Bummer: Immigration Judges Only Have Seven Minutes To Make A Decision

That’s probably about 5 more than is really needed. “Are you in the United States illegally? Yes? Goodbye”. But the Washington Post is Really Concerned about this “miscarriage of justice”, that illegals aren’t getting their fair time in court, that it takes, per the headline on the front page, about the same time as taking a shower to decide

His courtroom rarely came to order, and by now the judge had decided it was a waste of time to try. Interpreters explained legalese in three languages. Adults squeezed into crowded seats while children crouched in the center aisle. A court official stood near the doorway and worried about the building’s fire code. “Por favor,” he said in halting Spanish, as another family tried to enter. “No mas.”

Judge Lawrence Burman sat quietly in front of the chaos, adjusting his reading glasses and sifting through a stack of files on his bench. He had 26 cases listed on his morning docket in Arlington Immigration Court — 26 decisions to make before lunchtime about the complicated future of undocumented immigrants in the United States.

“The rocket docket” is what lawyers had begun calling this schedule, warning clients that their future could be decided in the time it took to walk to the restroom and back.

In Burman’s courtroom, the urgent number on this January morning was smaller but just as daunting. He had an average of seven minutes per case.

Just a random thought: if we’d stop coddling illegals, if we stop them at the border, if we’d disincentivize them from coming here illegally or overstaying their visas (like make it really painful, criminally and civilly, for companies to hire them, schools to host them, etc.), stop giving them money and social services, the work load might be a whole lot less. Instead, the Political and Chattering Class do all they can to incent them to come illegally or overstay their visas.

Undocumented immigrants try to prove they deserve to remain in America by bringing their versions of America with them to court: wives carrying family photo albums; babies wrapped in American flag blankets; pastors, bosses, neighbors and community soccer teams, all of whom fill the courthouse and sometimes kneel in the hallways to chant or to pray.

“Somos Americanos,” one group said. We are Americans.

Regardless of illegality, there are some we would love to be Americans. We are a generous nation. Showing up for court being unable to speak English probably isn’t the best way to demonstrate one wants to be part of the American experience.

Of course, the WP trots out sob stories, like a family separated from the husband, who’s in jail for getting caught while driving drunk on Thanksgiving, then being kept in jail since. They have a son born in the USA. The parents are illegals, though. Yes, this is tough. But, the parents made a choice to do this. They can take the child with them. The child is welcome to come back as a natural born citizen. Choices have consequences.

Oh, and the sob story includes the father have been involved in two separate property hit and runs. Because he had no license or insurance, and was worried about being deported. BTW, why has his wife not been arrested, since she is an illegal, too?

Ed20748 in the comments wraps it all up:

Being an immigration judge seems easy enough or at least it should be. Does the individual have the legal right to stay here? If yes he stays, if no he’s deported. What’s so difficult about that?

It should be.

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5 Responses to “Bummer: Immigration Judges Only Have Seven Minutes To Make A Decision”

  1. gitarcarver says:

    If you read the article, while being an immigration court, this was not a hearing to see whether the person would be deported. It was a “master docket” hearing.

    The article does highlight one of the problems – resources. If the author is correct, there are 1000 people deported every day in this country. At that rate it would take over 30 years to deport every illegal alien. So do we throw more money at the problem? More judges? More clerks? More courtrooms? More court support personnel?

    I don’t have answers for that but I am firmly convinced the often repeated idea of “deport them all” is simplistic and is at this time logistically impossible.

    If we want to expand the Federal government even more, it may work, but I am generally against such expansion.

    Finally, it should be noted that the judge the article profiled is the same judge that ruled on the Romeikes’ case. The Romeikes are parents from Germany who sought asylum in the US because of persecution in Germany for home schooling their kids. The Obama administration wanted to have the Romeikes returned to Germany but Judge Lawrence Burman ruled they could stay in the US.

    One wonders if that hearing took more than 7 minutes.

  2. […] buddy William Teach over at the Pirate’s Cove has a post highlighting an article by the Washington Post focusing on immigration […]

  3. Jeffery says:

    Perhaps if we put employers and CEOs in prison for paying undocumented workers… Large corporate interests such as farms, abattoirs and hotels know full well they are hiring undocumented workers but the practice is tolerated, if not encouraged, to keep wages low. Small businesses such as small farms, builders, restaurants and landscapers hire them for the same reasons.

    Isn’t hiring an undocumented alien a crime? Why don’t we pursue these crimes – because these crimes keep wages low.

  4. gitarcarver says:

    Isn’t hiring an undocumented alien a crime? Why don’t we pursue these crimes – because these crimes keep wages low.

    We do pursue these crimes, Jeffery. Perhaps we should pursue them more which many people would support.

    However, the left continually says “go after the companies” (like you just did) because companies are evil. The right says “go after the company that hires illegals and go after the illegal alien as well.”

    The left doesn’t support prosecuting the illegal alien.

    I also suspect that you have not hired many people because if you did, you would know that the government database on which companies rely is notoriously screwed up.

    If a company knowingly hires an illegal alien, they and the alien should be prosecuted.

  5. ReFrozen_Spring_Gumballs says:

    And, we have an uphill battle Teach when our non-judge Supreme Court pro-latino anti-american justice Sotamayor believes in La Raza. This proves what was rumored during her interviews:
    http://washington.cbslocal.com/2014/02/04/sotomayor-labeling-illegal-immigrants-criminals-is-insulting/

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