Mister Moose wrote:Kpdemello wrote:Mister Moose wrote:Missed my point entirely. Their criminals are their problem. No one else's. We are not the world's prison system.
And I guess you missed mine. These people weren't criminals until the came to the U.S., were recruited/pressured into joining a U.S. gang, and then sent back to El Salvador. MS-13 started in the United States and was exported to El Salvador. That was my point.
OK, so now if you don't value being a guest in the US enough to not be a criminal, you get to stay. I can't agree with that. I can feel my heartstrings being tugged at by the unfortunate pressure that led to that decision, but I cannot support that decision. Criminal immigrants get deported. Citizen criminal's kids grow up fatherless (or motherless) when their parent gets sent to prison. That's the way it has to work.
You know, I wasn't suggesting that criminals who aren't citizens should be allowed to stay. I'm suggesting that the problem is more complex than "you commit crime, you get deported." That policy created many of the problems we have now.
MS-13 was created in the United States. Sure, illegal aliens have become involved. But merely deporting illegal aliens associated with that gang is not going to solve the problem. In some ways, it makes it worse - you deport a criminal alien, and they are free to try to come back in right away. If you had prosecuted and imprisoned that alien, they might have been in jail for a long time instead of walking. Furthermore, a place like El Salvador doesn't have the resources to fight MS-13. So you send this MS-13 gang member back to an MS-13 stronghold where he can then be recycled into the criminal organization. Wouldn't it be in the U.S.'s interest to lend some resources to that fight? If you want to eliminate a gang like MS-13, doesn't it make sense to take out their stronghold in El Salvador where it is otherwise outside our reach?
And before you talk about strengthening border security so that these MS-13 gang members can't get back in, I think we need to realize the practical limitations of securing a 2,000 plus mile border. An organization like MS-13 has resources and isn't going to be stopped by a wall. It's going to be virtually impossible, absent some real draconian measures, to prevent a determined organization with resources from getting people into the U.S. Just look at the history of the drug war - we've had next to zero success stopping people from bringing in illegal contraband for decades. We should be treating the problem, not the symptom. If the problem is MS-13 and gangs like it, lets go after them, and not waste time on useless things like big shiny walls.