一、被拒之门外的移民
奥巴马政府曾向大约6000名曾在二战中与美国人并肩作战，并在数十年后获得美国国籍的菲律宾老兵释放了善意。2016年，当这些老兵已经八九十岁高龄时，政府同意他们的菲律宾亲戚在完成正常审批手续之前先行前往美国。
It was a kind gesture to some 6,000 Filipinos who, in their youth, had fought with American armed forces in World War II and had been granted U.S. citizenship decades later. In 2016, when the veterans were in their 80s and 90s, the Obama administration agreed to allow some of their relatives in the Philippines to come to the United States before they completed the long wait for formal admission.
去年八月份，特朗普政府叫停了该项计划。
Last August, the Trump administration announced it was ending the program.
无故终止“菲律宾老兵项目”体现出特朗普政府正在不遗余力地破坏美国移民体系。通过行政命令、强力执法和纯粹的胁迫，白宫已经对传统移民政策进行了全方位的破坏，合法和非法的移民都受到了波及。
This gratuitous swipe at a group of old veterans is a measure of how meticulously the Trump administration has pursued the destruction of immigration in America. Through administrative orders, strict enforcement and mere threat, the White House has attacked virtually every aspect of immigration, legal and illegal.
移民政策研究所今年夏天发布了一份报告，其中列出了特朗普治下庞大的联邦部门制定的400多项针对移民的政策。
A report this summer from the Migration Policy Institute outlined over 400 actions on immigration that had been enacted by a sprawling array of federal departments in the Trump era.
这些政策的效果很显著，Brookings 学会William H. Frey的一项分析显示，对比2016和2019年，美国的年净移民量近乎腰斩，降到60万人，这是自上世纪八十年代以来的最低水平（新冠疫情爆发以来，这一数字更是急速下降）。
The effects are clear. Between 2016 and 2019, annual net immigration into the United States fell by almost half, to about 600,000 people per year — a level not seen since the 1980s — according to an analysis by William H. Frey of the Brookings Institution. (Since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, that number has certainly decreased even more.)
Frey表示，2016年至2019年间的移民数量剧减清晰体现了特朗普政府出台的限制性移民政策的后果，这些政策包括对特定几个国家的移民限制令，对难民施加更严苛的限制，以及通过移民办公室恐吓性的政策向潜在的移民团体施压。
The 2016-19 drop “is clearly a result of Trump’s restrictive immigration measures,”Mr. Frey said, “including immigrant bans from selected countries, greater limits on refugees, and generating fear among other potential immigrant groups over this administration’s unwelcoming policies.”
二、留下的权利
除了采取像终止“菲律宾老兵项目”这样隐蔽的行动外，特朗普政府也在有条不紊地推进着其他政策的执行，尽管这些政策备受批评。
Along with more obscure actions, like ending that Filipino veterans program, the administration has been methodical in ensuring that its most widely criticized efforts succeed.
在2018年的春季，当成千上万的中美洲家庭穿过美国的南部边境线寻求政治庇护时，美国司法部下令逮捕了所有没有准入许可的移民。这一行动强行拆散了数百个家庭，甚至把正在襁褓中的婴儿从母亲怀中夺走。
In the spring of 2018, as thousands of Central American families crossed the southern U.S. border to seek asylum, the Justice Department ordered the arrest of anyone entering the country without authorization. This forced the separation of hundreds of families, even the removal of infants from nursing mothers.
为了防止人们带着自己的家人偷越边境，当时的司法部长Jeff Sessions称：“我们需要将孩子们带走”。无论年纪大小。
To scare people from bringing their families over the border, Jeff Sessions, the attorney general at the time, said, “We need to take away children.” It made no difference how young they were.
政府的行动所波及的范围已经远远广于特朗普在竞选时所表述的对象，他当时承诺会禁止来自墨西哥的“强奸犯”入境，创造一个彻底杜绝穆斯林入境的美国，并将这个国家从那些具有杀人倾向的非法移民手中挽救下来。
The scope of the administration’s actions has been far broader than Mr. Trump implied it would be when he campaigned. He promised to bar “rapists” from Mexico, create “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States” and save America from homicidal undocumented immigrants.
