There's a procedure for seeking asylum. Hint: it doesn't involve bum-rushing a border fence. You guys leave the front doors of your houses open so that people from out of state looking for jobs can crash in your living room?
Asylum can only be sought once on US soil. Refugee status can only be sought at a US diplomatic post, which often for the claimant is not practical because it involves remaining within the vacinity of danger. The reality is that there is little structure in place at the border to allow someone to claim refugee status at the port of entry. Not only that but claimants have been activity turned away at the border. So really trying to get on to US soil is their only option, and it is the US choosing to put them in that situation. What I find particularly disturbing about all this is that in amongst these people might be genuine refugees deserving of refugee status. By tear gassing them away the US is effectively trying to stop them applying for refugee status, which is not only a breach of the Refugee Convention, but flat out inhumane and below the standard that should be set by a western democracy.
Judging by how long ago your ancestors applied, all they did was pay some shyster on the other side of the Pond to dummy up some papers for them, rode in steerage, and hoped they didn't have smallpox like little Vito Corleone. I have a friend whose NFLDer great-grandfather was kidnapped to serve aboard a British ship when he was 14. When he got tired of being gang-raped, he jumped ship and swam for shore. Made up a name and got asylum. The only downside was that he could never go home to NFLD because there was a warrant out for him for dereliction of duty. My friend knows nothing about his real name or her ancestry. My maternal grandparents just booked steerage on a ship that made regular runs from St. John's NFLD to NY. As long as none of them had tuberculosis and a cousin in the States to vouch for them, they were in. Neither had more than a grade school education. One was a housewife, the other a cod fisherman. Not an advanced degree between them. My sainted grandfather even brought along his in-laws, both of whom were functional illiterates. Yup, things are exactly the same today as they were a century ago, you great naif. Oh, and your last sentence? Classic @The Flashlight and his imitator @Federal Farmer. You're regressing, boyo. Rather than seeing imitation as the sincerest form of flattery, Dumb-dumb is insulted.
Jaywalking? That's a teargassin'. Speeding? That's a teargassin'. Lying on your taxes? Oh, you better believe that's a teargassin'. Never mind the fact that seeking asylum is not an illegal act.
Tererun - good point on the trampling danger - I never considered that. While not pleasant to see people gassed, seeing them trampled would be like The Who 1980 concert all over again! Also the gas drifted a mile from where the crowd was trying to border bust. My point being nobody is "targeting" women & children except for the wind I guess. As for asylum I just found out 100,000 asylum requests were processed in the past two years - I probably heard it wrong, maybe it was 10,000. Regardless it was a shit load.
Not illegally shut the official points of contact in the first place? Let's not lose sight of this fact, it was the actions of the border guards which created the danger in the first instance.
The world would be nice if it worked that way. I also think this was, to some extent, an existing problem which has gotten attention because of trump. That attention has made things worse in many ways, but there has been a huge danger in border crossing which has killed many people including women and their children going on for years. The reality is that far worse has been going on up until now and the media had no reason to care until it became trump bashing time. I am just saying that because if you are waiting for people to do something they probably would have a long time ago if they really cared. A large majority do not care enough to do anything but complain.
Absolutely and this is the endemic problem, they didn't know what to do. Of course all of this will be used as an argument in favour of the mythical wall rather than, y'know, better procedures and training for those who are supposed to be the agents of law and order here.
this just runs into my general problem with human existence as a society. But it is neither my destiny nor the world's desire to fix things. Perhaps we are not all that much better than the animals.
What makes you think we're better at all? At least our primate cousins don't generally equate being civilised with having efficient means to kill each other whilst banning the public display of a nipple.
We do, but after all these millions of years the best we can say is that we are a moderately successful species (and that's being generous really) which has destroyed thousands of others and are well on course to do the same to ourselves. At some point we're going to have to stop relying on potential and actually live up to the hype or face self imposed extinction, be it through stupidity or malice. At the moment the most prominent driving factor in policy making is spite, spite for each other, spite for intelligence and education, spite for inconvenient truths, spite for the very ideas of compassion, fairness or cooperation.
The way I understand it, they didn't shut the official points of entrance in the first place. They shut the one at San Ysidro temporarily in response to the fences being rushed and all of the chaos that ensued.
