Emotional Blackmail Will Continue Until All Illegal Immigrants Can Stay

Emotional blackmail must be resisted at all costs: it distracts us from reality.

Oh please. Source

The media’s campaign of emotional blackmail over illegal immigration continues. The photograph above is a perfect example of it.

Here’s an X account’s description of what happened:

This is America. Picture taken yesterday as her father was illegally taken with 100 others by ICE agents in Nashville. I am ashamed.

Well, I’m not ashamed. And neither should you be, reader. For one, this is probably an inaccurate description of the context behind this photograph. For two, it’s clearly meant to trigger compassionate outrage. We don’t want to separate families, do we? We don’t want to send kids who are citizens of this country back to the country their parents came from, do we? We’re better than that!

As Robin Atkins says, however:

This is emotional manipulation, otherwise known as weaponized empathy. This is the exploitation of a child by the media. They would prefer to use her for their political agenda rather than focus their attention on the failure of the federal government to uniformily [sic] enforce immigration policy for decades. She is not a victim of ICE. She is bearing the cost of her father's decisions.

Look at this headline from the far-left Los Angeles Times over a deportation case out of San Diego:

Grandmother in U.S. without documentation faces deportation after wrong turn in San Diego

From the same article:

Camero was driving home from her job as a dishwasher at a La Jolla restaurant on April 7 when she stopped to get gas. She then drove into the Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego by mistake. There, she was asked for proper identification and when she could not provide one, immigration enforcement was called, officials said.

“It was just a wrong turn,” her daughter, Melissa Hernández, told news station Telemundo 20.

Just a wrong turn. As though people are getting deported every day just for making the wrong turn. The story is also confusing: if she really made a mistake, why wasn’t she allowed to turn around? Perhaps it’s standard procedure to identify everyone who enters federal property, which is understandable. Either way, she’s not being deported for “making a wrong turn.”

Here’s why she’s really being deported [bold mine]:

Camero has lived in the United States for more than 20 years. Born in Mexico, she does not have a California driver’s license or any other form of identification, according to her family. A spokesperson for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement confirmed Camero is in custody and currently being processed for deportation back to Mexico.

20 years. I graduated high school over 20 years ago. Are we really supposed to feel sorry for someone who came into the country illegally and lived under the radar the entire time? How’s this any different from living under a false or assumed identity? I certainly don’t hate this woman for it, but I’m definitely not going to give her any credit for it, either. She took a big risk, brought her family along for the ride. It’s not the responsibility of the American people to relieve her of that risk.

Look - I try to be empathetic, even when it comes to illegal immigration. I wouldn’t be a decent human being if I didn’t. But I won’t stand for anyone trying to weaponize empathy. I’ve said this time and again - emotional blackmail is abusive. Emotional blackmail is a technique employed by those wishing to justify and normalize bad behavior.

Though one of the less manipulative examples of it, this is still the logic applied by our abusers:

I do not think a Mexican grandmother, who has peacefully lived here for 20 years and made the poor choice of driving without a license, is the kind of person Trump voters expected to be targeted for deportation. Your context is unconvincing.

Poor choice? For over 20 years? Sure, it’s a choice, but it’s more than a poor one. She did it because she thought she could get away with it into perpetuity. Perhaps she wasn’t wrong to think so, given America’s dysfunctional government, but again, it’s not up to Americans to relinquish her of the burden of the risk she assumed.

More logic:

Saying that she shouldn’t be deported is not the same thing as saying that she shouldn’t face consequences for driving without a license.

Liberals aren’t wrong - knowledge of civics is lacking in America. The reason why she doesn’t have a driver’s license is because, well… she’s here illegally. Regardless of whether the rules are enforced or not, there’s no state, Blue or Red, which doesn’t have legal status in the country as a prerequisite for a driver’s license.¹ In other words, her biggest problem isn’t that she’s driving without a license, which is problematic enough. It’s that she isn’t supposed to be in the country in the first place, which denies her the benefits and privileges of being in the country. This stuff is so simple, I feel stupid for having to explain it.

Here’s another story being exploited for emotional effect:

A Georgia college student faces deportation after she ran a red light, and authorities discovered her entire family has been illegally living in the US for nearly 15 years.

