As hundreds and thousands of unaccompanied immigrant children, refugees from repressive regimes, gang violence and other forms of hardship, stream across the border between Mexico and the United States, we find ourselves at a loss to know what to do with them. The government has almost run out of money and resources to house these refugees, nor is the situation of the immigrants at all pleasant. Housed in unlivable conditions, returned to their countries of origin to face certain death or horrifying persecution, these children have no good options, and we can neither in good conscience send them back to the countries they come from nor with any hope of getting reelected in heavily Republican districts allow them to stay in the US.
Despite the seeming hopelessness of the situation, the answer to the problem of these child refugees stares us in the face, if we can only employ the kind of creativity that Ayn Rand employed in writing her let's say novels. We must not fear these child immigrants. We must not send them back to the conditions that caused them to flee to our land. We must eat them.
I already hear many voices raised in alarm (in my head, where I often hear voices): "Good Lord! Those children come from Hispanic countries! They must taste horribly spicy!" Not so, my prone-to-indigestion friends. Many of these children come from Central America, where the cuisine lacks any trace of heat. The meat of children from such regions could most profitably be sent to grace the tables of the Midwest, where we prefer a blander fare, while those youngsters raised in regions where chile-laced dishes reign supreme, from whose flesh we might expect more incendiary spice, would be more suitable for West Coast palates.
The fact that these children are refugees does present a very real practical obstacle to this proposal. The hard life of a refugee—always on the move, often walking hundreds of miles, in constant danger—tends to produce tough, stringy meat. Luckily, ranchers have known the solution for hundreds of years and have applied it to cattle and other livestock: feedlots, where weeks of inaction and plentiful high-calorie food prior to slaughter produce tender well-marbled meat. In such feedlots for immigrant children, televisions would be plentiful, and no child in these facilities would lack for Big Gulps, Big Macs, or any other form of Big food—not unlike our very own American children.
A well-marbled immigrant child 6 to 10 years of age can feed a family of four for weeks. It can provide steaks and roasts that can be baked, seared, fried, sautéed, added to stir-fry, braised (the pan liquid, when reduced, makes an excellent sauce) and fricasseed; a leg of child may be hung in a barn or attic and cured in the manner of an aged ham like prosciutto; the result rivals jamon Iberico for sweetness and tenderness, especially if, like the patas negras pigs from whom that Spanish delicacy derives, the child has been fed acorns for a time before slaughter. If I do not miss my guess, demand on the part of the "foodie" population will skyrocket and the price of immigrant child meat will rise in turn. In such an eventuality, we might need to invite more immigrants to our land, loosen our immigration policy in order that we might loosen our belts. Indeed, we might build a second Statue Of Liberty in sight of the Rio Grande, this one wearing a napkin tucked into the neck of her gown.
I pause here to point out to our friends in PETA and other animal-rights organizations the obvious benefits to their causes of this proposal. No other meat can compare in flavor to a child well-prepared, and soon no one would demand other meats. Pigs would be in pig heaven, lambs might gambol (unless they have a gamboling problem) and go on the lam without fear and we could put cows permanently out to pasture. (Well, more out to pasture.) Soon, the only meat that anyone will want on their tables will be "long pig", which, under the circumstances, we will have to call "short pig". No doubt a marketing campaign will soon have us calling this delicacy "the really other white meat." Perhaps the Soylent Corporation is already hard at work on that; I think we all know "What's In Soylent?"
Lack of space prohibits my expanding on the uses of the "leftovers" of immigrant children after one has consumed their flesh, but I will note that, properly tanned, a single child's skin makes a soft and supple leather for a pair of boots or several pairs of gloves. Larger items such as jackets, coats and trousers might also be stitched together from the skin of multiple immigrant children, but one must pay careful attention to the dyeing in order to achieve a pleasantly uniform tone.
I remain quite certain that, should we adopt this modest proposal, we will achieve a Swift resolution to the problem of child refugees—and perhaps one day we will look around and ask ourselves, "Are not our own American children good enough to eat?" And I will reply that they are not only good enough to eat, they are delicious enough to eat, and with childhood obesity in the US inexorably on the rise, tender and delicious free-range American children could become a worldwide delicacy. On the day that happens, no American will go hungry, and no American will have the back of his airplane seat kicked. I offer this proposal to my fellow citizens with no hope of profit (as my own children are grown) but only in the hopes of the prosperity and in-flight lack of irritation of my country.
Let's do it. Let's make it dinnertime in America again.