Man faces jail for giving immigrants water
(AP) A judge has threatened to sentence a Tucson man to 25 days in prison for leaving jugs of water in the desert for illegal immigrants.
A federal jury in June convicted Walt Staton of littering in the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge.
In August, a judge ordered Staton to pick up trash for 300 hours and also sentenced him to a year of unsupervised probation and banned him from the refuge for a year.
Staton is a member of the group No More Deaths, which supports humanitarian aid along the border.
He was scheduled to be re-sentenced Friday after he told the U.S. magistrate last month that he objected to the court's punishment on moral and legal grounds.
But Magistrate Jennifer Guerin denied Staton's motion to modify or suspend his sentence pending appeal and threatened to double his community service hours to 600 hours or give him 25 days in prison.
Guerin has scheduled a probation violation hearing for Dec. 21.
Not all laws are just and fair. You think laws from preventing gay marriage are ethically correct? What about government-sponsored housing segregation laws prior to 1954?
This is why civil disobedience exists, to help citizens draw attention to legal standards that they feel are unjust.
There is hope, but not for us.
Isn't that kind of the point of organizations like that, though? They're doing something that makes moral sense, but at the cost of being punished by the law. Their seemingly unjust punishment draws attention to their cause, making them martyrs.
Do I think it's crazy that the man is being punished? Yes. Do I think it helps support his cause? Yes.
This is why civil disobedience exists, to help citizens draw attention to legal standards that they feel are unjust.
True. I suppose I'm biased in this particular case.
i saw him (probably him) on a tv show about immigrants. it's illegal to help them in anyway, even handing them water. so he'd just leave it lying around in jugs.
There are no easy solutions to the immigration debate. I see the burden mass illegal immigration places on the government everyday (schools, hospitals, etc), but I also see the flip side: they're people. And most of them just want a better life, and the majority of them work harder than any citizen I know. The thing is, the root of the problem lies not in America, but in Mexico. More work needs to be done to encourage people to stay there in pursuit of their dreams rather than persecuting/barring them from getting to America. It's all an unfortunate case of that wonderful free market "regulating" itself.
Its kind of sad, really, how difficult it is for people from mexico to legally imigrate to America. I think you had a good point, Mike, about how they should try and build the better life that they want where they are, or of course, come here legally.
The thing that I do find irritating is how some people expect you to cater to their language barrier when they aren't even supposed to be here. Like, how everything is bilingual now, or how you can barely understand what a someone is saying when you're at a drive thru, or in a store when you need customer service.
Call me crazy, but if I was going to move to Germany, I'd learn german first, so at least I wont stick out as much. So I can get a job, so I can live, go to school. I wouldn't expect all the Germans to break everything down in English for me.
"...you want to be truly unselfish? Love someone or die for someone. Those are the only good deeds you can perform without any hope of personal gain."
And how do you propose that adults who don't have the money to go to ESL classes, buy a TV, have access to the internet, purchase Rosetta Stone, etc, learn English before they leave Mexico?
More and more around here I see churches that are offering ESL classes to Hispanic and African immigrants, which I think is just fantastic. But that's something you do AFTER you get here, and only if you have the free time to do so, which you might not have if you're working 12 hours a day for under minimum wage and have a family to take care of once you get home.
There is hope, but not for us.
I do agree about the language thing, though., It's annoying as fuck here in SoCal. There are certain Best Buys and WalMarts I've been to where the signage is bilingual with Spanish as the main language. Packages are annoyingly bilingual so all the type is miniscule, legal forms are all bilingual... it's horrible. You can't expect people to want to learn English if you take away any motivation they may have to do so.
I have no problem with this is it's a Mexican restaurant, or Mexican grocer/florist/whatever. But mainstream stores shouldn't cater to it.
I'm sure it's not as bad in places further from the border, but it's a genuine annoyance here.
There are also people who are able to learn the language, but just don't give a shit and don't bother.
I wouldn't necessarily expect people to learn the language beforehand [though it would be nice], but once they've arrived in the country they plan on living in, they better do what they can to be able to converse in that country's language.
Well, hate to sound like a dick here, but where there's a will, there's a way. Find a bilingual person, find a book, visit la biblioteca? And the churches offering said courses, or anywhere, for that matter, is great. And I have a lot of respect for the people that make an effort to learn.
What I do have a problem with, is the people that make a fuss about things not being bilingual, and now it's to the point where my speaking English is a problem. And people are like, upset with me because I don't make an effort to learn more Spanish. And when I want to do something, I have to sort through all the Spanish to get to the English. I'm even further south than Mike, I could be in Mexico in less than two hours. It's pretty bad down here. You don't have to learn English. At all.