但上任后，他不仅盯着罪犯与恐怖分子，那些离开祖国寻求庇护的人，那些试图养育家庭的非法移民，和那些追寻美国梦的外国人也成了他的眼中钉。
Once in office, it was not just criminals and terrorists who drew his attention. It was also people seeking protection from the horrors of their home countries, undocumented immigrants trying to support their families and foreigners striving for a better life in the United States.
最高法院批准了对来自13个国家的严格准入限制之后，特朗普终于实现了他的“禁穆令”。白宫解释这是因为这些国家的安全状况堪忧，然而受到美国国内官员和联合国严格保护的难民计划也被一并大大缩减了。前总统奥巴马任期的最后一年中，美国的难民接纳上限为11万人，而在当前的财年中，这个数字只有15000人。
Mr. Trump eventually achieved a version of his Muslim ban when the Supreme Court approved of severe restrictions on entry for residents of 13 countries, the majority of them with mostly Muslim populations. While the White House said one reason the ban was needed was lax security in those countries, it also has drastically scaled back the refugee program, which involves stringent vetting by American and United Nations officials. In Barack Obama’s last year as president, the ceiling for refugee admissions was 110,000. For the current fiscal year, it’s 15,000.
尽管特朗普承诺将保护美国人远离那些具有杀人倾向的移民。但移民海关执法局（ICE）的记录显示，与他上任前相比，除去非法移民，无案底移民被ICE逮捕的概率是以前的两倍。在ICE被贴上“赶人先锋”的标签后，奥巴马曾要求ICE将执法重点放在那些有犯罪前科的非法移民身上。而就在特朗普的就职典礼进行数周后，他就全面放开了ICE的手脚，取消了奥巴马之前的要求，使得所有的非法移民都成为了ICE的重点关注对象。ICE还发现，由于许多城市并不配合ICE新的严苛政策，总统的授权使得他们几乎可以仅凭驱逐令就可以逮捕任何人。
Despite Mr. Trump’s promises to protect Americans from killer immigrants, Immigration and Customs Enforcement is now more than twice as likely to pick up immigrants with no criminal record beyond immigration violations, compared with the number before he took office. After being labeled the “deporter in chief,” Mr. Obama ordered ICE to concentrate enforcement on unauthorized immigrants who had committed crimes. Within weeks of his own inauguration, Mr. Trump eliminated any deportation priorities and made all undocumented immigrants fair game for ICE. With many cities resisting ICE’s more stringent demands for cooperation, the agency has also found it easier to just pick up anyone with an existing deportation warrant.
“我明白当你是一个做了坏事的罪犯时，你不该在这个国家留下来。但是，当你按时纳税，并为人们提供工作时，你理应有权留下”投票给特朗普的Helen Beristain女士说。她的丈夫，印第安纳州Granger市的一家餐厅老板，在2017年被遣送回墨西哥。
“I understand when you’re a criminal and you do bad things, you shouldn’t be in the country,” Helen Beristain, who voted for Mr. Trump, said when her husband, Roberto, owner of a restaurant in Granger, Ind., was ordered to be deported to Mexico in March 2017 after 20 years in the United States. But, she said, when “you support and you help and you pay taxes and you give jobs to people, you should be able to stay.”
然而，这样的权利一去不还。
Not anymore.
三、移民国家的理想
特朗普曾承诺在总统任期内打击非法移民，但同时他也急切地希望一并减少合法移民的数量。
While Mr. Trump promised a crackdown on illegal immigration during his presidency, he has also eagerly pursued reductions in authorized immigration.
出于新冠疫情的原因，美国政府曾扬言要强制百分七十的美国公务员和移民管理局的雇员休假。但据部分雇员透露，真正的问题来自限制性的移民政策延误了大量的签证申请，这导致了用以维持机构正常运转的手续费收入大大降低。
The administration had threatened to furlough 70 percent of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services employees, blaming the pandemic, but some of those employees said the real problem was restrictive policies and delays in visa applications that have sharply reduced revenue from the processing fees that fund the agency.
