This entire episode with the refugee children of Central America is a sad embarrassment and a stain on America's honor. Who have we become that we have so little compassion left, so much bile and fear in our hearts that we would consider putting troops on our border to repeal Children Fleeing Kidnapping and Murder?
It makes me wonder, yes - I'm gonna go Godwin - if we would have seen the exact same sets of "Illegal is a Crime" sign holders screaming at children who had just escaped the Death Camps of the Nazis.
Even when we know we're sending them back into a Hell-Hole where they're likely to be exploited and murder, still we hear...
"Go back and get a Visa! Do it legally!"
To Kids!
It's even worse that we have actual Governors and the Speaker of the House chanting along with the Haters.. "Send in the National Guard".
Specifically this is what the Speaker "Demands" of the President before the Hosue will Lift a Finger.
http://www.speaker.gov/...
A Crisis of the President’s Own Making
“Along our southern border we’ve got a true humanitarian crisis underway, with children caught in the middle. Unfortunately, it's a crisis of the president’s own making – his actions gave false hope to children and their families that if they enter the country illegally they would be allowed to stay.
“Our priorities are clear: take care of these children, return them safely…to their home countries, to their own families, and secure the border.
“I sent a letter to the president last month laying out some specific actions that he should take to address the crisis, including sending in the National Guard. The National Guard is uniquely qualified to address these types of humanitarian crises, and utilizing their expertise would free up border agents to focus on their job of securing the border.
The National Guard is
what? Since when? How are Troops going to help with the process of administrating, housing and determining the proper disposition for these kids? What they need are more facilities to handle the human overflow, more immigration judges to determine what should happen more quickly, and more
Planes to have people returned if that needs to be done. But what they don't need is this big blustery
false macho muscle-flexing bullcrap show of force - to
intimidate children from running away from terror and toward the one place they think
might treat them fairly and decently - America.
But unfortunately weren't not that country, not anymore.
From Booehner's Letter to the President including his list of "Demands" (pdf).
http://www.speaker.gov/...
The steps Speaker Boehner outlines in the letter include:
- Deploying the National Guard to our southern border in order to both deal with the needs of these children, and relieve the border patrol;
- Beginning discussions with Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras to ensure that apprehended migrants can be promptly and efficiently returned to their home countries; and
- Deploying additional personnel to assist in the processing and removal of these aliens.
...
The lax enforcement at Mexico’s borders gives a free pass to immigrants heading north.
...
We can no longer tolerate the conditions threatening these children, nor continue to accept the risks of a porous southern border. We ask that you take the above actions immediately to address this problem and work with the Congress to develop a long term strategy to secure our borders and ensure the integrity of our immigration laws.
There already is a long term strategy in hand, one that was already passed by the Senate sitting on Boehner's desk gathering cobwebs. And the fact is that NO Previous President or Administration has done a
better job at Border Enforcement than this one with absolute record setting amounts of unlawful entrants
detained and deported.
What John Boehner claims is going on, is not what's actually happening.
First it's not like the President "Invited" any of these kids because his action to defer action for "Dreamers" only applied to kids who were already here, not to those who've just arrived.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
The sharp increase of teenagers and preteens showing up at the U.S.-Mexico border from Central America has prompted conservatives to blame the White House for its 2012 Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals policy, which exempts many undocumented immigrants brought here as children from deportation for a renewable two-year period. U.S. Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio) called on President Barack Obama Friday to send National Guard troops to deal with the crisis. Conservatives have also blasted the Latin-American media, accusing reporters of spreading the false idea that newly arrived immigrants will benefit from DACA. In fact, only immigrants who were living in the U.S. before the policy was enacted may apply.
If these minors have the impression that they'll be allowed to "stay" unlike those who cross without papers from Mexico or Canada, it's not because of Obama - it's because of the logistics of returning them.
The White House has repeatedly tried to dispel the idea that Central American minors who make it to the United States can stay here. But in practice, many do just that.Unlike Mexican minors who cross the border illegally, unaccompanied minors from Central America are not immediately repatriated. Instead, they are often given a notice to appear in immigration court and released to the custody of a family member residing in the United States.
Secondly if you want to blame an American President for the mess that is now Central-American - that President's name isn't "Obama".
The United States, ironically enough, has played a major role in creating the messes in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. Under the pretext of containing communism during the Cold War, the U.S. government ushered in decades of violent misrule and civil conflict in Guatemala by helping to overthrow the elected government of Jacobo Arbenz in 1954. Under similar justifications, the U.S. poured billions of dollars into the Salvadoran and Honduran militaries, even as they committed atrocities against civilians.
Decades worth of Chickens. Now Roosting. On our Border.
