Separating immigrant families and imprisoning children

[One Bad Pig]

There are places in Mexico that are not hell holes. Why don't they go there? Most of the ones coming here end up in just as bad of a situation as they were in Mexico. They have no skills so they end up standing on the street corner waiting for some farmer to pick them up for a day of picking crops for pennies. They live on the street or in shacks. They don't know the language, they have no papers, they can't get a legitimate job. It's not like they pop across the border and become rich.

As far as changing their country, they have a better chance then they do of changing ours. They seem to be able to protest in our streets and demand we change. Why not do that in their own country?

You're not making a whole lot of sense here. Those who are able to protest in our streets are clearly not "standing on the street corner waiting for some farmer to pick them up for a day of picking crops for pennies," "liv[ing] on the street or in shacks," "don't know the language," and "can't get a legitimate job." People often come here illegally for work and send money home to help out others. You're castigating Charles for exaggeration, then turning around and doing it yourself.

[Sparko]

Why is it so bad to be given the chance to help?

No problem at all if they do it legally.

Then they can get a social security number, driver's license, job, and have a real chance at the American Dream.

[Sparko]

You're not making a whole lot of sense here. Those who are able to protest in our streets are clearly not "standing on the street corner waiting for some farmer to pick them up for a day of picking crops for pennies," "liv[ing] on the street or in shacks," "don't know the language," and "can't get a legitimate job." People often come here illegally for work and send money home to help out others. You're castigating Charles for exaggeration, then turning around and doing it yourself.

Not all are in the same situation. Some get lucky and get jobs as nannies or working construction, etc. Still working under the table illegally. But many end up in situations as dire as they left. scraping to get by.

[rogue06]

It's not easy being an immigrant in Mexico:

In Mexico, police have been adapting to a different reality, resulting from a 2008 rewrite of its immigration law. "[It] decriminalized migration, so in theory it's no longer a crime to be an illegal immigrant in Mexico," says Jaime Arredondo Sanchez Lira, a former government official and currently resident fellow, at the Center for US-Mexican Studies at the University of California, San Diego.

"That was a consequences of violence ... tied to human trafficking," Arredondo says. By making illegal immigration punishable only by a civil fine, the hope was that migrants moving through Mexico would be less vulnerable to abuse and extortion. Unfortunately, Arredondo says migrants are still often targeted by corrupt police and military.

"Many of the police forces are associated with drug dealers or smugglers, and in many cases they will hand you over [to smugglers] or extort money, or in some sad cases, kill you if you refuse to take part in their activities."

Officially, local police in Mexico aren't supposed to go around asking people about their immigration status, says Alejandro Lares, former chief of municipal police in Tijuana. But things change once they have probable cause of an immigration violation, or the person commits another crime.

"We are able to detain them, and once they're detained, we can actually call Mexican immigration, and they can find out if they're legal or illegal in our country," Lares says.

The American "sanctuary city" concept is largely foreign to Mexico; Lares says local jurisdictions don't prohibit their police from working with national immigration officials.

"I don't think [police] would ever consider not to voluntarily cooperate with an immigration authority," he says, "if things are being done by the book."

Note that this is from NPR, not exactly a conservative right-wing source.

While Mexico is not a paradise if your motive is to escape persecution in your homeland you still have pretty much achieved it. If your motive is something else entirely then you keep dragging your kids along for another 2000 miles.

[Charles]

Mexico is a free country.

And if the country is not free, that is what revolutions are for. Ask the French.

I have to acknowledge your point about asking the French. :-) However, I think OBP made a very good case of people being in very different situations and living under different conditions with different options or lack of options. To be honest I had more of a protest gene and a greater will to accept risk when I was younger and I would perhaps (I don't know since I have never been in the situation) have been a greater protester. As of now I feel quite certain my greatest priority and I would also say my greatest responsibility in my current situation would be to make sure my children were safe. I don't blame people for not risking their lives protesting when that includes the risk that their small children will be left alone and probably die or live very misserable lives. And instead of asking the French (and I do see your point) we could also ask those from Syria, or could we? How many of them are still alive and have a voice that we can hear?

[rogue06]

Well, in general speaking terms, the quote I used is often used in that way to stress a particular point. I have no problem admitting that the historical accurancy is debatable since it makes no difference to the point. In fact I already did that. How that allows you to genrally conclude I don't worry much about facts is another question.

If one follows your logic then based on your following statement you don't care much about facts:



We all know the above is not correct since Manafort was with Trump for 144 days. What would you like us to conclude? That you made an error or that you don't care about facts in general?

I'm not the one who kept claiming something after being shown to be wrong cakeboy.

[Sparko]

While Mexico is not a paradise if your motive is to escape persecution in your homeland you still have pretty much achieved it. If your motive is something else entirely then you keep dragging your kids along for another 2000 miles.

Mexico is like most countries. There are richer and poorer areas. The biggest problems there are lack of education. People actually go to Mexico for vacations and even to live from other parts of the world.

[Sparko]

I have to acknowledge your point about asking the French. :-) However, I think OBP made a very good case of people being in very different situations and living under different conditions with different options or lack of options. To be honest I had more of a protest gene and a greater will to accept risk when I was younger and I would perhaps (I don't know since I have never been in the situation) have been a greater protester. As of now I feel quite certain my greatest priority and I would also say my greatest responsibility in my current situation would be to make sure my children were safe. I don't blame people for not risking their lives protesting when that includes the risk that their small children will be left alone and probably die or live very misserable lives. And instead of asking the French (and I do see your point) we could also ask those from Syria, or could we? How many of them are still alive and have a voice that we can hear?

So they don't protest because they are worried about their children? Yet they are OK with dragging those kids 2000 miles across a foreign country filled with danger hoping they don't die along the way?