Mexican-national Ximena Arias-Cristobal, 19, was pulled over by police in Dalton, Ga. on May 5 when she failed to adhere to a “no turn on red” sign.

Ximena Arias-Cristobal, a Dalton State Community College student, was driving without a driver’s license but told officers she had an international driver’s license, according to WTVC, citing the arrest report.

She admitted that she didn’t have the foreign document when Dalton police officers asked her to show it, claiming that her mother had taken it away from her and said she was not supposed to be driving.

In 2010, Arias-Cristobal was brought into the US illegally by her parents when she was only 4 years old during the family’s move from Mexico City to the Dalton area — over 30 miles from the Tennessee and Georgia border.

There are two possibilities to consider here. In the first, let’s assume these are reasonable people who possess sufficient levels of self-awareness. Certainly, they knew they were in the country illegally? If so, they understood what that meant, right? That any mistake on their part, including a traffic violation, would be enough to get them kicked out of the country? It was a risk they were cognizant of and willing to wager everything on, right?

Or, could it be that they had reason to believe they’d never be deported? After all, the only reason why 11 million, 20 million, or whatever the number is, were able to enter and stay in this country is because the government was either unable or unwilling to stop them. Under those circumstances, why wouldn’t they think they could get away with living illegally in America? They’re just playing the game. Meanwhile, the rest of us are following the rules, and rules are for fools.

Whatever the case may be, it’s an unacceptable state of affairs. We cannot have, on the one hand, people living in this country who break the rules and live their lives here as though they’ll never get caught. On the other hand, we cannot just have tens of millions of people coming into the country exclusively at their pleasure. Either control immigration or open the borders fully. Otherwise, none of this makes any sense, none of this serves any purpose.

There’s more to this story:

Arias-Tovar was arrested last month when he was pulled over for driving 19 miles over the speed limit, the outlet reported.

The father, who owns his own company, was denied proper paperwork to remain in the US. It was not known if he ever applied for citizenship.

Evidently, illegal immigrants have hardly lived their lives with any real concern or fear in this country. Those genuinely scared for their safety do whatever it takes to stay below the radar, out of trouble, and out of sight. Doing things that’d attract the attention of the authorities is either reckless or suggests they never had any real concern of deportation. Until now.

Central to the argument advanced by illegal immigration proponents is that they cost us nothing, they work hard, pay bills and taxes, as if Americans do none of that ourselves. In reality, illegal immigration does have costs, and the fact that they’re not glaring doesn’t make them any less real.

One area where the costs are more readily apparent is when it comes to driving. Since many illegals don’t have licenses, they also don’t have insurance. This means they’re never held accountable when at fault for an accident and end up driving up the cost of insurance across a state. This is as blatant a violation of the law as it gets and undermines social trust like no other. Everyone hits the road with an expectation that, in the event of an accident, the other party will be insured, just as you. What happens when someone decides to read off a different script, there’s no answer for.

How big of a problem are illegal migrant drivers? From a 2016 story:

As many as 7,500 Americans -- 20 per day -- are killed annually by unlicensed drivers, and Rosenberg calculates that more than half are the victims of illegal immigrants. Now, by testifying before lawmakers, speaking to parents who have been through the same ordeal and posting his research on his nonprofit’s website, unlicensedtodrive.org, Rosenberg is shedding light on a frightening number not readily available from government sources.

Key to the problem is that the government never cared and still doesn’t care enough to get to the bottom of it. What data is available is used by the government to make the ridiculous argument that illegal immigrants make communities safer. If that’s so, why not just open the borders, instead of pretending like we have any? Put your money where your mouth is.

More:

“I was stunned at what I found,” said Rosenberg, who at 63 is semi-retired from the entertainment and publishing industry. “Not only were unlicensed drivers killing people in numbers only exceeded by drunk drivers, but many times they were barely being punished and many times faced no charges at all.”

Again, data is tough to come by. But what data is available doesn’t paint a rosy picture:

Such imprecise government bookkeeping masks a frightening and, critics say, preventable danger. The AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, which obtains state-by-state data from the federal government Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) database – found that 20 percent of fatal crashes involved an unlicensed driver. From 2010-2014, there was an average of 32,887 road deaths per year, which would mean 6,577 were caused by unlicensed drivers. Those drivers include citizens with suspended or revoked licenses, and those who never had licenses. But if half are illegal immigrants, it would be in line with Rosenberg’s estimates.

