Thursday, July 17, 2014

 

Polititical Mayhem Thursday: On The Border

The news lately has been largely focus on the arrival of thousands of undocumented children who have crossed the Southern border.  As followers of the blog know, I am not adverse to a consistent and relatively strict border policy; I think that open immigration keeps wage down.

However, this is a different scenario.  Children from Central America are the ones crossing the border, rather than adults.  It appears that they have been sent by their families to the United States, in some (but certainly not all) instances to avoid the violence of their home countries. 

What do you think the United States' response should be?

Comments:
Yes. We keep them but...

My idea is a bit extreme but I believe it could work. Yet, I do not have all the info needed.

When these parents send their children here:
- Do they relinquish their parental rights?
- Are they assuming the children will be united with family members who are currently in the U.S.?
- Do they expect to travel here and retrieve their children?

If the answer to my first question is yes and the answers to the other two are no, then I wish these children would be immediately placed with couples (obviously vetted by the appropriate agencies) who are wanting to adopt. Skip the foster care system. Aside from the handful of those who do it for the right reasons, the system as a whole scares the hell out of me. There is too much abuse and I would be apprehensive to throw these kids into that mix.

There are so many couples and single men and women who want to be parents. This wouldn't work for all but might be a God-send for some.

My two cents...
MMM


 
I honestly wish I could read an honest account of what is really happening in Guatemala and other Central American countries that is causing parents to pay goo- goobs of money to Coyotes to get their children across the US border.

I would also like to know what happened to all those damned border fences we apparently have built and paid for during the Bush years. They don't seem to be very effective.

MMM lays out a reasonable case. #3 scares me as retrieval seems like a way they would get into the country and never go home.

sigh....
 
Apparently most of these children do not speak Spanish and are from indigenous communities that have been subject to many depredations by the governments as well as opponents of the government in Central America. So there may well be a human rights issue that needs to be addressed.

Border enforcement is not an issue as these children are walking up to border posts and turning themselves over to the Border Patrol and other government agents. They appear to be asylum seekers.

If we want to stop this influx, we need to work on the governments and anti-government forces to resolve conflicts without harming the children or subjecting them to such extreme poverty and lack of services that escape is their only alternative.
 
Compassion must drive our nation's response to the most pressing issue, that of innocent children arriving at our southern doorstep.

This response, of course, is not mutually exclusive of working on the root causes that resulted in their arriving here in the first place. But we have an immediate need to which we must respond with mercy and a longer term need to which we should respond in a more cerebral, policy-focused manner.
 
Pay, bribe, blackmail Mexico to shut their southern border down. Problem solved.

Lee
 
These two articles were recommended reading on the topic. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/13/opinion/sunday/a-refugee-crisis-not-an-immigration-crisis.html?smid=fb-share

and

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/118675/child-migrants-guatemala-are-fleeing-more-just-gang-violence
 
Post a Comment



<< Home

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?

#