debitage

13.1.07

All Politicians Really Are Scumbags

Hilzoy has a long quote from Edmund Burke exhorting us not to assume all politicians are scumbags, and to "be good at spotting courage, honesty, and virtue" in their actions. My first response is that I don't think "all politicians are scumbags" is an axiom, it's just that in every case I have encountered (with the possible exceptions of Henry Waxman and Deval Patrick) the evidence strongly supports the scumbag hypothesis. My second response is that the more power you have, the less you need my praise. The space of actions that are supererogatory for those in positions of power is comparatively small, and I'm not inclined to give politicians a cookie just for voting records that aren't discriminatory and self-serving.

In that vein, I need to look harder for a few intelligent conservative blogs to read, since the Democrats have some power now and I don't expect the liberal blogs to do a great job of noting the inevitable hypocrisy and malfeasance of the new Congress. (Well, unless it's perpetrated by Joe Lieberman. I can only conclude that Lieberman's life is consumed by a paranoia that I might, somewhere, in some weak moment, think a positive thought about him.)

Stentor Danielson, 23:59, |

9.1.07

Saving Lives Isn't Profitable Enough

Vulgar Marxists will tell you that the state is just "the executive committee of the bourgeoisie." Conservative governments seem to have heard that and said "hey, that's a good idea." Take this bit of ridiculousness from Australia:

Australia's first national bushfire research program could be disbanded within two years because it will fail to meet tough new Federal Government rules demanding research deliver marketable commercial benefits.

... The Bushfire Cooperative Research Centre, which has more than 60 fire research programs operating across the continent, has flagged it may not rebid next year for a second seven-year term of government funding, unless the controversial commercial benefit rules are scrapped.

... Two of Australia's most successful and high-profile national environmental research programs the National Weeds Management and Tropical Savannas Cooperative Research Centres were refused a second round of federal funding last year because they failed to meet the new commercial criteria.

Stentor Danielson, 22:05, |

8.1.07

Public Defenders for Immigrants

The debate over immigration tends to focus on how many people, and what kind of people, we should let in (and how we should keep out the rest). But some of the worst injustice occurs in the process by which the existing laws -- however strict or lax they may be -- are applied. Immigration court is an arbitrary, grossly inefficient system even for those people who ultimately get the green card or the deportation that they deserve.

This article gives a nice overview of one of the main sources of unfairness and inefficiency in the immigration system: the lack of a positive right to counsel. There are no public defenders in immigration court -- only a mix of expensive private lawyers and overworked nonprofits and pro bono programs. Well over half of immigrants have to do their cases pro se (on their own behalf, without counsel).

There are no public defenders because immigration is technically a civil matter, not a criminal one. This is a farcical and invidious bit of hairsplitting, as the consequences of being deported are often harsher than a criminal sentence (for example, some Haitians with lawyers have managed to stay on the grounds that Haiti throws deportees into jails where the conditions violate even the US's anemic interpretation of the Convention Against Torture). And many immigrants are held in detention while the government gets around to thinking about processing their case, subjected to the same punitive conditions as convicted carjackers and drug dealers despite having not yet been sentenced to anything.

It would be wrong to frame this simply as people who have a case getting deported due to the lack of a lawyer -- though that is a serious injustice. Also unjust is the situation of people who should (by the laws on the books) be deported, who end up rotting in detention (wasting the court's time, scarce jail beds, and taxpayer money) while they wait for the inevitable. Partly this is due to the inefficiency and incompetence of ICE, which is magnified when there's no lawyer to complain on the immigrant's behalf. And partly this is due to false hope. When the stakes are so high, it's easy for someone with no legal training (and exposed to jailhouse rumors and the assurances of scam artists) to imagine, or insist, that they have a case when they really don't.

The lack of defense lawyers also compromises the integrity of the system. The American judicial system is built on the adversarial model -- one lawyer makes the strongest possible case for the prosecution, one makes the strongest possible case for the defense, and an impartial judge or jury decides which arguments were better. But when the defendant is pro se, the immigration judge is forced to be both impartial judge and partial defense attorney, attempting -- in the short period of time the defendant is in his or her court, and on the basis of the limited facts at hand -- to ensure that the defendant's rights aren't grossly trampled.

Streamlining immigration law so that it's clearer who must go and who can stay would help. So would decreasing the use of de-facto-punitive detention (in favor of things like tracking bracelets). But the bottom line is that the efforts of immigration prosecutors need to be counterbalanced by expanding the public defender system to give a substantive right to counsel to all immigrants.

Stentor Danielson, 14:04, |