Since Grant asked, here’s a long-winded reply.
The Obama administration has a publicity campaign at work in the Central American countries to dissuade children from trying to come to the U.S. Making that journey is deadly and dangerous. Obama’s PSA TV ads are probably available on YouTube. I’ve seen one. They’re chilling but not that effective, because the danger of living in Honduras in particular outweighs the risks of trying to escape.
The reason they are allowed in is because of Bush-era law that says refugees can’t be deported. Dan read the law and said it didn’t apply to Mexico, and that’s true, but these kids aren’t from Mexico. Believe it or not, there’s a big difference between Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Colombia, Ecuador, Puerto Rico, etc. I’ve lived in several of those countries and visited them all – not as a tourist – and, believe me, they’re all distinct, not just a brown mass as some people want to believe.
What the anti-immigrant people want to do – out of fear, hatred, and ignorance – is to send them back. Or – as Dan suggested – send down the Marines to kill the gangs.
If it were that easy, we would have wiped out the gangs in Chicago and Los Angeles a long time ago. Sending in the Marines isn’t an answer and often causes more problems than it solves. Similarly, sending in weapons to those we approve of often backfires, with the weaponry in the hands of the enemy we were trying to fight.
What a Christian country would do, obviously, would be welcome, shelter, feed, clothe, and heal the needy. That’s what many people I know have done, at personal sacrifice. They’ve gone to the border with supplies or they have gone to these countries and helped at the source.
So much of this problem is our own fault to begin with. U.S. business interests have manipulated and abused Central and South American countries for decades. Ronald Reagan allowed death squads to massacre Guatemalan peasants. United Fruit Company virtually stole the land and the resources from Central America. It had happened more recently in Mexico, with Monsanto and seed companies with their patented seed wiping out the Mexican peasants’ ability raise their own corn for the traditional staple of tortillas and driven them from rural areas into the cities, where there aren’t enough jobs.
Similarly, the U.S. market for drugs fuels the drug wars in Mexico as it has done in Colombia for decades. We not only buy the drugs, U.S. gun manufacturers supply almost 90% of the weapons confiscated in the drug wars, so we are largely responsible for the violence that erupts out of these wars, too. Breaking Bad isn’t much of an exaggeration.
If you really want to read about U.S. foreign intervention, read about the overthrow of Chile’s democratically elected government in the 1970s. We took out Allende simply for political reasons (and killed American citizens down there in the process, as has just been reported), installed the dictator Pinochet, and torture and executions continued.
So, Grant, what would I do? First of all, what is the problem? What is the fear? Children are coming to our borders – starving and threatened with execution – and asking for asylum. What would YOU do? It’s a no-brainer as far as I’m concerned.
The Obama administration has a publicity campaign at work in the Central American countries to dissuade children from trying to come to the U.S. Making that journey is deadly and dangerous. Obama’s PSA TV ads are probably available on YouTube. I’ve seen one. They’re chilling but not that effective, because the danger of living in Honduras in particular outweighs the risks of trying to escape.
The reason they are allowed in is because of Bush-era law that says refugees can’t be deported. Dan read the law and said it didn’t apply to Mexico, and that’s true, but these kids aren’t from Mexico. Believe it or not, there’s a big difference between Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Colombia, Ecuador, Puerto Rico, etc. I’ve lived in several of those countries and visited them all – not as a tourist – and, believe me, they’re all distinct, not just a brown mass as some people want to believe.
What the anti-immigrant people want to do – out of fear, hatred, and ignorance – is to send them back. Or – as Dan suggested – send down the Marines to kill the gangs.
If it were that easy, we would have wiped out the gangs in Chicago and Los Angeles a long time ago. Sending in the Marines isn’t an answer and often causes more problems than it solves. Similarly, sending in weapons to those we approve of often backfires, with the weaponry in the hands of the enemy we were trying to fight.
What a Christian country would do, obviously, would be welcome, shelter, feed, clothe, and heal the needy. That’s what many people I know have done, at personal sacrifice. They’ve gone to the border with supplies or they have gone to these countries and helped at the source.
So much of this problem is our own fault to begin with. U.S. business interests have manipulated and abused Central and South American countries for decades. Ronald Reagan allowed death squads to massacre Guatemalan peasants. United Fruit Company virtually stole the land and the resources from Central America. It had happened more recently in Mexico, with Monsanto and seed companies with their patented seed wiping out the Mexican peasants’ ability raise their own corn for the traditional staple of tortillas and driven them from rural areas into the cities, where there aren’t enough jobs.
Similarly, the U.S. market for drugs fuels the drug wars in Mexico as it has done in Colombia for decades. We not only buy the drugs, U.S. gun manufacturers supply almost 90% of the weapons confiscated in the drug wars, so we are largely responsible for the violence that erupts out of these wars, too. Breaking Bad isn’t much of an exaggeration.
If you really want to read about U.S. foreign intervention, read about the overthrow of Chile’s democratically elected government in the 1970s. We took out Allende simply for political reasons (and killed American citizens down there in the process, as has just been reported), installed the dictator Pinochet, and torture and executions continued.
So, Grant, what would I do? First of all, what is the problem? What is the fear? Children are coming to our borders – starving and threatened with execution – and asking for asylum. What would YOU do? It’s a no-brainer as far as I’m concerned.