A recent article by Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies posits that even if the unaccompanied minors arriving at our Southern border are refugees, they should be sent back.

I find that CIS in general and Mr. Krikorian in particular are usually fairly reasonable in their arguments (though there are exceptions; and more exceptions). However, Mr. Krikorian’s recent article is long on insults and short on insights.

First, the insults (they’re more fun to deal with, no?). He refers to the “anti-borders Left,” which I suppose means that to him, anyone who advocates for immigrants opposes all borders. This is kind of like saying that anyone who advocates for a speed limit opposes driving. He also refuses to acknowledge that children arriving at the border are unaccompanied (he refers to them as “unaccompanied” – damning them with quotation marks). What he means by “unaccompanied” is that the children are brought here by smugglers who (and this is a real quote from CIS – check the link if you don’t believe me) “watch over the children until they are taken into custody by U.S. authorities as part of a process that turns the children over to relatives in the United States.” I guess technically, the children are accompanied, though having a smuggler “watch over” my kids is about as desirable as having them spend a night at Neverland Ranch. Finally, here’s a good one:

Asylum is for people willing to go anywhere to get out of where they are; just as a drowning man doesn’t pick and choose among life preservers he sees in the water, a genuine asylum-seeker doesn’t pick and choose among countries.

Au contraire, mon Krikorian: Drowning men who hope to survive are actually quite picky about their life preservers. Think about Leonardo DiCaprio in that movie with the boat. Had he been a bit more choosy, maybe he and Kate Winslet would have floated off together into the happily ever after. In the same way, asylum seekers must be very choosy about where they plan to spend the rest of their lives. Just ask all those poor Eritrean refugees in Sudan, who are subject to exploitation, attacks, and expulsions. Probably they are wishing that they had found a better life preserver.

OK, enough of that. Now to Mr. Krikorian’s “insights” (sorry for the quotes, I was feeling snarky).

Mr. Krikorian’s main point is that even if the children from Central America are refugees, a point that he does not concede, they can be turned away under international law. Why? Because the 1951 Refugee Convention provides:

The Contracting States shall not impose penalties, on account of their illegal entry or presence, on refugees who, coming directly from a territory where their life or freedom was threatened in the sense of article 1, enter or are present in their territory without authorization, provided they present themselves without delay to the authorities and show good cause for their illegal entry or presence.

According to Mr. Krikorian, the underlined language means that an alien who flees persecution and passes through one country should not be allowed to apply for asylum in another country because the alien is not “coming directly” from the territory of feared harm. In other words, Central Americans who pass through Mexico cannot seek asylum in the U.S. because they are obliged to seek asylum in Mexico.

There is one teeny tiny problem with Mr. Krikorian’s idea. As he himself notes, United States law “unfortunately” only allows asylum seekers to be turned away if they come from a “safe third country.” U.S. law recognizes only one “safe third country,” Canada. He thus suggest that the statutory fix to the border surge is to “bar outright any asylum claim from someone who passed through a third country where he should have made that claim first.”

While I think this is an idea worth discussing, I don’t see it as the simple solution that Mr. Krikorian does. For one thing, while Mr. Krikorian wants to convince us that Mexico is a “safe” country, there is a lot of evidence that it is not safe. So if such a law were implemented, I would expect the battle would shift from the applicant’s fear of return to her country to why she would not be safe in Mexico (much as the battle in many asylum cases is about the one-year filing deadline, not the fear of return). All this would make Central American cases more–not less–difficult (and time consuming) to adjudicate.

Also, there is the more philosophical question about how we, as a country, want to treat people coming to us for help. While we cannot solve all the worlds problems, we also cannot ignore those problems. Especially when they are in our backyard (remember the Monroe Doctrine). And especially when our policies contributed to those problems (remember the Monroe Doctrine).

Mr. Krikorian and I do, I think, agree on one thing: The influx of asylum seekers at our border needs to be addressed. We need to have a rational policy debate about how to treat such people. In my opinion, that debate should protect the integrity of our asylum system (it should not be used as a way to get around normal immigration procedures) and it should also respect the people coming to us for help and protect bona fide refugees. Even though I generally disagree with them, I believe that groups like CIS–groups that advocate for more restrictive immigration policies–have an important role to play in the debate. That role would be more constructive if they focused more on policy and less on polemics.