Letters to the Editor
This letter is associated with the following article:
-
Justice vs. policy
Whether or not it's just to deport people who've immigrated illegally when they come forth to report crimes is beside the point: it's bad policy.
The problem here isn't whether to punish one person or two when a person who has illegally entered the country is abused. It's whether we should punish one person (the abuser) or zero -- abuse vistims will not step forward if they know they'll be punished.
This law symbolically threatens to punish a class of criminal. In practice, this law won't result in that class of ciminal being punished; it'll result in a different class of criminal being let off.