As with most things in life, immigrants aren’t the cause of the problem, but they make it worse. Saying that immigrants aren’t the cause of our problems as an excuse to not deport a single one of them isn’t rooted in any critical thinking. Even if somehow, we got the problem of unlicensed driving under control, illegal immigrants would still be over-represented as unlicensed drivers.

It’s not just about the practical outcomes, important as they are. A person who breaks something as fundamental as immigration law often goes on to break other laws. It doesn’t need to be because they’re bad people, either. It’s because people are imperfect in general and will often do what they think they can get away with. The only way to protect against this is through an incentive structure which discourages such behavior - a.k.a. “laws.”

Expecting people to obey the law, our laws, is the bare minimum for being a member of any society. It’s what maintains the social contract, not being a “decent f**king person,” as liberals like to put it. Illegal immigration undermines that social contract, no matter how hard-working the migrants are, no matter how much they pay in taxes. Someone who breaks the law to enter and stay in the country, then continues breaking laws, isn’t learning how to be a good citizen, they’re learning how to game the system. That’s not something worth incentivizing.

Not everyone is from the West, though, and most everyone in the world isn’t from the Anglo West, specifically. Most people on this planet live in a more Darwinian, survival-of-the-fittest environment, where rules really are for fools. It’s for this reason you don’t just bring anyone into the country, in large numbers, no less. You need to bring in people whom you can have a reasonable amount of confidence that learning to follow the rules won’t be too much to ask of them.

In yet another example of emotional manipulation, here’s how an illegal immigration supporter described the deportation of a Venezuelan native:

This is Jose Barco a 39 year old Iraq Army Veteran that was awarded the Purple Heart during combat in Iraq! He has lived in this Country almost all of his life. He was detained by ICE and is now awaiting deportation to Venezuela. He served this Country & now being kicked out!

As we should all be aware by now, the Left lies by omission. Let’s look at a more complete account of events, courtesy of far-left PBS:

Jose Barco is not a U.S. citizen. He applied for citizenship between tours in the summer of 2006 while he was stationed at Fort Carson. Barco’s commanding officer, Lt. Col. Michael Hutchinson, helped him complete his citizenship application.

His application “should have been approved by the end of calendar year 2006,” Hutchinson wrote in a memo to federal immigration officials. “At some point the packet was lost and we have not been able to find a chain of custody document."

In 2009, a jury found Barco guilty of attempted murder after he opened fire at a Colorado Springs house party. One of the gunshots hit a 19-year-old pregnant woman in the leg.

Tia Barco attributes the shooting, in part, to mental trauma Jose Barco suffered during combat in Iraq — trauma that her husband did not receive proper treatment for, she said.

The story is clearly meant to be sympathetic towards Barco’s plight (emotional blackmail detected!!!). His citizenship application being lost is unfortunate, but in retrospect, given the crime he ended up committing, is that really the worst thing in the world? Serving in combat doesn’t make what he did okay and I’d rather someone like him not become a citizen of this country.

In fact, if there’s anything we should be able to agree on, it’s that committing felonies should result in deportation for non-citizens. It’s crazy to think we might not all agree on that point. The Barca story is yet another example of why we cannot afford to allow our compassion get the better of us. Nobody is being deported for no reason.

We could spend all day talking about these stories, but as long as the Regime wants to keep trying to psychologically abuse us into submission, we need to be willing to push back forcefully against the narrative. Let’s look at one more story:

Martin Diaz came to the U.S. as a toddler, fleeing cartel violence. His family had proof of the danger—and hope for safety here. He married a U.S. citizen, and after years of waiting, their visa case finally moved forward.

Days later, ICE showed up at their Spokane home with no warrant, no ID, and no regard for the law. His wife wasn’t home, but a roommate filmed everything. When he asked for badge numbers, agents said, “None of your business.” Then they assaulted Martin and dragged him away.

Now ICE is charging him with assault. But the video tells the truth. This is what ICE does—lie, escalate, and disappear people. Kendall Diaz spoke out at the Spokane Fights Back rally. We echo her call: Deportation is not an option. We demand justice.

