Posted on 07/06/2014 9:17:15 AM PDT by Kaslin
An undocumented foreigner crossed the Rio Grande near Hidalgo, Texas, the other day. He had spent three weeks traveling from Honduras, and he was carrying only one thing with him: a birth certificate. He was hoping to find relatives in San Antonio or Maryland. His name is Alejandro, and he's 8 years old.
His story and photo appeared in The New York Times, providing a stark reminder that illegal immigration often involves harmless individuals who are guilty of nothing. From the angry reaction to the surge of unaccompanied minors and mothers with young children crossing the border in recent weeks, you might just forget that.
Recently Murrieta, Calif., Mayor Alan Long denounced the transfer of undocumented immigrants to a local facility, and a city councilman worried that, as The Desert Sun reported, "the immigrant families would bring disease and crime." Between 200 and 300 protesters formed a human wall to block buses carrying the foreigners. That's not a big turnout for a city of more than 100,000.
Fox News fed the fears with a lurid story on its website quoting unnamed sources who said children housed at a Texas Air Force base had measles, chicken pox, scabies, not to mention that "lice would just be climbing down their hair."
Of course, lice are not unique to these youngsters; the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that "6 million to 12 million infestations occur each year in the United States among children 3 to 11 years of age." But accusing foreigners of bringing disease and filth is a favorite tactic of nativists.
Much of the reaction stems from motives that are anything but pure. One protester in Murrieta told CNN, "I just wish America would be America again because it's not, and it's not just pointed to the Hispanics."
But there has indeed been a tide of arrivals that badly strain the government's ability to handle them. Republicans blame it on President Barack Obama. Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott accused him of "policies that entice children to navigate more than a thousand miles away from home, going through the most treacherous conditions, facing things like human trafficking and sexual assault." By this, he presumably had in mind the administration's deferral of deportation of some children brought here illegally by their parents ("Dreamers").
One thing critics ignore is the federal law that expanded protections for children who may be victims of human trafficking -- signed by President George W. Bush. "Longer processing times created by the 2008 act mean longer wait times for the minors in immigration detention facilities," writes Cato Institute analyst Alex Nowrasteh. The result has been more kids than places to house them.
U.S. law calls for immediate deportation of children from Mexico who are apprehended at the border -- but forbids it for minors from other countries. Their fate is ultimately up to immigration judges.
The claim that Obama's action to help Dreamers unleashed the flood is plausible but unproven. It's entirely possible that smugglers try to drum up business by telling parents that kids who make it here will be allowed to stay. But presidents can hardly design policies based on how they may be distorted by self-seeking felons.
Experts say other factors predominate. The Migration Policy Institute says kids are coming "to escape violence, abuse, persecution, trafficking and economic deprivation." Caitlin Sanderson, program director at the Esperanza Immigrant Rights Project in Los Angeles, told The Washington Post her staff has talked to some 600 unaccompanied children about why they came and said, "I have not come upon one intake form that says, 'because of a rumor that says I can stay here.'"
Of the five countries with the highest murder rates in the world, four are in Central America. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees found that nearly half of the children interviewed said they had been harmed or threatened by criminals.
The flow of foreigners would be more predictable if our immigration laws provided more avenues for those who want to come here. If you block off legal avenues for desperate people, they will find illegal ones. Even a huge expansion in the border enforcement has failed to change that elemental reality.
The surge of kids is a logistical and humanitarian challenge, but not a dangerous wave of pestilential predators and vermin. In pondering immigration policy, it's sometimes useful to keep in mind that we are, after all, talking about human beings.
Steve Chapman???? I’ve read his articles for years and never took him for a bleeding heart liberal.. His facts about violence in Central American countries don’t square with other figures released this week.
Be perfect for a squadron of a 10s
why aren’t their parents in their homecountries arrested for child endangerment?
Hey Steve, I dare you, I double dare you to spend the night in the same holding area with these people.
Share a pillow with one.
And if we let these "children" in then why not let every child in the world who is downtrodden into the country?
I can't believe that Townhall allowed this trash to be published on their website. Nativists?
How about patriots who care about the sovereignty of the United States and who care about the future of OUR OWN CHILDREN?
They are coming in from Mexico -- so they should be immediately deported.
And who says that the birth certificate that they are carrying is actually theirs.
Brought to our border, by our government.
An American citizen sat with his parents in the family car at an intersection red light in Dallas, Texas, at noon time, one day, a few years ago. An drunk unlicensed illegal alien driving a high speed, crashed his car into the family car killing the boy and his father immediately. The boy’s mother died in the flames as desperate people on the curb tried to rescue her. The boy lost his relatives that day and his own life. His name was Xavier and he was 3 years old.
His story and photo did not appear in The New York Times
When an 8 year old won’t go home for dinner, and can game the US government, it is a sign America is toast. It will never stop now.
If you look at the top 6 countries for homicide rate in the world, 4 of them are in Central America. Honduras, Belize, El Salvador, and Guatemala.
http://www.unodc.org/gsh/en/data.html
His "impoverished" parents paid coyotes $8000 to take him to the border.
Alejandro can find his relatives real easy---check the EITC forms---to get more money he's been falsely claimed on the forms for years an years as one of 12 children they left behind.
