Foxfyre wrote:Thomas wrote:Foxfyre wrote: Yes you feed the hungry person and bind up his wounds.
And then you call the INS to come pick him up and send him home.
And what if you feed him and
don't call the INS? Should that be a statutory crime?
I don't know. They're still working it out. But if you feed a bank robber or murderer, knowing he wanted for bank robbery or murder, and don't notify the authorities, I think that might be a gray area in the aiding and abetting category but probably would not be prosecuted. But if you help him do the deed, that is a prosecutable offense.
Everything I'm hearing in the debates and seeing written as proposed legislation seems to address the latter scencario re being in the country illegally.
Dr. Samuel Mudd was the Maryland physician who set John Wilkes Booth's broken leg after he had fled Washington. Mudd was a confederate sympathizer, and had met Booth, and introduced him to other confederate sympathizers in 1864. It was never established that he either knew that Booth had assassinated Lincoln, or that he knew in advance that he intended to make the attempt. Booth and his companion hid out and rested at Mudd's house for more than half a day, before moving on to Virginia, where Booth was eventually killed at the end of the pursuit.
There can be no doubt that Mudd was a Confederate sympathizer. There can be no doubt that Mudd had met Booth before the assassination, and that he had introduced him to other Confederate sympathizers. There can also be no doubt that Maryland was full of Confederate sympathizers, of whom Booth and Mudd were simply two more of the number. Booth met other Confederate sympathizers in Boston, and in Montréal--but i know of no effort which was made to prosecute any of those whom he met.
Mudd was tried and convicted as an accessory to Booth. If an accessory at all, he was an accessory after the fact--unless one alleges that Booth intend to break his leg. The more likely case was that Booth, a Marylander and Confederate sympathizer, went to the house of Mudd, another Marylander and known to him as a Confederate sympathizer, because he needed medical attention and knew Mudd to be a physician. Mudd escaped execution by a single vote of the military court which convicted him. Mudd claimed that he did not recognize Booth. He had met him for a few hours in November, 1864, and Booth spent the night at Mudd's house in December, 1864. One can decide for oneself whether or not they believe that Mudd recognized him when he arrived in April, 1865. For whatever the truth may have been, Mudd went before a military court, not a civilian tribunal, and he was rapidly tried and convicted, barely missed hanging, and was imprisoned at Fort Jefferson in the dry Tortugas west of Key West, Florida. He later assisted the surgeon there, and when that surgeon died during a yellow fever epidemic, Mudd took over, and helped to end the epidemic there. On the appeal of the officers and men at Fort Jefferson, Andrew Johnson pardoned him in 1869.
The tenor of the times, the attitudes of those who consider the degree of criminality in a certain action or an habitual behavior have as much or more to do with the perception of someone's complicity in crime than anything we are ever able to know about what an accused person actually felt or believed. Had Mudd simply set the broken leg of an ordinary murderer in time of peace, even with the information that he had met the man twice, several months earlier, it is doubtful that he would have been convicted as an accomplice, and even if convicted, that he would have been subject to such a harsh sentence (he had been sentenced to life imprisonment). But as the event was the assassination of the President after four years of the most bloody warfare in American history, Mudd had little hope in relying upon his defense, and small prospect of clemency.
Illegal immigrants brave incredible dangers to get here, including mutilation and death (many people in Central America routinely jump a train upon which they have a shot of sneaking into Mexico--there have been literally thousands of traumatic amputations). They pay enormous sums to "Coyotes" who lead them across the border and dump them. Border patroling is a spotty affair, and with stepped up efforts in Texas and California, the Coyotes are leading across the border in the Chihuahuan desert into New Mexico and Arizona--and usually abandoning them in the desert with little to no food or water. The alleged enormity of the "crime" dwindles into insignificance in comparison to the hardships these people so often endure to get here. Comparing it to murder or other such crimes truly disgusts me--what a complete crock.
Chinese illegal immigrants are routinely smuggled into this country, paying sometimes as much as $30,000 or $40,000 dollars to be packed into a container on a ship. If they live through the experience, they are then put to virtual slave labor to repay the cost of their passage. If they are lucky, they will be discovered by Immigration--otherwise, their nightmare is likely to be unending. But we don't discuss the Chinese, we don't discuss illegals from Russia (estimated conservatively at many tens of thousands), we aren't talking about people from the Islands--we only discuss Spanish speakers. The racist factor is all too obvious.
(sarcasm intended) maligned by Thinkprogress. If those so contemptuous (and unrealistic) about the problem can fail to note the question mark in the headline indicating that it is one of many suggestions that have been offered by many--even those on the Left--lately, their own objectivity must be called into serious question.