Third, it's not like sending National Guard to the border hasn't been attempted before. It was done in 2006 under President Bush and then Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano.
http://www.foxnews.com/...
PHOENIX – Gov. Janet Napolitano on Wednesday ordered more National Guardsmen posted at the Mexican border to help stop illegal immigrants and curb related crimes.
National Guard troops have worked at the border since 1988, but Napolitano signed an order authorizing commanders to station an unspecified number of additional soldiers there to help federal agents.
Once the funding is approved, the troops will monitor crossing points, assist with cargo inspection and operate surveillance cameras, according to the order.
"They are not there to militarize the border," the governor said. "We are not at war with Mexico."
About 170 National Guardsmen are already posted at the nation's busiest illegal entry point, where they assist with communications, fence construction and anti-drug efforts.
And in 2010.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
President Obama will deploy 1,200 National Guard troops and request an extra $500 million to secure the Mexican border, his administration said Tuesday, a move dismissed by Republicans as insufficient to win their cooperation on an overhaul of the nation's immigration system.
By reinforcing the 340 Guard members already monitoring border crossings and analyzing intelligence, the initiative echoes 2006's Operation Jump Start, in which President George W. Bush devoted 6,000 guardsmen to a two-year commitment in support of the Border Patrol.
But it hasn't been without it's problems.
http://www.click2houston.com/...
LAREDO, Texas - A dispute between the Army and the National Guard is jeopardizing the security role the Guard has played along the U.S.-Mexico border since 2006, a newspaper reported Sunday.
...
The current dispute comes from the Army facing budget cuts that could strip it of a fleet of Kiowa helicopters. The Army wants to replace the Kiowas with about 100 Lakota helicopters. Those aircraft could come from the National Guard, leaving that unit with little air capacity of its own.
If the National Guard loses 100 of its helicopters, Smith told the newspaper "we'd have to commit almost all the rest of our (14) Lakotas to that mission, or stop it, neither one being preferable."
The Guard has been able to help, when sent in both 2006 and 2010, with capturing those trying to entire without proper paperwork, but right now interdiction isn't the problem. It's Housing and Processing the kids who are pretty much
surrendering themselves to us.
Catching Them is no problem it all, it's what to do with them once they been caught because there are just So. Many!
http://www.rawstory.com/...
- More than 52,000 unaccompanied minors from Central America have been caught trying to cross the U.S.-Mexico border since October, twice as many as a year earlier. Thousands more have been detained with parents or other adults.
- Without government action, the Obama administration projects more than 150,000 unaccompanied children under the age of 18 could be fleeing their Central American homelands for the United States next year.
And it's not as if "Nothing is being done".. .
TEMPORARY FIXES
- Immigrant children are being held temporarily at three military bases: Joint Base San Antonio in Lackland, Texas; Naval Base Ventura County in California; and Fort Sill in Oklahoma. The facilities have a combined capacity of nearly 3,000 beds. The average stay is less than 35 days.
- Children are subsequently placed with a relative or sponsor and are instructed to go through immigration proceedings, during which they face a possible deportation order.
- To house mothers traveling with children, federal officials have opened a temporary detention center for 700 people in Artesia, New Mexico, at a federal law enforcement training center.
ACTIONS SO FAR
- To speed up deportations, the Justice Department is reassigning immigration judges to cases involving newly arrived minors and they are prioritizing those cases ahead of non-detained adults without children.
- To discourage parents from sending children to the United States, the State Department has launched an ad campaign in Central America and Mexico to try to dispel rumors that the children will able to stay.
- The State Department is working with the governments of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras to understand the source of the problem as well as with Mexico to interrupt smuggling routes.
And it's not like the Obama Administration doesn't have it's own practical proposals on the table.
OBAMA’S PROPOSALS
- President Barack Obama has asked Congress for $3.7 billion in emergency funds to pay for temporary detention centers, increased border security and additional immigration court judges.
- The White House wants Congress to change a 2008 anti-trafficking law requiring lengthy deportation proceedings for children arriving from countries that do not share a border with the United States. The change would allow authorities to quickly deport newly arrived children, as takes place with children from Mexico and Canada. The majority of Mexican children are turned back within a day of their arrival, said U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Gil Kerlikowske.
The sad part here is that most of Beohner's proposals - once he's done with the phony muscle-flexing - are exactly the same as the President's. If only Beohner would stop
pandering the to xenophobic neanderthals that dominate his party, something worthwhile might get done.
But I don't think that's going to happen, and these kids are going to suffer for it for the foreseeable future. This man is a incompetent who can't lose his job as Speaker soon enough to protect the nation from the collateral damage he has wrought, and will continue to reign down not just on the American people, but now also these kids.
Vyan