Private Prisons are Becoming an Unfortunate Trend for Refugee Detainment

Article: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/25/opinion/private-prisons-are-cashing-in-on-refugees-desperation.html?_r=0

The South Texas Residential Center in Dilley Texas.

If there's one thing I'm not big on it's certainly got to be decisions made based of ill-concieved logic. This is especially true when those decisions effect so many people so negatively. Reading the article with give you all the clarification you need but I'll spell out what is essetislly the bottom line in this situation.

According to the New York Times, "Advocates of private immigration detention claim they are saving taxpayers money. But that seems unlikely. The American government spends more on immigrant detention today than it did 10 years ago, when the number of border crossings was higher."

Refugees, people who have needed to uproot their entire lives due to a war or a crisis or religious persecution, they are all being treated like prisoners. These "detention centers" as they very cheek-in-tongue like to call themselves, are not fooling me nor the NY times. These are prisons, for refugees whose only crime may very well be living in the wrong country at the wrong time. And once again the NY times provides a clear comparison between these detention centers and prisons. 

According to Antony Lowenstein of the NY Times, "State-run detention centers don’t necessarily guarantee more respect for human rights, but there is evidence that government control brings improvements: A 2014 report by the American Civil Liberties Union, for example, found that private immigration detention centers in the United States were more crowded than state-run ones, and detainees in them had less access to educational programs and quality medical care. And public centers, while still flawed, are more transparent."

Britons Liken Trump to Enoch Powell in Policy

There is no proper caption I can type to describe this stupidity.(Selman Design; photographs by Ross D. Franklin/Associated Press and Popperfoto, via Getty Images)

Article: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/23/opinion/campaign-stops/donald-trump-and-the-rivers-of-blood.html?ref=topics&_r=0

There are few words that can describe my emotions while reading this piece other than an endless stream of dark chuckles. It’s difficult to keep track of half of the dimwitted statements regular politicians make in any given number of debates, let alone Donald Trump. This piece from the NY Times discusses the policies of a man whose political opinions start coming back after hearing Trump’s ridiculous claims. 

According to the NY Times, Trump’s blathering is reminiscent of a British politician who was once just as against immigration, if not slightly more effective in gaining support. Enoch Powell was a British politician who was appointed minister of health in the Conservative government in 1960. He would later become the Opposition’s chief spokesmen on defense, a position he would then lose following what came to be known as the “River of Blood” speech. 

The impression NY Times article gives me concerning this that scare tactics played a big part in winning over his supporters. Sarfraz Manzoor, writer of the article, writes,

“For immigrants like my father, who arrived in Britain from Pakistan in the early 1960s, it wasn’t Mr. Powell’s words that were frightening so much as that so many seemed to agree with them.”

The use of scare tactics is a fallacy that many speakers employ to strike up a shock factor, making their words more compelling to those who might have already been associated or inconvenienced by an issue. Trump and many politicians use scares tactics today, usually they take the forms of startling statistics (sometimes inaccurate), slippery-slip claims, apocalyptic warnings and the like.

The use of scare tactics by these kinds of politicians all circle back to the idea that if they’re elected or appointed, the issue will be resolved and everyone will live better with them at the helm. Obviously as a fallacy scare tactics should be frowned upon when hearing a speech but they can have their effect.

They did back then with Powell and they could very well work again with Trump. All I know is that that picture of Trump and Powell creating a form reminiscent of a Hindu god is extremely stupid. As is Trump. 

Enoch Powell's "River of Blood" Speech: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/3643823/Enoch-Powells-Rivers-of-Blood-speech.html