MAOHS you are correct. I don't know where spot gets his information! I think his narrative is getting ahead of him. Tererun yes it does seem interesting that although border agents have to use tear gas about once a month (at various crossing points along our border) nobody gives a shit until Trump is involved. That said if people want to put the tear gas on the back burner and bring up Trump closing the Tijuana crossing I'm all ears. IMHO I think closing off the crossing any longer than necessary is "group punishment" because many Americans & Mexicans commute for various reasons. The caravan is not affecting that situation 24/7 so don't close it to make a statement. True about our destiny not being to "fix things" per se. We have the ability at times but that came along in humans after the strong foundation of a functioning, fully capable brain evolved. In other words we had to master fire before we tackled trigonometry. Doctor Drew (big in the 90's) was on TV a few days ago and mentioned something as a quick aside while discussing robots taking over that was interesting to me. He said humans don't really "think" all that much as far as scheming, long tern thinking, etc. as you would imagine. Most our brain is used for just what the animals use their brains for - making sense of, organizing & responding to all the stimuli & data our senses take in. This is the #1 priority of our brains and the very highest abstract thinking didn't come along until relatively recently in human development. Obviously there was an evolutionary need for it or we probably wouldn't be around as a species, but it could just be a "side effect" of our ever increasing brain power.
"At the moment the most prominent driving factor in policy making is spite, spite for each other, spite for intelligence and education, spite for inconvenient truths, spite for the very ideas of compassion, fairness or cooperation. " - spot at the moment? Seriously? Where were you for the past several thousand years? It's been like this for a long time throughout much of the world, and it won't change anytime soon. All we can do is not practice spite on an individual level.
"Absolutely and this is the endemic problem, they didn't know what to do. Of course all of this will be used as an argument in favour of the mythical wall rather than, y'know, better procedures and training for those who are supposed to be the agents of law and order here." - spot Dude.... "they didn't know what to do?" What part of using tear gas about once a month for the past ten years do you not understand? Obviously the border agents are well trained and did exactly what their procedures would have them do! The chaotic crowd was stopped from border busting and nobody suffered permanent harm! Law & order was effectively maintained. Again............think hard now.........what the fuck do you think the border agents should have done in this situation? Just how would you improve their training? What should the procedures be for stopping a mob from coming through? A mob who are a danger to themselves (tererun brought up trampling which would increase as even more people funnel through a bottleneck) as well as the border agents?
That seems to be the official line, but the journalists present and migrants seem to be more ambiguous to say the least. I'm inclined to believe the latter at this point if for no other reason than there had to be a trigger point for the mob to form, why else would the chaos have started at that point? @oldfella1962, I don't believe you're in a position at this point to say what is correct, but the majority of versions have the crowd responding to the provocation of shutting the gates. That's open to change as more information comes out but as the border agency are conducting a review and are at present unable to say for certain it seems odd that you are.
I suggest you recheck your information here dude, most reports are having the mob form in response to the border guards shutting the gate. If you really can't see a way around this other than deploying fucking tear gas then something's very wrong with you. Interestingly the only source I can find on this "once a month on average" is Sarah "I tell bare faced whoppers for a living" Huckabee Sanders, whilst the border agency themselves are carrying out an internal review of the incident.
It started at that point because the caravan showed up after traveling 2000 miles to find that there were already over 2000 asylum seekers in line at the port of entry, and they were only processing 40 - 100 people per day. Some of them then started protesting the delays, then around 100 of the protestors rushed a border fence, which kicked the whole thing off.
oh I see - I thought you might have been jumping on the "everything was paradise until Trump came along" train.
No, but frankly the idea of tear gas being deployed on average one a month is hardly a strong argument even if it's true, all it says is the brutality is a regular occurrence and the agency isn't learning from the lessons it's being presented with.
That may be the case and if the review confirms that fair enough, but there are ways to deal with large groups of people before they become a mob and force is required, there's a vast body of research into non violent methods of crowd control and a lot could have been done to diffuse that situation ahead of time and there's nothing coming back to say it was.
ladies & gentlemen may I direct your attention to post #508 - the most definitive example of "Monday morning quarterbacking" that you will ever find.
Takes a bow, thank you kind sir. Now do tell what suggestions you have from your vast experience of terrorising civilians, ahem, maintaining law and order at gunpoint, I mean, er whatever it is you did in the army.
