Mental Illness and Immigration

         “Sir, I not – cannot go home. If I die, I die America”  Xiu Ping Jiang, a Chinese immigrant, uttered these words at her first deportation hearing in Pompano Beach, Florida, after a judge threatened to deport her to her native country, from which she fled in 1995.  Jiang, who suffers from an undisclosed, severe mental illness, has endured the rigors of the American immigration system, which has seen vast changes in the past nine years. After a year and a half, Jiang was eventually released on bail to the care of her sister, yet her ordeal was far from over. Her prolonged detainment had only exacerbated her mental illness, making her even more unfit to stand trial and defend herself against a legal system that has systematically ignored her condition. Jiang was eventually granted asylum by a Florida judge, perhaps  due to the press coverage and public outrage regarding the case.

Yet, her struggle illustrates an immigration system marred by ignorance, neglect and utter disregard for the legal considerations of the mentally ill. By not providing counsel to the mentally ill facing deportation, by not providing clear criteria and tests for competency, and by not maintaining due process in cases involving the mentally ill, the American legal system has caused the already convoluted web of immigration law to become even more entangled by contradictory case law and statutes – thus underscoring the immense need for a consistent, comprehensive legal framework that addresses the multifaceted issues surrounding the immigration and deportation of the mentally ill. 

         Using the precedent set in Dusky v. United States, the criminal standard for adjudicative competence could be used in deportation cases. This does not necessitate that all criminal due process rights be extended to those facing deportation, as, although the Supreme Court recognized deportation’s substantial effect on an individual in Bridges v. Wixon, deportation trials are nevertheless vastly different from criminal trials, and should be treated as such. Yet, in the realm of competency, a clear standard of mental fitness should be implemented in deportation cases in order to not only protect the due process of an individual, but also to facilitate the efficiency of the justice system.

Once an individual is determined to be incompetent or mentally ill, should they have the right to treatment? In Bowring v. Godwin the 4^th District Court of the United States determined that, under the 8^th Amendment, prisoners had explicit rights to treatment for mental conditions while imprisoned. Many United States officials and agents of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Bureau would cite the overwhelming costs that providing treatment to all detainees that are potentially facing deportation. However, as can be seen in the iconic case of Ms. Jiang, the cost of not medicating a detainee – thus not only impeding the legal process but also endangering his or her life – is far more costly than any financial burden the state may incur.

            Resolving the issues currently plaguing the treatment of the mentally ill in immigration cases is undeniably a daunting task. However, its importance in forming a fair approach to mental illness in deportation proceedings is undeniable. Simply because a mentally ill individual is faced with deportation is not reason enough to deny them the rights of due process, competency hearings, and counsel that have been granted to United States citizens grappling with mental illness. Perhaps, with legal reform in the areas of counsel, competency, and treatment, cases such as that of Ms. Jiang can be avoided.

Don't Ask, Don't Remind Me

Members of the Royal Navy Marching at the Manchester Pride Parade

            Last Thursday, U.S. District Judge Virginia Phillips deemed that the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy is unconstitutional as it violates the 1^st and 5^th Amendment rights of gay and lesbian servicemembers. Since the act became law in 1993 under the Clinton administration, over 13,000 members of various branches of the military have been discharged. As demand for soldiers grew during the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the average number of annually discharged soldiers fell considerably, although the policy is still purported to have cost the United States 363 million dollars since its inception. Judge Phillip’s ruling comes in the heat of a long-standing debate between the opponents and proponents of DADT, a debate that has reached a head in recent months.

            Contrastingly, Great Britain celebrated the 10-year anniversary of the bill that allowed gay and lesbian soldiers to serve openly in the military last July, a move that has been reported to have increased unit cohesion and morale, rather than degrade it. Other countries that allow gays to serve openly in the military include Israel, France, Canada, Australia, and the Netherlands, which ended the ban on openly gay military members in 1974. Yes, 1974. An estimated 12,000 soldiers, 10% of The Netherlands’ military forces, are gay.

            What I don’t understand is why, even though so many other countries, and indeed, our military allies, have allowed gays to serve openly in the military for so long (relatively speaking), the United States has been so reluctant to do the same. Granted, the United States is much more socially conservative than most of the other industrialized nations in the world, but with so much evidence countering DADT’s effectiveness, and, indeed, point, its hard to believe that social prejudice is still precluding the bill’s overturn. Commodore R. W. Gates of the Royal Australian Navy stated that, following the allowance of gays to serve openly in the military in Australia in the 1990s, there was little, if any, change to the infrastructure or morale of the military: “There was no great peak...where people walked out, and there was no great dip in recruiting. It really was a non-event.” If America, too, could make the overturn of DADT a non-event, perhaps it would limit the deleterious effects that people like John McCain so fervently insist will ensue if DADT is overturned. 


Update: On another note, check out Diversity Matters' blog about coming out. 

