We’re watching multiple meltdowns, mostly on the left, about the practice of separating children from their illegal immigrant parents (or the adults with them) at the southern border of the U.S.
I’ll be honest, I don’t know — nor frankly do I care — if our policy tracks with other Western countries. What I do know is that the people falling on the floor, kicking arms and legs up and down, and finally holding their breath and threatening to turn blue — including the UN — are not only wrong but disturbingly wrong. Their idea that children should always stay with those claiming to be their parents endangers children and adults, destroys the future of the children and might very well encourage kidnapping and child trafficking.
Like most other things the UN throws its weight behind, it’s not only wrong — it’s very very bad. As in evil. As in no one sane should support it.
Before I start in on this, I want to explain that I come from a country that throughout most of my childhood functioned in relation to Europe just as Mexico (or more accurately Central America) functions in relation to the U.S. Portugal was, if not a failed state, a profoundly and endemically poor state — and people who had mostly labor to sell longed to work in labor-poor (at the time) Europe for currencies that translated as enormously more valuable than the (then) Portuguese escudo.
Europe — which had no experience of Arabs yet — considered Portugal and Portuguese (not totally without cause) un-European and a bad trend and didn’t like importing a lot of unskilled/unlearned laborers. However, they were dying for laborers and for people who would do the unpalatable work and be paid under the table (and they were happy to avoid onerous labor regulations.
As far as I saw it play out, the process went like this: Father went out, illegally, sometimes for years, until he found the combination of circumstances/employer that allowed him to apply for a legal visa. This could take ten to fifteen years, with several “returns” when he was caught and deported. As soon as he was in possession of a legal visa, Father would send for children and wife, as legal immigrants. Sometimes the process would vary if father and mother had a trusted relative who would stay with the kids, while Father and Mother crossed over illegally.
Since most of the places these people emigrated to were Europe and specifically Germany and parts further North, the illegal crossing was extremely dangerous, as it had to happen twice. People often hired the equivalent of the Mexican coyotes to get them across the border, and getting raped/beaten/robbed or even killed was not unusual. Hence the father and very occasionally the mother risking themselves but leaving the children safe at home.
The people emigrating were often — yes — doing it literally for the children. I joke/say that we were all as poor as Job but didn’t know it. I remember the kids who emigrated with their parents coming back on vacations and looking “posh.” I had no other name for it. The truth is that they came back well nourished. I was of a class above them — or at least my parents were more stubborn. Some of my own family did this cycle — but even then they came back looking… slicker than I ever was as a kid.
Since most of the people who emigrated were at least somewhat poorer than us, I can see the inducement. In fact, while I disagree with many things, including our “minimum wage” and labor regulations that are a perverse incentive to hire illegals, and the cabal that sends “caravans” of migrants to our doorstep, I can’t fault the people doing this for their children. That is, the ones who are doing this for their children.
But consider my description above. If you’re immigrating from Central America, it isn’t any easier than it was immigrating to France from Portugal in the sixties. In fact, it might be more dangerous, since security at the border is far more lax and there are gangs of various descriptions operating between the two countries.
What kind of crazy person brings kids on this journey? What kind of crazy person brings their pregnant wife, as did one of the idiots on the “caravan”?
Sure, the people who are part of an internationally funded “caravan” where all their needs are met. Frankly, that alone was reason to separate them from their kids and never give the kids back. Those people are nothing more and nothing less than an organized invasion of our country. When you catch invaders you have the right to shoot them. Taking the kids away and giving them to foster families/detaining them is the least we can do to discourage more such incursions on our sovereignty. (No, the people of that “caravan” are not refugees in dire need. At best they’re economic migrants. At worst, they wish to take advantage of our Social Security and welfare services. If they were real refugees in dire need, they would stay in the first country they flee to, not proceed on to America. Note the people from my area who went to France were economic migrants. Though some might use politics as a cover.)
But let’s go with other waves of migration not personally funded by George Soros’ organizations. Again, I repeat to you: what kind of monster brings their kids on a long trek up most of a continent which, as far as I can tell, involves many of the females and a good number of the males getting raped/beaten/abused and includes a not-inconsiderable risk of being killed?
“But they don’t want to be separated from their children,” cry the leftist sheep. (Sometimes one wishes for a little Silence of the Sheep, I tell you.)
When I was a little kid, I was very shocked at the story of the judgement of Solomon. Partly I was shocked because some wit had put in a guard splitting a baby in two as an illustration. But the story itself is pretty shocking. If you slept through religious education, let me tell it: in the time of Solomon, the two wives of a man gave birth to two boys. You probably know enough of the Middle East by now to know being mother to a boy was status and safety for the mother. A few days later, one of the babies died. At which point both mothers claimed to be the mother of the living boy. The case was brought before King Solomon, who promptly ordered the baby to be split in half and half given to each of the mothers. Before the soldier could kill the baby, the real mother cried out, “No, no, give him whole to my rival.”