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HARRY SAYS ITS OK TO FALSIFY EITC FORMS: Senator Harry Reid Supports Giving Illegal Aliens Tax Credits for Kids Not Even Living in US
Townhall.com | October 30, 2013 | Mike Shedlock / FR Posted by Kaslin
US Rep. Sam Johnson, R-Texas, wants to end the practice of giving illegal immigrants tax credits for kids, but U.S. Sen.
Harry Reid, D-Nev., won’t let the House-approved measure H.R. 556 through the Senate. "The System is Working Fine" says Senator Harry Reid, even though the Joint Committee on Taxation calculates that enactment of H.R. 556 would save taxpayers $24.4 billion over the next decade.
The House of Representatives repeatedly has passed an IRS bill that could save U.S. taxpayers up to $24.4 billion over the next 10 years — but Harry Reid’s Democratic Senate will not hear it.
The Refundable Child Tax Credit Eligibility Verification Reform Act, or H.R. 556, would require tax filers to provide Social Security numbers to claim child tax credits.
Currently, the IRS allows undocumented residents to collect the $1,000 credits for dependents not even living in the country.
Watchdog reported that illegal immigrants received $4.2 billion from the tax agency in just one year. “My bill (targets) billions of dollars in waste, fraud and abuse. Instead of hitting up taxpayers for even more taxes, Washington needs to go after these billions of dollars,” said Rep. Johnson, R-Texas.
Though the GOP-controlled House has passed Johnson’s measure three times, Senate Majority Leader Reid, D-Nev., refuses to allow the bill to come up for a vote in his chamber. “The IRS has been doling out the credit to tax filers claiming children who do not even live in the country,” Johnson charged.
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Welcome to the Obama culture where falsifying US govt documents for govt freebies is a form of "American assimilation."
>>The surge of kids is a logistical and humanitarian challenge, but not a dangerous wave of pestilential predators and vermin. In pondering immigration policy, it’s sometimes useful to keep in mind that we are, after all, talking about human beings.
OK. So, let’s make sure that the human traffickers who sent them never get their hands on them again.
Destroy their paperwork from their country of origin, give them English names, teach them English by total immersion, adopt them into American families to be raised as Americans and make it illegal to even feed them a taco until they are 21 (26 if they stay on their parent’s health care until then). Ban all Latin American flags from being displayed in the US. Send anyone who wants to fly one back to the country where it comes from.
Let’s end the corruption that is Latin America by taking all their children and raising them as Americans and then lets take the whole hemisphere next generation because there aren’t any more of them left.
There Steve, does that fix your “humanitarian crisis”?
According to Obama, these are the best Central America has to offer. Wouldn’t it be more compassionate to leave them in Central America so they can fix things? The truly compassionate act here would be to send three or four million of our Democrats to colonize Central America. That would fix them.
Undocumented foreigner, same as illegal alien
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No its not..
My mother never came to this country but she was a foreigner, to Americans although not undocumented..
Would she be an alien also ??? Probably not, she never left her own country..
For legal documents she had her British birth certificate and her New Zealand marriage certificate plus a sleuth of hospital documents etc..
Did she have a document giving he permission to visit or live in America ??? No she never needed any...
let’s look at the legal term illegal alien...
Any foreigner coming into America is an ALIEN...
Either that foreigner has PRIOR permission to enter our sovereign country and is a REGISTERED ALIEN with an ALIEN REGISTRATION CARD (or green card)
or he is an ILLEGAL ALIEN who has just entered our country WITHOUT PRIOR PERMISSION...thumbing his nose at our immigration laws..
No illegal alien can say they love America and have deliberately broken and ignored our immigration laws...
Those laws are in place for a reason..
we need to know who wants to come in and we need to know they are fit to be here and are disease free and not criminals or planning to harm us...
ILLEGAL ALIENS are not screened beforehand...
REAL IMMIGRANTS are willing to pay the fees and get all the screenings and wait to come here...
HEY !!! I understood and did it the right way ...
but illegal aliens refuse to go through the immigration system because they will not be accepted as immigrants...
Either they have disease or a have a criminal background or they will be dependent on our government for their living, the last something that only proven refugees can claim...
So we have this current huge group of illegal aliens being dubbed by our treasonous government as “refugees”...
that means there is no limit to the public services that would be extended to them for an endless amount of time..
Well, Steve, I’m all for giving these children a good meal and any urgently-needed medical attention, then kindly and humanely shipping every last one back to his country of origin that very day.
And if their parents are already here illegally, send them back too. Then the family will be together.
“He was hoping to find relatives in San Antonio or Maryland. His name is Alejandro, and he’s 8 years old.”
Oh boy. A “free” puppy! And he’s hoping to find a home.
Adopt them out, if there are takers; otherwise, ship `em home.
I’ve already raised my own kids and, like it or not, am `raising’ children of people I don’t even know, and now I’m paying for their medical care as well.
This writer can play his pathetic, sad song somewhere else. We’re not the western hemisphere’s dumping ground.
It’s Steve Chapman. What more needs to be said?
.........Kick ‘em the hell out!
What parent would send an 8 year old with a Coyote? Parents should be charged....if my kid go 2 miles I worry about him.
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