Identity and the Public Intellectual

The public intellectual is changing. Notions of what a public intellectual is, who a public intellectual should be, and why a public intellectual should exist have radically changed since public intellectuals began coming down from their ivory towers and entering the blogosphere, or, as I like to call it, the “plastic dungeon.” But, as Stephen Mack posits in “The ‘Decline’ of Public Intellectuals?” – “our notions of the public intellectual need to focus less on who or what a public intellectual is…Instead, we need to be more concerned with the work public intellectuals must do, irrespective of who happens to be doing it.” As the realm of public intellectuals becomes increasingly diversified, Andrew Sullivan has crafted a distinctive niche for himself. Besides being openly gay which is, unfortunately, an already rare quality for those in the public sphere, he is openly Catholic and conservative, which are, unfortunately or fortunately, rare qualities for those in the gay sphere.

I say fortunately because it is these two broadly defined factions, those who are religious and those who are conservative, that the most fervent opponents of homosexuals (be it objecting to equal rights for gays and lesbians or condemning homosexuality based on religious or moral beliefs) often espouse themselves. But, I say unfortunately because it is regrettable that there has been so little reconciliation between the gay movement and conservative politics. As conservative politics have become more and more religiously based in America, social issues, like gay marriage, have become increasingly divisive; those who would identify themselves as liberal or conservative in terms of fiscal and international issues may not always have corresponding liberal or conservative social views. This contrast is what makes the British-born Sullivan so unique as a public intellectual, as he has managed to not only reconcile his homosexuality with his Catholic identity, but also his conservative politics. (He addresses this contrast in one of his latest books )

Harvard-educated Sullivan got his start as an intern at The New Republic, where he would later become an associate editor and eventually acting editor. Sullivan often faced controversy during his turn as acting editor of The New Republic, mostly because his conservative viewpoints clashed with the magazine’s traditionally liberal slant.  Sullivan favors gay marriage, but clashes with many other liberal viewpoints, and, in his words, “the gay establishment,” on topics such as hate crime laws, which he opposes based on their “chilling effect on free speech” and their “undermining of the notion of equality under the law,” his opposition of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, and his support of the War on Terror (a viewpoint that has since radically changed)

Sullivan doesn’t apologize for these contrasting views, nor should he have to. As Stephen Mack states,  “…if public intellectuals have any role to play in a democracy – and they do – it’s simply to keep the pot boiling.”  On the contrary, he is, in many ways, an exemplar of a public intellectual’s ability to separate their religious and political perspectives. Granted, his sexual orientation may have distanced him from his Catholic identity, but he still maintains the importance of religion in his life. During an interview on Real Time with Bill Maher, not only did Sullivan identify himself as a "religious secularist", but he also criticized Maher about his viewpoints of religion and religious people: "To dismiss all religious people based on the actions of the most literalist dumb ones, I think is bigotry." Sullivan avoids viewing all political and social issues through what Stephen Mack calls,   “the prism of theology,” and as a public intellectual, makes his work universally accessible, regardless of religion. As Stephen Mack states, it is important for anyone, and especially public intellectuals due to their sphere of influence, “to ground [public arguments] – as much as possible – in reason and evidence, things that are accessible to people of different religions, or no religion at all.” Sullivan, excluding the occasional impassioned rant, has managed to ground his arguments, even concerning religiously charged issues, such as gay marriage, in cogent reasoning and analysis. As Richard Bernstein writes in his New York Times review of Sullivan’s book, Virtually Normal: An Argument About Homosexuality, “…Mr. Sullivan presents a model of civil discourse. His voice is a voice of reason, tranquility and analytical precision on a subject that commonly degenerates into a raucous shouting match between competing moralisms. He has a knack for enabling nonhomosexuals to put themselves inside his consciousness, just as he manages to occupy the minds of those who disagree with him.”

            This “tranquility” and “analytical precision” make Sullivan’s arguments stand out among the “raucous shouting match[es]”that so often pervade current political and social discourse, especially with the increased popularity of blogs, like Sullivan’s, which have arguably much less accountability than print publications, and news and opinion programs that show little regard for decorum, such as The O’Reilly Factor. This sentiment is echoed by Peter Steinfels of the New York Times in his analysis of a speech made by Sullivan about his sexual and catholic identities at the University of Notre Dame “But what remains indisputable is that in a society where moral disputes quickly degenerate into polarizing denunciations -- for example, Act Up brands as murderers those who disagree with its view of homosexuality, and Operation Rescue does the same to those who disagree with its view of abortion -- Mr. Sullivan demonstrated that respectful reasoning could still be powerful”

          Sullivan’s ability, therefore, to carve an identity for himself not only as a conservative, Catholic gay man, but also one that approaches his religious identity and role as a public intellectual with a secular wariness, makes him unique in the public intellectual sphere. Perhaps it is the complex contradictions of his identity that allow him to accomplish this – gay and Catholic, gay and republican – but, regardless of the factors, Andrew Sullivan has managed to skillfully tread the precarious line of religion and political and social commentary, acting as, ironically enough, an example of a religious individual that has not allowed his religion to unduly influence his work as a public intellectual. 




Update: Check out Diversity Matters' take on Andrew Sullivan here!

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