The thing about lying by omission is that it doesn’t feel like lying - they’re not telling falsehoods, they’re just leaving important facts out of the story. But there’s no meaningful difference, because the intent is the same: to deceive. In fact, lying by omission is worse, because it mixes truth with lies. It does more than confuse: it attacks.

Here’s why Martin Diaz is being deported:

That first thing came in 2008 when Martin Diaz was convicted of third-degree assault in a case where he earlier had been charged with third-degree rape of a girl who said she did not give her consent.

In addition to the first conviction, Martin Diaz was convicted in 2017 of felony domestic violence following a confrontation with his ex-wife’s father.

In the meantime, he and is wife, Kendall Diaz, have been working to obtain his legal immigration status through his 2018 marriage to a U.S. citizen. But that all stopped with the April 29 arrest.

Particulars of these cases aside, Diaz is lucky he wasn’t deported earlier. It’s gotten very tiresome hearing stories about supposedly innocent people being hassled by ICE, only to discover they, in fact, have an awful lot of baggage. My biggest worry is that the emotional blackmail does, in fact, work. Most of us simply have neither the interest nor the time to take a deeper look into these stories and the media ruthlessly exploits that fact.

If you’re still the type to have your emotions toyed with, then at least extend some of that compassion to your fellow countrymen, not just to foreigners. Read this story from a victim of illegal immigration:

So yesterday at work someone had a grip strength meter. We were all trying it out. My right hand was like 140lbs. Nothing to brag about, but I can work with that.

But on my left hand, however--on the side that got injured when an uninsured unlicensed illegal mother t-boned my truck--is at 40lbs.

I have trouble opening pickle jars. I still can’t lift light objects over my head. I can only open doors with my right hand. Everything I do at work is awkward and weird (because i have to do it one-handed) and I’m in constant pain. Even swinging my arms as I stroll down the street is painful. And I'm still fighting my car insurance company to get reimbursed for medical expenses.

If it takes a sob story to change your mind, there’s plenty of it to go around on all sides. Of course, not a single leftist would be moved by this man’s ordeal. For them, it’s just another day in the Multicultural Democratic Republic of America (MDRA), a price worth paying for cultural enrichment and diversity. Besides, we already have plenty of criminals in this country who are citizens and native-born; what’s millions more?

It’s important to be empathetic. But empathy cannot be the basis for public policy. No matter what side of the debate you take, allowing your compassion to be taken advantage of makes it impossible to be objective. Messing with feelings is about ensuring we arrive at only one right answer. That’s because the one thing none of us can escape is our own humanity, unless we are total sociopaths.

At the risk of belaboring the point, I’ll add that things like across-the-board deportations and stopping immigration might seem cruel, but the alternative is war. No kidding. History shows time and again, even as we speak, that demographic change is main driver of armed conflict. That’s because land and resources are ultimately limited commodities, that and everyone, not just White people, are territorial, and have a sense of what’s theirs. You don’t have to like this, but you can’t deny it just because it sounds awful. This is reality and reality is the only thing that matters.

Emotional blackmail must be resisted at all costs: it distracts us from reality. If you give in to it, you’ve allowed your judgment to be compromised. It’s for this very reason we generally prefer to avoid having emotional people in positions of great responsibility. Resisting emotional blackmail doesn’t make you a cold, anti-social person, either. It just means you have your priorities in order.

America has long had its priorities out of order. It’s why we’re where we are today.

Whose Side Are They On?

Crazy scenes coming out of Newark, New Jersey:

Source

The incident led to the arrest of Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, though charges against him have since been dropped. However, charges have been filed against Representative Monica McIver for actions captured on the video above.

From NBC News:

Rep. LaMonica McIver, D-N.J., faces two counts of assaulting, resisting, and impeding law enforcement officials in connection with an incident at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Newark, according to court documents made public on Tuesday.

Watch the video yourself to see if the federal government has a legitimate case against McIver. Whether the charges are valid or not, however, the fact that supposedly American politicians are so openly supportive of illegal immigration is a peculiar feature of our time. When the history of this period is written, we can only hope someone will explore the phenomenon of leaders elected to represent Americans instead choosing to represent foreigners, in more ways than one.

