Immigration Debate and Illegal Minors

[hardblue.livejournal.com]

Over the last two years, a crisis has developed on our Southern border: a children’s migration of increasing scale, in which thousands of unaccompanied minors from Central America have made the dangerous journey to the U.S.-Mexico border, many apparently motivated by the belief that some sort of legal status awaits them. [...]

The young migrants are not, obviously, deeply familiar with the ins and outs of U.S. politics; they’re following smuggler-spread rumors, for the most part. But the rumors exist for a reason: They’re fueled by a sense that “if you want to get into the U.S., now is the time,” a scholar of Latin America told The Washington Post. And the Obama White House has conceded that a “misperception of U.S. immigration policy” is playing a role — one significant enough to dispatch Vice President Joe Biden to Central America to clarify that we are not actually opening our borders to any minor who reaches them.

-- Ross Douthat at The New York Times

Although Obama has been fairly heavyhanded in deportations, there has been some more shows of compassion toward children immigrants. And we are in the middle of another round of debate over immigration enforcement and amnesty.

Comments

[hardblue.livejournal.com]

I think they are kind of like massive homeless shelters,
but very clean.

[angelcerv25.livejournal.com]

I read more about them - they feed the kids three times a day, and there are phone banks where kids try to reach family. Some are coming with phone numbers already in their pockets to try to call family in the states. Oh and they give them a shower and change of clothes when they are brought in.

What alarmed me about the conditions in which they are being held wasn't so much about cleanliness or availability of resources as much as the punitive nature of it. The warehouse doesn't look like a group home, it looks like jail. there were images in the slideshow I saw of preteen girls in holding cells. They were even labeled "female juvenile holding cell."They looked so scared and confused. I'm not sure we need to be locking them up in jail like that. I was in juvy several times as a kid, but at least I deserved it.

[hardblue.livejournal.com]

I know what you mean, but from the perspective of the law,
they are criminals, right? In a sense, they are trespassers, I guess.

[angelcerv25.livejournal.com]

I guess yes....they did technically break the law. I question if this is the right ethical response, however.

Many laws themselves I questions as well. That's an entirely different thread though.

[angelcerv25.livejournal.com]

When and how and why did compassion become so unpopular?

[hardblue.livejournal.com]

I suppose the answer is when it became expensive.
Tax dollars. The comeback is that it is easy to be
compassionate on someone else's dollar.

[angelcerv25.livejournal.com]

Do we always need money to be compassionate?

[hardblue.livejournal.com]

How else do we get better accommodations
for all those kids? Everything costs money,
except for sentiment, but sentiment alone
cannot be very comforting.

Of course, it is not all about money for some issues,
such as questions relating to discrimination, racial or sexual
or otherwise, in which case it is about opening up
people's understanding, though this can sometimes
be harder to get than money.

[angelcerv25.livejournal.com]

Something about what's going on down there just cuts me deep. Like it made me cry the other day.