The first thing is to pick the right spokesman, and Cecilia Munoz, President Obama's White House czar of immigration, is clearly not that. She uses phrases like, "We are taking this very, very seriously" and speaks in legaleese and sounds like the right wing's send up of a fuzzy minded liberal bureaucratic. "Well, we don't want to deny any of those children who qualify as asylum seekers, so we have to respect the process and the law."
Then she is followed by some Congressman from Arizona saying, "Look, the way to stop this is to send a planeload of these illegal kids back to Guatemala, another to Brazil, and another to Nicaragua, three days after they cross the US border, and that'll stop this flood."
As is true for so many Republicans, the answers are always simple. 9/11? Just load up the troops and blow Sadam Hussein out of Iraq, that'll learn 'em.
But there is a certain truth in what he is saying: When we are confronted with a tidal wave of children, we cannot proceed with business as usual. Our rules were never meant to deal with this. If we have to send back some deserving children with the "undeserving" then we will, just to get the contagion under control.
The fact is, they are all deserving. We are making distinctions which are game playing. No kid deserves to be raised in squalor and desperation. Trouble is, we cannot just adopt every desperate kid. We had foundling hospitals in this country once, but we had to devise better solutions than that when the numbers overwhelmed them.
But this problem has clearly caught President Obama unprepared and he needs to think about how to communicate with his countrymen about the problem and its solutions. And don't sound too concerned about sending home the twelve kids who, by law, should really be granted asylum, when you've got 10,000 kids to deal with. Even in medicine, you have to do the greatest good for the greatest number: Quarantine sacrifices people, so the general population is protected. If you have to send back a dozen deserving kids so 10,000 more kids don't wind up on their way to our shores, so be it.
One thing which really inflames white Americans is the idea that people will come here and "freeload," live off welfare, not work, simply ask to be given a handout. Children are always "freeloading" even white children. You have to support them until they can become independent. So, in a sense, it is a very clever idea to send children, if you are a desperate parent in Bolivia. Nobody can really blame the kids. Your heart has to go out to them.
But if we throw open our doors to the world's children, what are we taking on?
Sound tough. Sound reasonable. Do not sound like a lawyer.
Mad Dog,
ReplyDeleteOne more reason why it stinks to be President. Another no win, how do you like your poison shaken or stirred scenario. Offer asylum to thousands of desperately needy children and tether the country, especially the border states, to potentially unsustainable financial and social costs or round up these kids, who didn't travel in first class luxury to get here, and ship them back to their parents-if we can find them. Those parents who are guilty of what-wanting to free their children from a life we wouldn't wish on our dogs. The saddest book I've read is " I Wish For You a Beautiful Life" which is a collection of letters from unwed mothers, in an Asian country, to the babies they are giving up for adoption outside the country. The book relays, with heartbreaking clarity, the agony that often accompanies relinquishing your child-it isn't an act of abandonment but an act of love. So why so much lack of empathy from many of our fellow countrymen-elected and otherwise. They speak of shipping these kids back so cavalierly-like we're returning a bad batch of bananas. Surprisingly, Glenn Beck has been outspokenly kind and generous regarding these kids and is reportedly sending bus loads of supplies to where the children are being held. Me and Glenn Beck being of like mind-what is the world coming to...
Maud
Maud,
ReplyDeleteGail Collins says it's 54,000 children since last Fall.
And if we did load these kids on a plane, would Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador even allow the plane to land? And if it landed and the kids were shoved off, what then? Republican simplicity.
John Boehner says "Call out the National Guard!"
As Gail Collins and President Obama have pointed out--these kids are throwing themselves at the first American uniform they see. They are not evading detection. They are seeking it.
It's the old dilemma of what you do with the foundling.
In Dr. Zhivago, as his train passes through a burnt out village, a woman runs up to the passing car and holds out a baby and the people inside instinctively pull the baby into the train, and then the mother. The baby is frozen dead. They tell the woman, who shrugs, "Wasn't my baby," she says. But, of course, she's not unhappy that baby helped her get on the train out of that killing ground.
Even if it's just kids being sent away by parents who are trying to save them, what do we do to respond?
What do other countries do?
Mad Dog