Which begs the question: Whose side are they on? How far are they willing to go with this? And what impact will American politicians supporting illegal immigration have on those who refuse to leave, of which there’s certain to be many? A few essays ago, I expressed concern that the migrant population in the U.S. could become a source of insurgency. There’s plenty of examples throughout history of this happening. But it’s also true that insurgencies often have the support of political figures within the state. Sinn Féin’s support of the Irish Republican Army throughout The Troubles of Northern Ireland comes foremost to mind.

It’s still too early to develop this thesis of sorts any further. But I find it unlikely that the migrant population would never resist efforts at deportation. There are too many examples throughout the world of foreigners living in other countries eventually fighting back against state attempts at enforcing the law. It’s a reason why authorities are often leery of doing so, because they’re afraid of the backlash it might trigger.

If American politicians protect immigrants, it may only empower them to resist, knowing they have people in power on their side. Eventually, this resistance might mestastize into an insurgency, maybe even terrorism. We’re not there yet, but you can see it from where we are at today.

When Does It Become An Emergency?

The Supreme Court has validated a major move made by the Trump administration:

The Supreme Court in an emergency order on Monday allowed the Trump administration to strip legal protections the Biden administration gave to hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans, over the public dissent of one of the court’s liberal justices.

The Trump administration in January said it would move to revoke Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Venezuelans — lifting protections that bar deportation due to civil unrest and dangerous conditions in a migrant’s home country.

The Justice Department appealed to the Supreme Court after a San Francisco-based federal district judge put the efforts on hold, finding they “appear predicated on negative stereotypes.”

Only Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, former President Biden’s appointee to the court, publicly dissented from Monday’s order to lift that judge’s block. Neither Jackson nor the majority explained their decision.

The decision comes on the heels of a separate SCOTUS decision from Friday, which barred, at least temporarily, the administration’s attempts to deport Venezuelans accused of being Tren de Aragua gang members under the Alien Enemies Act. The Right had something of a moral meltdown over it, though as even right-aligned commentators pointed out, it hardly amounted to a defeat, little more than just a procedural matter.

It did, however, spark a broader debate about how far the Trump administration should go to bring illegal immigration under control. Many on the Right feel the situation has gotten sufficiently out of control, a state of emergency, if you will, to the point that extreme measures are justified. Others - most, I’d say - don’t feel that way. Most Americans may think immigration to be a major problem, but aren’t preoccupied by it, either.

What’s an emergency, anyway? Basically, it’s a situation which overwhelms your resources, where business as usual cannot effectively address the problem. Are we at that point yet?

Central to answering this question is understanding the severity of the problem in a comparative sense. The worthwhile X account “i/o” had a useful way of framing the issue by comparing the situation in the U.S. with the situation in Europe:

If I lived in Europe, I’d be consumed with rage about what mass immigration from Muslim countries has inflicted on the continent. I would be a single-issue voter. I’d hold my nose and vote AfD. I’d vote Reform UK and National Rally. Because this type of immigration has been a disaster for western Europe.

But I don’t live in Europe. I live in the US, where legal immigration (including from Muslim nations) has overall been very good for the country, and illegal immigration, while a net negative, has had a considerably less deleterious impact than mass immigration in Europe has had.

Based on the data, I don’t see that we’re in an emergency situation here in the US, or one that justifies throwing out the rule of law and the Constitution, and wonder why people like Matt Walsh think we are.

He provides some good perspective on the matter and I think anyone who wants to have an opinion on immigration in the U.S. ought to start where he’s at. Relying on data to answer the question of whether or not the U.S. is in an emergency situation, however, has its limits.

I agree that the U.S. isn’t in a Europe-style immigration crisis, yet. I also agree that the negative impact of illegal immigration isn’t readily seen by all. Finally, I agree that defying the rule-of-law is not a choice to be made flippantly, and the Right ought to not be so cavalier in proposing we throw the baby out with the bathwater.

I also believe, however, that once we get to a Europe-style immigration crisis, it’s probably too late. The whole idea is to avoid getting to where Europe is today. The only way to do that is to take early action. America is at a point where we probably don’t need to resort to overly drastic measures to avoid a collision with fate, but it’s also at a point where taking the slow-and-steady, business-as-usual approach isn’t going to fix the problem. One look at the extent to which demographics have transformed so dramatically in just the last 20 to 30 years proves it.

