Illegal Aliens Self-Deporting Is a Good Thing, No Matter How Long They've Been Here

An illegal act doesn't become less illegal if you keep doing it for 36 years.

This seems obvious to anyone who has enough brains to pound sand. But now we see a hand-wringing story from the UK Independent about a Chilean couple in the United States who have decided to self-deport, because they are in the US illegally. No, they aren't "undocumented." They are here illegally. And they have been here illegally for 36 years.

In the late 1980s, after the US-backed Pinochet regime had destabilized their country, José* and Claudia* moved from Chile to California with their two young daughters. Alejandra*, the oldest, was five years old; Ines* was still an infant, about to turn one.
Their mother still has her old Chilean passport with the three-person photo they took for the journey, Alejandra and Ines grinning together in their mother’s arms. Back then, minors routinely traveled on their mother’s passport.

At this point, the picture becomes fuzzy. It's unclear how this couple (their names are changed in the story) came into the United States, but the linked article refers to them throughout the piece as "undocumented," which, of course, means they are illegal aliens.

Alejandra and Ines are long grown now, both in their mid-30s. José and Claudia are both 65 years old. And instead of doing what they always imagined they’d be doing — celebrating their naturalization, retiring comfortably after working and paying taxes diligently, getting to know their daughters’ new families — they are planning a very different life.
They are packing up almost 40 years’ worth of belongings, keeping an eye on the neighborhood apps that let them know when ICE is in the area, and holding clandestine meetings with an immigration lawyer about how to self-deport safely.

It's easy enough to self-deport safely. The United States will give them $1,000 each, a plane ticket, and people who leave voluntarily are eligible to return to the United States legally, through the legal immigration system. Why are they not taking advantage of this program?

They had 36 years to legitimize their presence in the United States. They did not.

And, as we might expect, there are several outright falsehoods in this piece.

“The most scary thing is, if something happened to us — if they arrest us or something — we can die,” says Claudia, “because [José] is diabetic. They don't care. They don't care if you have medicine or not. They don't tell you where you're going… They just arrest and keep you. That makes us very, very scared. My husband and I, we are scared.”

This is utterly false. Immigration & Customs Enforcement - ICE - provides full medical care for everyone in ICE custody, throughout the repatriation process. There is a branch of ICE, the ICE Health Service Corps, which provides medical evaluation and support to ICE operations and ICE detainees.

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Of course, this family may not get such great medical care back in Chile. But they are Chilean citizens, not American citizens, not even legal residents.

They had 36 years to legitimize their presence in the United States. They did not.

Then there's this:

It’s a sad way to live out your golden years, says José: “We gave so much to this country. We worked very hard all our life here... So it's not fair for us to live with this fear. Every day we watch the news and it’s just the same things, negative things. Poison things.”

They had 36 years to legitimize their presence in the United States. They did not.

So they worked for 36 years. Great work ethic, but that doesn't matter. So they lived in the United States, educated their kids here, and all that. So what? They are still, it seems, in the country illegally. And no, they are not "undocumented." They are illegal aliens.

They had 36 years to legitimize their presence in the United States. They did not.

I have little to no sympathy for sob stories like this. They complain about the Trump administration actually enforcing immigration laws, but they had many years when it was more illegal-alien-friendly administrations in place, during which time they could have done something - anything - to try to legitimize their status. Apparently, they did not.

Now they are going back to Chile. And, once again, we can't rely on the legacy media to tell the truth about the whole thing.

Editor’s Note: Thanks to President Trump, illegal immigration into our great country has virtually stopped. Despite the radical left's lies, new legislation wasn't needed to secure our border, just a new president.

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