It's beautifully written. In my limited experience, these words work even in day-to-day life. It's baffling that all it takes is just ask the other person to reconsider. Probably it's a vulnerable gesture that has that impact or one's fucking greatness and their mastery of art :) Either way, a good reminder to ask more frequently than we do.
This piece was fantastic. I will say I literally spat out of my sip of water onto my computer monitor when you casually dropped that ICE was watching the inmate list and would probably deport him. I tend to think of myself as a centrist, but all of my red tribe friends say that there is literally no attempt to deport illegal immigrants, even the ones who repeatedly get caught committing crimes. And my blue tribe friends say that this is an outright lie, that no illegal immigrant who committed a crime would *ever* fail to be deported because the system is set up to do exactly that
So to hear this entire story, and set myself up to sympathize with this man and care about this deep and extensive interaction with the state as a consequence of him committing a bunch of crimes, only for you to then casually drop the fact that he's an illegal immigrant near the end... was kinda shocking to me?
"illegal immigrant on probation for drunk driving gets caught second time and then is released after 2 days of jail on the whim of a judge, gets to remain in country" sounds like the kind of headline I would immediately disbelieve in any other circumstance, it's fox news drivel. It isn't supposed to actually be true and absolutely commonplace enough to go without comment in this story.
With 11 million plus illegal immigrants living in the US, there's only so much you immigration enforcement to go around. ICE naturally has to prioritize the most egregious offenders first.
I mean the two violations of the law are not really comparable.
Drunk driving endangers people and benefits no one.
Large parts of our economy run on undocumented labor. You can choose to regard them as "criminals," but the fact of the matter is that they have a lower rate of (other) crime than the native-born, and if you leave them alone they are just going to keep working hard, mostly at jobs Americans don't want, paying taxes, working away at their own American dream.
We can disagree about whether such people should be rounded up and deported, but hopefully we can agree that given the limited resources awarded to federal law enforcement, it shouldn't be the top priority.
No, but maybe when they get caught drunk driving twice, we should put a little bit of effort into it?
The way it was explained to me was, we don't have to worry about illegal immigrants, because any time they get caught committing a crime, the criminal justice system will swiftly notice that they aren't a citizen and deport them. Therefore, the only ones "slipping by" are the good, law-abiding worker types.
That's why I was so taken aback at the story told in the post, of a man caught drunk driving and then caught drunk driving again, and then sort of offhandedly mentioned "oh yeah, and he was an undocumented immigrant without citizen status"
Maybe this is how our society should be? Maybe it's not worth putting effort into deporting even those undocumented immigrants who get caught committing crimes like drunk driving? I could definitely see the argument for this.
But if that's the case, I'd greatly prefer it if we did not pretend that actually there's no way any undocumented immigrant could ever commit a crime, get charged, go through the entire court process, get found guilty, but be given a lenient punishment, without ICE ever hearing about it
It seems more like something the democrats say in order to make the republicans' fears seem unfounded, than something that's actually true?
I don't know. Maybe this one anecdote shouldn't have had such an effect on my worldview, maybe it's not typical. But the way the story is written, it really does seem typical... It's not written as "get this - my client was undocumented! So we really had to be super careful to avoid ICE's attention, and this required a great deal of legalistic maneuvering, but I was able to pull it off"... it's written as "my client got charged with drunk driving a second time, and it was a pretty cut and dry case, but something I said happened to make the judge feel more lenient, and it made me think about how inconsistent the courts are... Oh, and by the way, my client was undocumented"
Whoever explained that to you either lied or was ignorant about ICE enforcement.
There's a sliding scale of prioritization, where serious violent felonies get immediate prioritization (murder, rape, armed robbery, etc). After that it filters down, where most misdemeanors get overlooked, with the only exception I heard of were DUIs, either because they have aggravators (such as collisions) or because there are multiple of them.
There's also a distinction between ICE hearing about a crime and doing something about it. Conviction filings are already public records, and law enforcement agencies get direct access too.