Having given birth twice, I assure you that’s not even a doubt. Given a choice between my kids being hurt or killed, or being brought up away from me, but in a decent life, I’d unhesitatingly have said “take him. Make him happy and productive.”
And yet, the illegal immigrants bringing kids in are doing the opposite. Whether the kids are their blood or not, they are dragging the kids across extremely perilous terrain, where the kids have a chance of getting hurt or severely killed.
Meanwhile, Americans who have never looked into the conditions of such a crossing try to get both parents and kids to stay because “poor children, being separated from their parents.”
The thing is, would good parents drag the child that distance? Before they were sure he or she could stay?
It’s never said, but I suspect in the Obama era bringing a child with you was a good way to get in. Heck, sending a child ahead of you was a good way of securing your visa to get in.
And yep, people did it, sending children as young as three or four alone, with a good chance of dying.
People here said, “Those poor desperate children, being sent ahead of those poor desperate parents.”
It was none of that. Cut the sentimentality and look at what the parents were and are doing: they were and are exposing the children to horrible risk in order to secure for themselves a ticket to greater prosperity and stability. In other words, they are using their children to blackmail softheaded liberals and the international community (but I repeat myself).
Would King Solomon give the kids back to such parents? Would our own agencies of child protection? Let me give you a hint: if you use your child by, say, having him beg on a street corner to create economic benefit for yourself, do you know what CPS would do? Yep, take the child away and give him/her to more responsible parents. Something, by the way, that both sides of the political spectrum would approve of here.
So why are the liberals screaming? Oh, many reasons, including their conviction that the children and their parents have the “right” to just come in as though our border didn’t exist. Amusingly, there’s also some mumbling about how bad our foster care/child services are, which I’m sure the left, praisers of all government power, wouldn’t admit to in any other circumstances.
Look, even responsible parents, who have no other choice (and I bet the percentage is tiny) and therefore choose to bring their kids with them, should not protest when the children are temporarily separated from them.
Why?
Have you heard of child trafficking? Apparently, in our society, there are several people who … uh… like underage girls and boys. The effectively open border to the South lends itself to child trafficking just as it lends itself to drug trafficking and adult trafficking and all other kinds of trafficking.
Immigrants arriving at the border are notoriously not just illegal but also truly “undocumented.” As in, they have little or no paperwork showing who they are or where they actually came from.
Given the mess that bureaucracies in the rest of the Americas are, even those who have paperwork don’t have paperwork that can be verified. Verifying someone’s identity or point of origin could take months.
And meanwhile, how do you know that adult who came in with the child is the child’s parent?
There are rumors up and down South and Central America and yes, even Mexico, of children abducted to either be someone’s passport into the U.S. or for more sinister purposes.
Is this something we want to encourage?
This softhead, in this article, is worse than wrong:
In a briefing this week on human rights issues in Egypt, the United States and Ethiopia, Ravina Shamdasani, spokeswoman for UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, said the office is “deeply concerned that the zero tolerance policy recently put in place along the U.S. southern border has led to people caught entering the country irregularly being subjected to criminal prosecution and having their children – including extremely young children– taken away from them as a result.”
“The practice of separating families amounts to arbitrary and unlawful interference in family life, and is a serious violation of the rights of the child,” Shamdasani said. “While the rights of children are generally held in high regard in the US, it is the only country in the world not to have ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. We encourage it to accede to the Convention and to fully respect the rights of all children.”
“The use of immigration detention and family separation as a deterrent runs counter to human rights standards and principles. The child’s best interest should always come first, including over migration management objectives or other administrative concerns. It is therefore of great concern that in the U.S. migration control appears to have been prioritized over the effective care and protection of migrant children.”
The spokeswoman added that “children should never be detained for reasons related to their own or their parents’ migration status” and it “always constitutes a child rights violation.”
Note that since both children and human rights were propaganda efforts aimed by the defunct USSR at free countries, it shouldn’t surprise me that the UN Human Rights Commission is composed of people coming from countries where women and other minorities have absolutely no rights.
It does, however, surprise me that no one else realizes the evil these people are spouting and proposing.
By not using detention and family separation as a deterrent, we’re encouraging more parents to risk their children on what one hopes will be a fruitless journey. Worse, we’re encouraging the kidnapping and using of strangers’ children for economic gain. We are also happily supporting and encouraging the ability of children traffickers to carry kidnapped and bought children across our border for a horrible fate.
As I said, as with everything the UN endorses, it’s not just a bad idea. It’s evil.
And as for the crying liberals calling Ivanka names for tweeting a sweet picture with her son, while “children and parents” are separated at the border: be gone, you foul beings.
You also fail the judgment of Solomon. Just like the bad parents (and others) using their children as shields to allow them to break our border security, you wish to use these children to score political points, regardless of what it does to the children themselves.
You’d rather parents were incentivized to hurt their children in their attempt at economic promotion; you’d rather children were kidnapped for this use; you’d rather encourage child sex trafficking, than admit that Trump has a point and that your dream of open borders is insane.
Be gone or at least stay silent. Decent people are talking. Your eructation adds nothing but a foul smell.
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