同时，联邦政府宣布，将会采取行动来阻止那些被认为可能会占据公共福利的人获得永久居留权，因而永久居留权的申请有所减少。根据移民政策研究所出示的数据，在最近获得绿卡的人中，百分之六十九的人至少有一项特征会因此被反复盘问。
At the same time, applications for permanent residency have declined since the administration announced it would adopt a rule that would prevent those considered likely to receive public benefits from becoming permanent residents. Among recent green-card recipients, 69 percent had at least one of the characteristics that would be weighed,according to the Migration Policy Institute.
国土安全部代理副秘书长Ken Cuccinelli近日宣布，由于更加严格的限制条件，适用于技术工人的H-1B签证发放量将削减三分之一。有评论家认为这将使美国公司将更多工作机会转移到国外。
Ken Cuccinelli, the acting deputy secretary of homeland security, recently announced that the number of H-1B visas for skilled workers would be cut by one-third because of tighter criteria for who can get them. Critics said this would make American companies shift more work abroad.
特朗普也终止了那些来自塞尔瓦多，海地，苏丹和其他地区的近四十万人的“临时保护地位”。这些人在经受了战乱或是自然灾害后凭借着这一政策的庇护在美国合法居住工作了十余年。
Mr. Trump also has ended “temporary protected status” for 400,000 people from El Salvador, Haiti, Sudan and elsewhere who have legally lived and worked in the United States for decades after being provided a haven from war or natural disaster.
特朗普政府虽对美国移民系统造成了破坏，但《纽约时报》分析，若民主党明年能够掌权，那么及时止损并不难。但是回转其他的措施将会变得异常困难。移民政策研究所的政策分析师Sarah Pierce说：“过去四年里发生的改变太大，新政府不太可能在其未来四年甚至是八年的执政期内扭转所有的局面。”
If Democrats were to take control of Congress and the White House next year, it would be fairly simple to undo some of the damage Mr. Trump has done to the nation’s immigration system. But rolling back other measures will be difficult. “There’s so much change that has happened in the last four years, there’s no way a new administration could reverse things in four or even eight years,” said Sarah Pierce, a policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute.
此外，如果取消特朗普政府的边境限制政策，可能导致寻求庇护者的数量在短时间内陡增，那么新政府将会面临政治上的挑战。民主党是否会反转公共负担规则，任由自己被公众谴责过度偏袒移民？
Beyond that, there could be political challenges to undoing President Trump’s clamps on the border if that would invite new caravans of asylum seekers. Would Democrats reverse the public charge rule and leave themselves open to accusations of coddling newcomers?
在撤销了总统对移民系统残酷而毫无意义的改变之后，新政府需要做出很多艰难的抉择来重新管理边境，再次评估工作技能和家庭关系在移民审核方面的权重，为那些数以百万计的非法移民工人及家庭找到一条获取公民身份的途径，并使他们得到劳动法的保障。
After undoing the cruelest and most pointless of the president’s changes to the immigration system, a new administration would need to make difficult decisions about controlling the border, assessing the role that skills and family ties should play in admitting immigrants, enforcing employment laws for unauthorized immigrants and creating a pathway to citizenship for millions of those workers and their families.
结语
在新冠疫情和经济危机的阴影下，移民问题看起来并不是一件需要首先考虑的问题。然而，特朗普政府一系列的残忍仇外、充满种族主义的移民政策给美国“移民国家”的理念打上了一个问号。我们失落地发现，曾根植于美利坚的自由主义人文传统正在保守派日趋极化的眼光中蒙尘，此刻，割裂比联结看起来更像是正常秩序的一部分。而那些在失常的政治秩序中苦苦挣扎的晦暗面孔，他们比任何时候，都需要人们的注视。
原文链接：
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/10/opinion/sunday/trump-immigration-child-separations.html
编译：高语阳 王兆隆 储志阳
排版：储志阳
