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]

300 Illegal Immigrant Children, Families Flown from Texas to San Diego: ... http://t.co/4zRYStIA7G (http://t.co/4zRYStIA7G)/s/ukHB #OiP (https://twitter.com/search?q=%23OiP&src=hash) #tcot (https://twitter.com/search?q=%23tcot&src=hash) pic.twitter.com/1KATAOZntw (http://t.co/1KATAOZntw)

— Boo (@P4tR10tBoo) June 22, 2014 (https://twitter.com/P4tR10tBoo/statuses/480858630648913920)

Obama administration officials said the government is planning to open new facilities to detain and house the influx of migrants and ease the burden on detention centers in the Rio Grande Valley where horrifying conditions have been reported. Administration officials also said the government would send more immigration judges and lawyers to the region to bolster enforcement and removal proceedings. “We are surging our resources to increase our capacity to detain,” Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas told reporters on a conference call, emphasizing the administration’s aim was to make conditions more “humane.”

[...]

Dara Lind, who’s been all over the story, notes that “the current system was built for 8,000 kids – not 50,000.”

-- Sully's Dish (http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2014/06/23/babysitting-on-the-border/)