"...you want to be truly unselfish? Love someone or die for someone. Those are the only good deeds you can perform without any hope of personal gain."
nothing like finding a random jug of stagnant water in the middle of no where.
You can play the empathy game all day. Ultimately, these are not your parent's immigrants. Much of their earnings are sent back via remittance to families in Meh-hee-co, not redeposited into the economy (ours) that is providing their infrastructure and services.
I am not even going into the drug pipeline.
Growing up in Arizona I refused to learn Spanish for many of the same reasons HardCandy raised. I would muse: If I ever lived in a Spanish speaking country I'd learn their language.
Guess what? Fate tried to call my bluff and I was on assignment for a year in a Spanish-speaking country. What happened? Through immersion I was passable in about three months.
Three months. There are some immigrants in this country who spurn English for entire generations.
I work with a woman who has been in America for 30 years, and she pretends that she can't speak English. She just won't. She can understand it perfectly fine, because everyone speaks to her in English.
I say we send all of them back to Mexico!
A federal jury in June convicted Walt Staton of littering in the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge.
In August, a judge ordered Staton to pick up trash for 300 hours and also sentenced him to a year of unsupervised probation and banned him from the refuge for a year.
Staton is a member of the group No More Deaths, which supports humanitarian aid along the border.
He was scheduled to be re-sentenced Friday after he told the U.S. magistrate last month that he objected to the court's punishment on moral and legal grounds.
But Magistrate Jennifer Guerin denied Staton's motion to modify or suspend his sentence pending appeal and threatened to double his community service hours to 600 hours or give him 25 days in prison.
Guerin has scheduled a probation violation hearing for Dec. 21.
Wait, we have magistrates?
| adj | facebook | an american atheist| warmed and bound |
Fuck your laws. The last thing anyone needs is more laws. I can figure out right and wrong for myself. I don't need government doing that for me. If I feel like giving someone water, or putting a needle in my arm, or shooting myself in the head, or buying a hooker, or getting an abortion, or collecting guns, or putting my money in a bank in another country, or sagging my pants, I'll fuckin' do it. And I shouldn't have to worry about someone else's ideas about morality getting in my way, or putting me in jail. The fewer laws, the more freedom, the better. Your laws are oppressive. I work in this country as well as around the world. If the U.S. were the poor country, and someone told me I could skip the border to Canada and make eight times the money for my kids, you think I'd give a flying fuck about what Canada's laws say? I care about feeding my family and providing them with a better life.
A.W.
Did you seriously join a fan forum just to rant about America's legal system?
That's awesome.
| adj | facebook | an american atheist| warmed and bound |
Wow. That was...that was weird.
_eNdLeSs_MiKe_ wrote:
I'm number 2!!
Fuck your laws.
I tried, but it's illegal to copulate with paper in Los Angeles.
The last thing anyone needs is more laws.
Somalia disagrees!
I can figure out right and wrong for myself.
Which is another way of saying you just want to do whatever you want, whenever you want.
I don't need government doing that for me.
It keeps your wrong from interfering with my right.
If I feel like giving someone water, or putting a needle in my arm, or shooting myself in the head, or buying a hooker, or getting an abortion, or collecting guns, or putting my money in a bank in another country, or sagging my pants, I'll fuckin' do it.
And I shouldn't have to worry about someone else's ideas about morality getting in my way, or putting me in jail.
The world just doesn't understand you!
The fewer laws, the more freedom, the better.
...as defined by...you?
Your laws are oppressive.
I work in this country as well as around the world.
Surely there's a place other than America that would allow you the lifestyle you enjoy and the wages you desire.
If the U.S. were the poor country, and someone told me I could skip the border to Canada and make eight times the money for my kids, you think I'd give a flying fuck about what Canada's laws say?
Canada would give a fuck, surely. Once the weed wore off. And if it wasn't hockey season.
I care about feeding my family and providing them with a better life.
And you can do all of that, and do it legally.
I love you, Mike.
"...you want to be truly unselfish? Love someone or die for someone. Those are the only good deeds you can perform without any hope of personal gain."
Things like this make me want to change my stance on the quotey-no-talkie rule.
This is a tough issue. Personally, I think the only solution is investing in Mexico's economy, infrastructure, and government. But relaxing immigration laws is the worst possible solution. This is one of the reasons I hesitantly support NAFTA. Since manufacturing is leaving the U.S. anyway, I'd rather those jobs go to Mexico than China, where they actually still help us out. I really don't sympathize with the water-jug guy. 25 days in jail isn't anything for someone who has enough free time to drop jugs of water off in the desert. He probably wants to go to jail so he can whine about being a victim.