So no, the U.S. isn’t in an emergency situation. However, it’s definitely in a crisis situation. A crisis needs to be confronted, decisively so. By the way, there are many in Europe who don’t believe their countries are experiencing an immigration emergency, either, despite what the data shows. This means the situation must get far worse than it already is before people internalize reality. By then, it’s definitely, not probably, too late. It’s the same reason why early diagnosis is key to surviving diseases like cancer. It’s interesting that we don’t apply similar logic to political problems.

What makes this crisis particularly urgent is that it’s been going on for so long and no decisive action has been taken, not until now. What isn’t an emergency risks becoming one had immigration to the U.S. been allowed to continue at the rate it was going until Trump’s election. I still don’t think Americans understand just how many people came across the border during Joe Biden’s four years in the White House. So while suspending the Constitution is a step too far, merely applying the rule of law isn’t a sufficient recourse, either. The rule of law only prevails in an otherwise orderly environment. In a state of anarchy, which characterizes our immigration situation, order has to be restored using all measures available and permissible. I believe the Trump administration to be doing just that.

The political commentator Inez Stepman summarizes what the argument over due process amounts to:

The problem isn’t due process, it’s what process is due. Not a word game, genuine question: what process is due to someone who is here illegally?

I think the process that ought to be due is a simple and quick venue to establish two basic facts: you’ve got the right guy, and he is indeed illegally in the country.

That’s it, he should be dropped back in his home country. The problem isn’t due process, it’s the fact that the due process is ludicrously long and convoluted and therefore a de facto barrier to enforcing immigration law.

That’s exactly it - due process is being used as an excuse to not deport anyone. Anyone who thinks the Left has any desire to see any number of illegal immigrants booted from the country, even through legal measures, isn’t being honest about the situation. The Left never believed in due process or rule of law until now, not until it pertained to illegal immigrants. For all others, guilt is determined through identity.

Nor are their criticisms particularly convincing. Everyone who has been deported was deported out of some degree of suspicion. Otherwise, we’d have many more legal residents, even citizens, being deported. But that’s not happening. Given that the situation is sufficiently chaotic, restoring order is the top priority. If that means moving a little more quickly, then so be it. Preserving the rule of law cannot come at the cost of cultivating disorder. Otherwise, the rule of law serves no purpose.

On that point, I’ll echo something many others have said about the issue: rule of law did nothing to stop tens of millions of illegal immigrants to entering the country. I won’t go as far as to the rule of law has collapsed, but clearly, it’s either ineffectual or it means absolutely nothing, at least to those committed to the complete demographic transformation of this country. Following the letter of the law isn’t going to fix a problem created by complete disregard for the law.

Enough Of The Sob Stories

Let’s close on one more attempt at emotional blackmail. Here’s a story out of MIami, Florida:

Source

Wah, wah, wah. Let’s take a look at her case for staying in the country, shall we?

“Maria” entered the U.S. illegally in 2005. She was ordered to leave the country after failing to appear at an immigration hearing. She claims she didn’t attend the hearing because she had no family in the country, she had no specific place to stay, and received no documents to attend her hearing. Did it ever enter her mind that this is all the result of having entered the country illegally in the first place? Or did she decide, as so many other illegal immigrants have, that nobody would actually try to get her to leave, and chose to tempt fate? Is it now up to Americans to reward her for making such a bad choice?

On top of that, after 20 years in the country, she cannot speak English. To channel my inner Simon Cowell, she didn’t attend her immigration hearing, she refused to leave when told to, she can’t speak the language after 20 years, so, what does she want any of us to say?

Which takes it to you - what do you have to say about all this? Do you have any compassion left in your heart? Or are you done with the emotional blackmail? What do you think about American politicians representing illegal immigrants? Finally, are we in an immigration crisis, or is it an emergency? At what point does it become an emergency?

Talk about it in the comments section.

Max Remington writes about armed conflict and prepping. Follow him on Twitter at @AgentMax90.

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1. 16 states plus the District of Columbia do allow illegal immigrants to get a driver’s license. However, not only does this undermine order and rule of law, there are requirements which need to be met; a person cannot just show up and apply for one without any documents. More importantly, none of this supercedes federal immigration law.