I agree completely with being honest about the landscape; that's a predicate to having an honest conversation about the issue. I strive to be transparent in my writing and I hope I didn't give any impression of trying to obfuscate.
oh no, i rather think that my blue-leaning acquaintences, who indeed probably either lied or were ignorant about ICE enforcement, are the ones at fault, and i did not meant to imply that of you
that is why i feel lied to, because what i wrote above is, indeed, the reasoning they gave as to why the red-ish concerns about illegal immigration are unfounded
i think it might be more of an attempt to convey a stereotype of an ICE agent, that they cannot imagine ICE other than as a cruelly efficient gestapo-like organization, full of people eager to ride out on every rumor
i am still not sure how to feel about immigration in general... i think i'd prefer a world where we cracked down on illegal immigration, but expanded the legal immigration windows large enough to account for most of the decrease
it feels like this system, where instead we just kinda let people come in and mostly don't go after them, mostly has the de facto effect of creating a societally-legitimized 'lower caste' and i worry about how much abuse must be going on
She may have done it because you took the extra step, knowing full well what your job is like, and that you wouldn't have asked her to reconsider if you thought he deserved the sentence. You may have also given her an opening to change her mind after the family's reaction made her feel guilty. Could have been a bit of both too.
You are a gifted writer. I have a similar experience in the emergency room -- the three categories of client, the futile (patch you up and see you later, 'cause you're not changing the habits/chronic illness that brought you in), the routine (anybody with decent training you prescribe an antibiotic or diagnose a stroke), and the rare third type, where unexpectedly you find the missing scale in the dragon's armor and just for a little while, feel like a badass that earns their paycheck.
For sure. I also think there's a kinship in terms of needing to be a good citizen in the wider professional community (the law, medicine) but our role being to advocate for and protect a particular person (the client, the patient) within that system. It's a kind of dual loyalty.
As the great physician Virchow said (more pithily) "physicians are the natural attorneys of the poor."
My question is....have you tried this since then? Has it worked?
Also, unrelated, I spent approx 6 months working in criminal justice in New Orleans and it definitely __seemed__ like defense attorneys nearly reflexively believed in their clients innocence. That might have something to do w/ race tho or perhaps they were just putting on a great front and I bought in.
This piece is why I originally subscribed to you. Hopefully more people see this.
It's beautifully written. In my limited experience, these words work even in day-to-day life. It's baffling that all it takes is just ask the other person to reconsider. Probably it's a vulnerable gesture that has that impact or one's fucking greatness and their mastery of art :) Either way, a good reminder to ask more frequently than we do.
This piece was fantastic. I will say I literally spat out of my sip of water onto my computer monitor when you casually dropped that ICE was watching the inmate list and would probably deport him. I tend to think of myself as a centrist, but all of my red tribe friends say that there is literally no attempt to deport illegal immigrants, even the ones who repeatedly get caught committing crimes. And my blue tribe friends say that this is an outright lie, that no illegal immigrant who committed a crime would *ever* fail to be deported because the system is set up to do exactly that
So to hear this entire story, and set myself up to sympathize with this man and care about this deep and extensive interaction with the state as a consequence of him committing a bunch of crimes, only for you to then casually drop the fact that he's an illegal immigrant near the end... was kinda shocking to me?
"illegal immigrant on probation for drunk driving gets caught second time and then is released after 2 days of jail on the whim of a judge, gets to remain in country" sounds like the kind of headline I would immediately disbelieve in any other circumstance, it's fox news drivel. It isn't supposed to actually be true and absolutely commonplace enough to go without comment in this story.
i will be thinking about this for years
With 11 million plus illegal immigrants living in the US, there's only so much you immigration enforcement to go around. ICE naturally has to prioritize the most egregious offenders first.
i suspect there are far more than 11 million criminals in america, yet... i don't know quite how to put the objection into words
most of the time that somebody is *caught* committing a crime, law enforcement tends to try to bring a case against them
maybe the case is stupid, or just not a good use of scarce resources, and so the prosecutor drops it immediately
but it does seem like the standard we are applying to illegal immigration is not the same as the standard that is being applied to, say, drunk driving
and i'd always sort of believed that wasn't true, that it was a conservative talking point that just wasn't actually born out in reality
i'm having trouble reconciling that with this new information
I mean the two violations of the law are not really comparable.
Drunk driving endangers people and benefits no one.
Large parts of our economy run on undocumented labor. You can choose to regard them as "criminals," but the fact of the matter is that they have a lower rate of (other) crime than the native-born, and if you leave them alone they are just going to keep working hard, mostly at jobs Americans don't want, paying taxes, working away at their own American dream.
We can disagree about whether such people should be rounded up and deported, but hopefully we can agree that given the limited resources awarded to federal law enforcement, it shouldn't be the top priority.
