“There’s two ways to reduce child populations in circumstances that are not acceptable, like being held at a border patrol station. One is to get them to the place where they have a relative and set a date as to when the hearing can be held. The second way to do it is put them in a health and human services facility that we’re occupying now, both licensed beds around the country that exists, as well as, for example, federal resources like Fort Bliss, to get them safely in a place where they can be taken care of while their fate is determined.”
There’s a third way, Joe, to reduce incoming immigrant “child populations in circumstances that are not acceptable.” – DON’T LET THEM IN!
The United States does NOT have to let people in just because they want to come in or just because they show up at our border or just because they’re kids or just because we feel sorry for them.
Compassion is an appropriate response to the suffering of others. But compassion alone is an inappropriate and unacceptable basis for foreign or domestic policy. The United States is not big enough or rich enough or organized enough to responsibly take in the millions upon millions of children and adults who would move here if they only could.
The answer is not to house migrant children at Fort Bliss or other military bases or to build new facilities or refurbish old ones to house all the Latin American kids who will stream across our southern border if allowed to.
There’s nothing wrong with these kids. Nor have they done anything wrong in seeking a better life for themselves. But the United States government is indeed doing something wrong if the basis for allowing unlimited numbers of people to move to our country becomes simply that they’re poor kids and they want to live here, or that they have phone numbers with them of relatives in Chicago or Los Angeles, or that their native countries, like so many other countries in the world, are plagued by poverty or unemployment or violence.
My personal view is that we should take drastic and dramatic measures right now, such as closing our border with Mexico to all non-commercial traffic, until we come up with a comprehensive and viable plan for reforming our nation’s immigration policies as well as their implementation.
