I’m glad a major protest against separating immigrant children from their parents is in the offing, but June 30? That’s twelve days after it was announced. Children are being ripped from parents and caged at the rate of over forty per day.
Innocence is the key concept. Seeking asylum continues to be completely legal under US law, despite the bandying-about of the term illegal immigrants by even fact-based media outlets. The stated purpose of the new policies–reducing throughput at ports of entry and separating children from parents–is to reduce the number of asylum seekers, as reported by CSNBC on June 18.
Maybe we could achieve that result via programs that reduce gang violence in Mexico and Central America? That would require creative strategy, investment, and legislation, and after all, we aren’t involved. Now where did I put my stash?
During the Obama era, adult asylum seekers wore ankle bracelets while their applications were reviewed, which was controversial at the time. Trump makes even America’s punishments Greater.
One idiotic administration mouthpiece chastised parents for bringing children on this dangerous journey. Dangerous journey, dangerous country, how to decide? One woman’s oldest son was killed, then her second was paralyzed. She brought her third here, and lost him to the US custom service. Trifecta!
Apparently, the US strategy is to compete with MS-13 to be the worst choice for a happy life. You think your children will be safer in the US than in Honduras? The Trump Administration will take the challenge!
I heard Dianne Feinstein compare this situation to our interning Japanese-Americans during WWII. Yes shameful, yes wrong, but the families were together.
How about slavery, in which family members of all ages were frequently sold separately? That is, they had about as many rights as batteries do today. Slavery defenders cited the same God-loves-government passage from the Bible that Jeff Sessions did recently. Confusingly, this facile passage doesn’t seem to induce Bible-thumpers to respect much else of what government does.
My favorite is “Indian School.” Starting in the late 1800s, we took native American children from their families, gave them “Christian” names, and sent them to boarding school to learn “American” language and traditions. Some were institutionalized or placed with “American” families. None was returned to their real families. This was outlawed in 2007.
Punch line: They were in America first! By over 10,000 years!
During the same period, America often forced unwed mothers to give up their babies, since they are obviously unfit mothers. This is the only policy that affected white families, though at the time, one example of race would be “Irish.”
In 2018, now, today, 44% of youth in US juvenile incarceration facilities are African-American, even though only 16% of all youth are.
This immigration policy appears to be a continuation of our long tradition of oppression and cruelty. As the Bible says, …there is no new thing under the sun.
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Dr. Seuss caught onto America First v. children long ago. Please checkout the political cartoon embedded in this Snopes report:
Culminating Triad 