At this point, the case of Seamus Culleton – the Irishman currently in the detention of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) – has been widely-covered, and the details made well-known. However, the response to the case has proven to be even more interesting than the case itself, and it was the response of Kathy Sheridan of the Irish Times that caught my attention recently.
Ms. Sheridan took the time last Wednesday to lambast the “double standards” of the Irish response to the Culleton case. According to her, “We can turn on a dime, demanding special treatment for (some of) our own while enacting laws such as the International Protection Bill”.
There is something to Ms. Sheridan’s objection. The idea that we can call for Culleton to be let off easy by ICE, while also attempting to tighten our own immigration laws, is a double standard.
What then is the solution? It seems Ms. Sheridan would like both Ireland and the US to relax our immigration laws, since this seems to be the only humane thing to do. Drawing from anecdotes regarding past instances of Irishmen entering the US illegally, she paints a sorry picture of “Haunting stories on the ground” about undocumented immigrants struggling, “unable to leave the Bronx, get a driving licence or a mortgage”. She warns us about passing laws “that are all about ejecting immigrants with greater speed and efficiency”, as “there will be a next time” when some of our own citizens feel compelled to enter the US, lack of documentation notwithstanding.
The argument is familiar, but is based entirely upon emotional appeal. Ms. Sheridan decried the conditions in which Culleton finds himself in ICE detention, echoing the sentiment Culleton himself expressed when telling RTÉ’s Liveline that the detention centre was a “concentration camp”. There is a part of me that feels almost insulted by this statement on behalf of the millions of men and women who were tortured and brutally killed in masses inside the actual concentration camps, suffocating in poisonous gas as they choked on their last breaths without hope of escape. One does not conduct phone interviews from concentration camps. Besides this, Culleton’s detention is entirely voluntary; he can leave at any moment he wishes, and his flight back to Ireland will be provided to him for free.
Many object that Culleton has spent years in the US – that he (or any number of illegal immigrants to the US) doesn’t have life easy. I fail to see the merit of this argument.
As much as I can sympathise with people wanting to run off to the land of the free and the home of the brave for a better life than wherever they might have been from before, this cannot justify them breaking a very clear law. Length of time spent there or quality of character don’t alter that basic fact; is the US supposed to reward people who have evaded the law for years with a free stay for life? Are people supposed to rate how much they are struggling on a scale of 1 to 10, based on which it will be decided whether they are allowed to remain in the country illegally? Are immigration officers supposed to give a wink and a nod to illegal entrants if they subjectively decide that those people deserve to be there?
Most reasonable people would answer the above questions with a “no”. If so, then there is only one other solution: abolish immigration laws altogether; and as much as the liberal elites today seem to fetishise immigration – especially when it is into America – I doubt that they would be happy with millions of new entrants into our own little island with no screening or restriction of any kind. The problem with the emotional argument presented above is that it does not align with the laws of reason, upon which the laws of both Ireland and the US should be founded.
Of course, there are illegal immigrants – some of them fellow countrymen of ours – in the US who are struggling, as Ms. Sheridan described. On a human level, it is right to sympathise with these people, and if there is a legal method for them to remain where they are, they are perfectly entitled to avail of it. However, their struggles are once again almost entirely due to the fact that they themselves entered their country of residence illegally. Ms. Sheridan decries the fact that an Irish couple illegally staying in the US couldn’t get driving licenses or a mortgage, seemingly ignorant of the fact that it is their illegal status itself which prevents them from accessing these privileges. These are not cases of immigrants entering legally and then struggling under an unfair society: they are cases of people experiencing the entirely foreseeable consequences of their own actions. This is the truth of the case of Seamus Culleton.
Seemingly, the US is supposed to ignore its own laws – to allow a free pass to Culleton and any other illegal immigrants, provided that they are struggling enough to arouse sympathy. Ms. Sheridan even goes so far as to suggest that Culleton’s case should be reconsidered merely by virtue of the fact that he is older and probably more mature than he was in his youth when he decided to emigrate. All of this is emotionally appealing, but overlooks the basic fact of the case: that Mr. Culleton broke the law, and is continuing to break the law as long as he remains in the US. Even if Culleton has changed his previous ways (such as his choice to abandon his infant daughters) since he arrived on American soil, this does not change the fact that every second he stays there is another second longer than he promised to and than he was allowed to. Say what you want about immigration enforcement methods, and the conduct of certain ICE officers in recent months has certainly been enough to raise concerns, but the principle of having and enforcing immigration laws is crucial for the survival of any country.
Yes, there is a double standard in calling for the US to stop immigration enforcement while also enforcing our own immigration laws. There are two solutions to this, and they both involve ceasing to engage in either one of the activities mentioned above. The preferable solution: stop calling for the US to stop immigration enforcement. The other option is much worse.
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Patrick Vincent writes from Dublin