"[B]eing good is a fearful occupation; men strain at it and sometimes break in two." - Ray Bradbury
This is, of course, absurd, the idea that undocumented immigrants don't contribute to the national economy. Because of the low wages they're paid, their bosses accumulate more surplus value (google it) from them--lower wages, same product, same market price, higher profit margins. Undocumented immigrants produce the same products, for less pay. Feel free to consider that pay they're not getting (additional exploitation, if you will), them "redepositing into the economy."
Too, you act like it's a matter of "hop across the border and live off the Americans," which is patently not true. Most Central American and Mexican immigrants who find their way here take worse jobs and for less pay than they would have had before whatever crisis (usually US-influenced, but that's for another post) drove them out of their country. In Florida alone, in the last ten years, there have been ten successfully prosecuted cases of human slavery of farmworkers, which involved more than a thousand workers. If, because of national origin, you're okay with fucking slavery, then really this post was pointless.
Anyway, yeah. Basically, if the worst problem facing the economy was that people will go wherever, do whatever job they have to to feed their family, we'd be good as gold. But it's not. And let's not blame the folks trying to scrape by, mmkay?
Lawl.
This is, of course, absurd, the idea that undocumented immigrants don't contribute to the national economy. Because of the low wages they're paid, their bosses accumulate more surplus value (google it) from them--lower wages, same product, same market price, higher profit margins. Undocumented immigrants produce the same products, for less pay. Feel free to consider that pay they're not getting (additional exploitation, if you will), them "redepositing into the economy."
Too, you act like it's a matter of "hop across the border and live off the Americans," which is patently not true. Most Central American and Mexican immigrants who find their way here take worse jobs and for less pay than they would have had before whatever crisis (usually US-influenced, but that's for another post) drove them out of their country. In Florida alone, in the last ten years, there have been ten successfully prosecuted cases of human slavery of farmworkers, which involved more than a thousand workers. If, because of national origin, you're okay with fucking slavery, then really this post was pointless.
Anyway, yeah. Basically, if the worst problem facing the economy was that people will go wherever, do whatever job they have to to feed their family, we'd be good as gold. But it's not. And let's not blame the folks trying to scrape by, mmkay?
I wanna kisth you.
It's not easy having a good time.
Even smiling makes my face ache.
Ive always thought we should do a trade.
Send every shitbag welfare recipient who refuses to get a job and leeches off the system to Mexico in exchange for immigrants who want to work and be a productive member of society.
1) They face the same problem in Mexico. Central Americans are taking the lowest paying jobs from Mexican citizens for even lower wages. Those Mexican citizens who have less or no eduction are now forced to come to America to look for manual labor type jobs.
2) These employers of illegal are doing it for one sole reason. Greed. If there wern't jobs there would be no illegals. I know guys who are contractors that go to the Home Depot parking lot every day and pick up illegals to work. They do it because they can pay them less and treat them like shit.
3) Hard Candy, I dont know if your idea of investing in Mexico is the best idea, but I see your points. The Mexican govt doesn't really care because a good chunk of money made by illegals gets sent back to Mexico and put into their economy to the tune of billions of dollars.
Its a very complicated issue and Im not sure there is a solid answer to the problem.
Not to mention the entire situation with drug cartels. Unfortunately, it's more them that runs Mexico than it is the Mexican Government.
3) Hard Candy, I dont know if your idea of investing in Mexico is the best idea, but I see your points. The Mexican govt doesn't really care because a good chunk of money made by illegals gets sent back to Mexico and put into their economy to the tune of billions of dollars.
Its a very complicated issue and Im not sure there is a solid answer to the problem.
That wasn't me!
"...you want to be truly unselfish? Love someone or die for someone. Those are the only good deeds you can perform without any hope of personal gain."
3) Hard Candy, I dont know if your idea of investing in Mexico is the best idea, but I see your points. The Mexican govt doesn't really care because a good chunk of money made by illegals gets sent back to Mexico and put into their economy to the tune of billions of dollars.
Its a very complicated issue and Im not sure there is a solid answer to the problem.
That wasn't me!
That's just his pet name for me 
"[B]eing good is a fearful occupation; men strain at it and sometimes break in two." - Ray Bradbury
3) Hard Candy, I dont know if your idea of investing in Mexico is the best idea, but I see your points. The Mexican govt doesn't really care because a good chunk of money made by illegals gets sent back to Mexico and put into their economy to the tune of billions of dollars.
Its a very complicated issue and Im not sure there is a solid answer to the problem.
That wasn't me!
That's just his pet name for me :P
Aww my bad!
Whatever you feel about the US policy concerning immigration, we have laws for a reason, and if you break the law, you face the penalties.