This is what we\u2019re being told about the Central American women and children showing up on our doorstep: \u00a0they are, in effect, refugees, driven by desperate conditions in their home countries,including gang warfare and sky-high murder rates, with the countries\u2019 governments wholly unable to, well, govern. \u00a0It\u2019s almost remarkable that every single Central American child hasn\u2019t already fled, but based on the reporting we\u2019ve seen, we can expect them to do so. \u00a0And, as in any refugee situation, international law requires that the country to which they flee take in the refugees \u2014 with the proviso that the refugees don\u2019t get to pick-and-choose but stop at the first possible country.<\/p>\n
(Of course, that ought to mean that Mexico ought to be taking in these refugee children \u2014 the fact that they\u2019re not stopping there does tend to invalidate their refugee claim, but let\u2019s figure that Mexico isn\u2019t any better on the corruption front.)<\/p>\n
But if this crisis is so bad that life in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras is intolerable, if it\u2019s inevitable that our Southern border will simply be overrun, by legions of desperate mothers and children, then isn\u2019t it in our own national interest to intervene? \u00a0Perhaps we need our own military, recently returned from abroad, to begin patrolling the streets there. \u00a0Perhaps we need to install our own government structures to replace the failed local ones \u2014 education, healthcare, etc. <\/p>\n
No? \u00a0These are sovereign nations, you say? \u00a0A nation which can\u2019t take care of its own people and sends them abroad to be dependent on others surrenders its sovereignty, don\u2019t you think?<\/p>\n
And if these children are homeless back in their home countries, abandoned by their parents, then aren\u2019t they better off being repatriated, with foreign aid being targeted at some form of orphanage, rather than adapting to the foreign culture and language of the United States? \u00a0(After all, the rationale of the \u201cDream Act\u201d is that it would be an intolerable hardship for Mexican national children who have grown up in the United States to adjust to Mexico, right?)<\/p>\n
Yes, this is an extreme solution. \u00a0But I\u2019m not seeing any other solution on the table: \u00a0It\u2019s a joke to imagine that the media campaign we\u2019re told is underway, to persuade parents not to send their children to the U.S., will have any effect when there are not yet any actual reports of children being repatriated (and, instead, the only unknown is exactly how far-reaching the anticipated amnesty-by-executive-order will be). \u00a0Obama says his hands are tied by the 2008 law requiring hearings for \u201cother than Mexico\u201d children, but the Democrats have refused to consider changing the law except as part of a full amnesty.<\/p>\n
So before you say \u201cJane\u2019s gone off the deep end\u201d (which would be true \u2014 but this is really just a starting point for discussion), what\u2019s the alternative?<\/p>\n
Update:<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s another observation: \u00a0remember how Jeb Bush claimed<\/a> that illegal immigration from Mexico was different than elsewhere, because these were desperate people doing whatever they could to feed their starving families? \u00a0The stories of the Central Americans are different \u2014 they\u2019re paying substantial amounts of money to coyotes. \u00a0(This LA Times article<\/a> says $7,000, I\u2019ve seen $5 \u2013 10,000 elsewhere.) \u00a0To put this in context, the per-capita GDP in Guatemala is $5,300; for El Salvador its $7,500 and $4,800 in Honduras, according to the CIA Factbook.<\/p>\n Where\u2019s the money coming from? <\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This is what we\u2019re being told about the Central American women and children showing up on our doorstep: \u00a0they are, in effect, refugees, driven by desperate conditions in their home countries,including gang warfare and sky-high murder rates, with the countries\u2019 governments wholly unable to, well, govern. \u00a0It\u2019s almost remarkable that every single Central American child […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n