pilot program as a way to legitimize forced and traumatic searches of homes in the future.
The random sweeps instill fear not just in those who are here without papers, but also in local community members who are here perfectly legally. Their homes are targets for searches, and they live in apprehension of nocturnal invasions. Their loyalty is eternally in question, and if police can enter their homes to search for illegal immigrants who aren't there, those same officials can also use the opportunity to intimidate, interrogate and comb through the home looking at whatever they want.
Nothing stands to stop these searches, and the new program serves to legitimize the onslaught to come. Then they can cite that they provided those they deem illegal with an illogical and poorly conceived solution to avoid legal prosecution and forced deportation.
This is not showing any compassion to the circumstances that illegal immigrants and students find themselves in, and it does not solve anything.
Operation Scheduled Departure's flaws indicate how unrealistic it is to try to deport all the people in this country who don't have papers. Removing every illegal immigrant from the country, barring them from re-entry and expecting them to follow the letter of the law is ludicrous.
Any program that involves removing people from this country will just waste time, energy and most importantly, tax payer money. This obsession with money and papers has to stop. Lack of papers is not a reason to break up families and ruin lives. We're people, not dogs; we don't need pedigrees to prove our worth.
-Allan Acevedo is a political science and ISCOR sophomore and a staff columnist.
-This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Daily Aztec. Send e-mail to letters@thedailyaztec.com. Anonymous letters will not be printed - include your full name, major and year in school.
Be the first to comment on this article!