This NYT article today provides a great example of the difficulties that migrant workers and other foreigners face when dealing with the US judicial system. Erik Camayd-Freixas is an experienced court interpreter who wrote a 14-page essay detailing
that the immigrant defendants whose words he translated, most of them villagers from Guatemala, did not fully understand the criminal charges they were facing or the rights most of them had waived... Most of the Guatemalans could not read or write, he said. Most did not understand that they were in criminal court.
“The questions they asked showed they did not understand what was going on,” Professor Camayd-Freixas said in the interview. “The great majority were under the impression they were there because of being illegal in the country, not because of Social Security fraud.”
One of the pillars of our legal system is the idea that individuals will be held responsible for their actions regardless of their knowledge of the law. And that makes complete sense: it would be too easy, otherwise, to claim that you didn't know something was against the law. There are exceptions, including for children, the mentally retarded, and the insane (which is a legal term, not a medical one). But what if your culture, your paradigm of reality prevents you from fully comprehending what's going on? I am not in any way equating cultural differences with insanity, mental handicap or immaturity, mind you. Nor do I have a ready answer to this important question.
In addition to the barriers of language, literacy, and ignorance of green cards, work permits, and social security numbers, many immigrants face tremendous cultural barriers to success in the legal system. Concepts that Americans (and other Westerners) take for granted are simply irrelevant, including the rule of law, the adversarial legal system, the concept of factual evidence, citizenship and residency permits... Those concepts only make sense if you have the benefit of thousands of years of Western cultural history, from Ancient Greece onward. The "Lou Dobbses" of the immigration debate focus on people's undocumented entry into the United States (eevn though most "illegals" entered legally but overstayed their visas), arguiing that "illegals" committed a "crime" and should therefore face the consequences, no matter how impractical it would be to deport millions of people or the nefarious impact this would have on our already fragile economy. Sancrosanct borders are not a universal feature, in fact I would argue that for most of its history, mankind has lived in blissful ignorance of national sovereignty. Millions of people live that way today, particularly in post-colonial Africa where international boundaries were largely determined by white men drinking scotch in a faraway foggy capital.
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