No, but maybe when they get caught drunk driving twice, we should put a little bit of effort into it?
The way it was explained to me was, we don't have to worry about illegal immigrants, because any time they get caught committing a crime, the criminal justice system will swiftly notice that they aren't a citizen and deport them. Therefore, the only ones "slipping by" are the good, law-abiding worker types.
That's why I was so taken aback at the story told in the post, of a man caught drunk driving and then caught drunk driving again, and then sort of offhandedly mentioned "oh yeah, and he was an undocumented immigrant without citizen status"
Maybe this is how our society should be? Maybe it's not worth putting effort into deporting even those undocumented immigrants who get caught committing crimes like drunk driving? I could definitely see the argument for this.
But if that's the case, I'd greatly prefer it if we did not pretend that actually there's no way any undocumented immigrant could ever commit a crime, get charged, go through the entire court process, get found guilty, but be given a lenient punishment, without ICE ever hearing about it
It seems more like something the democrats say in order to make the republicans' fears seem unfounded, than something that's actually true?
I don't know. Maybe this one anecdote shouldn't have had such an effect on my worldview, maybe it's not typical. But the way the story is written, it really does seem typical... It's not written as "get this - my client was undocumented! So we really had to be super careful to avoid ICE's attention, and this required a great deal of legalistic maneuvering, but I was able to pull it off"... it's written as "my client got charged with drunk driving a second time, and it was a pretty cut and dry case, but something I said happened to make the judge feel more lenient, and it made me think about how inconsistent the courts are... Oh, and by the way, my client was undocumented"
Can you see why I would find this surprising?
Whoever explained that to you either lied or was ignorant about ICE enforcement.
There's a sliding scale of prioritization, where serious violent felonies get immediate prioritization (murder, rape, armed robbery, etc). After that it filters down, where most misdemeanors get overlooked, with the only exception I heard of were DUIs, either because they have aggravators (such as collisions) or because there are multiple of them.
There's also a distinction between ICE hearing about a crime and doing something about it. Conviction filings are already public records, and law enforcement agencies get direct access too.
I agree completely with being honest about the landscape; that's a predicate to having an honest conversation about the issue. I strive to be transparent in my writing and I hope I didn't give any impression of trying to obfuscate.
oh no, i rather think that my blue-leaning acquaintences, who indeed probably either lied or were ignorant about ICE enforcement, are the ones at fault, and i did not meant to imply that of you
that is why i feel lied to, because what i wrote above is, indeed, the reasoning they gave as to why the red-ish concerns about illegal immigration are unfounded
i think it might be more of an attempt to convey a stereotype of an ICE agent, that they cannot imagine ICE other than as a cruelly efficient gestapo-like organization, full of people eager to ride out on every rumor
i am still not sure how to feel about immigration in general... i think i'd prefer a world where we cracked down on illegal immigration, but expanded the legal immigration windows large enough to account for most of the decrease
it feels like this system, where instead we just kinda let people come in and mostly don't go after them, mostly has the de facto effect of creating a societally-legitimized 'lower caste' and i worry about how much abuse must be going on
She may have done it because you took the extra step, knowing full well what your job is like, and that you wouldn't have asked her to reconsider if you thought he deserved the sentence. You may have also given her an opening to change her mind after the family's reaction made her feel guilty. Could have been a bit of both too.
You are a gifted writer. I have a similar experience in the emergency room -- the three categories of client, the futile (patch you up and see you later, 'cause you're not changing the habits/chronic illness that brought you in), the routine (anybody with decent training you prescribe an antibiotic or diagnose a stroke), and the rare third type, where unexpectedly you find the missing scale in the dragon's armor and just for a little while, feel like a badass that earns their paycheck.
I noticed a ton of overlap talking to ER physicians in terms of how we triage cases.
For sure. I also think there's a kinship in terms of needing to be a good citizen in the wider professional community (the law, medicine) but our role being to advocate for and protect a particular person (the client, the patient) within that system. It's a kind of dual loyalty.
As the great physician Virchow said (more pithily) "physicians are the natural attorneys of the poor."
Yassssss
Beautifully written, Yassine
My question is....have you tried this since then? Has it worked?
Also, unrelated, I spent approx 6 months working in criminal justice in New Orleans and it definitely __seemed__ like defense attorneys nearly reflexively believed in their clients innocence. That might have something to do w/ race tho or perhaps they were just putting on a great front and I bought in.