[Charles]

While Mexico is not a paradise if your motive is to escape persecution in your homeland you still have pretty much achieved it. If your motive is something else entirely then you keep dragging your kids along for another 2000 miles.

I assume you missed these parts:

That was a consequences of violence ... tied to human trafficking," Arredondo says. By making illegal immigration punishable only by a civil fine, the hope was that migrants moving through Mexico would be less vulnerable to abuse and extortion. Unfortunately, Arredondo says migrants are still often targeted by corrupt police and military.

...

"Many of the police forces are associated with drug dealers or smugglers, and in many cases they will hand you over [to smugglers] or extort money, or in some sad cases, kill you if you refuse to take part in their activities."

Or perhaps wanting to stay alive qualifies as "something else"?

[Charles]

So they don't protest because they are worried about their children? Yet they are OK with dragging those kids 2000 miles across a foreign country filled with danger hoping they don't die along the way?

What would you do if the alternative was that the children would likely die if you stayed? The idea that any parent is OK with "dragging those kids 2000 miles across a foreign country filled with danger" is so absurd and shows both a lack of understanding of their situation and a lack of basic empathy. Trying to portray some of those who are worst of as bad parents and supporting the separation of innocent children from their parents is about as far from basic Christian values as I think you can get.

[Charles]

I'm not the one who kept claiming something after being shown to be wrong cakeboy.

Well you can actually find sources claiming it is cake and that was why I maintained it. That is also how the popular and probably historically wrong version of it goes. But after having looked at more sources I have no problem admitting the other description is more exact, rogue49.

[Charles]

Amnesty International has some very interesting points on the current situation:

“There is no question that President Trump administration’s policy of separating mothers and fathers from their children is designed to impose severe mental suffering on these families, in order to deter others from trying to seek safety in the USA. Many of these families come from countries experiencing generalized violence and grave human rights violations, including Honduras and El Salvador. This is a flagrant violation of the human rights of these parents and children and is also a violation of US obligations under refugee law.”

“Make no mistake, these family separations are a crisis of the government’s own making. The U.S. government is playing a sick game with these families’ lives by playing politics with what is a serious and mounting refugee crisis. Just as we have seen with previous immigration reforms from this administration, authorities have chosen to target the very families seeking safety in the USA, adding to the trauma and pain they have already experienced,” said Erika Guevara-Rosas.

Amnesty International recently interviewed 17 asylum-seeking parents who were forcibly separated from their children, and all but three of them had entered the USA legally to request asylum.

Here is the entire article: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/ne...ation-torture/

[Charles]

Children held in cages

In many of our discussions about Trump's immigration policy it has been claimed that the material conditions for the children are good and that they are taken good care of. Now, it seems, those claims can no longer be witheld. The Telegraph has described the actual conditions for some children in a heartbreaking article. Here are some of the most important parts:

Inside an old warehouse in South Texas, hundreds of children wait in a series of cages created by metal fencing. One cage had 20 children inside.

I just exited a border patrol “processing facility” known as the “icebox.” It is nothing short of a prison.

Just left Border Patrol Processing Center in McAllen—aka "the dog kennel." Witnessed loads of kids massed together in large pens of chain-linked fence separated from their moms and dads.

But one boy nearby wasn't playing with the rest. According to Brane, he was quiet, clutching a piece of paper that was a photocopy of his mother's ID card.

"The government is literally taking kids away from their parents and leaving them in inappropriate conditions," Brane said. "If a parent left a child in a cage with no supervision with other five-year-olds, they'd be held accountable."

Staff members tried to console the child, who looked to be about two years old, Kraft said. She had been taken from her mother the night before and brought to the shelter.

The staff gave her books and toys - but they weren't allowed to pick her up, to hold her or hug her to try to calm her. As a rule, staff aren't allowed to touch the children there, she said.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/201...xas-warehouse/

[carpedm9587]

As no doubt most posters here are aware by now, this Republican administration has chosen to split up the families of asylum seekers, separating children from their parents. This is part of a deliberate policy by Jeff Sessions of attempting to terrorize immigrants in order to deter future immigration.

The UN has condemned this as a violation of international law. A US judged has declared it a clear constitutional violation. Since the US government has a poor record in terms of properly looking after immigrant children it imprisons, a US Senator attempted to visit the detention facility to check conditions there, and rather than let him in, staff called the police to kick him out.

In other threads I have pointed out to Cow Poke that the Republican party acts pretty consistently against families in their policies. This is simply the latest example, albeit a particularly egregious one.

Personally, I think the FBI should break down Jeff Sessions' door, arrest him, throw him into jail, indict him with enough charges that he serves the rest of his life in prison. The same goes down the chain of command for those who choose to follow such horrific orders from those above them. This is an international outrage that will make the history books, akin to the torture program of the last criminal Republican administration, and there should be immediate consequences for those involved.

Please vote in the poll with your views!

I have held off on this one for a bit, waiting to see what information will pop up. In general I am in support of a more hard-line stance on illegal immigration. The problem is close to out of control, and it needs to be reigned in. However, when you are one of the most prosperous nations on earth (we rank 20th in terms of GDP/capita, fourth in terms of mean total wealth per capita, and the U.S. is home to 34% of the worlds wealth) with the kinds of political freedoms we enjoy, people are going to try to get in. It's inevitable. Something has to be done to dissuade those who do not have a genuine asylum claim or are not immigrating legally.

Putting forward common sense, generous, immigration quotas (especially now that our native population has dropped below the replacement rate for population) is one part of that. But you also need the stick. There are fewer things stronger than the maternal/paternal bond. I have to wonder if the knowledge that being caught entering illegally would result in separation from your own children for some period of time might not be a good deterrent, at least for families entering. Once the word gets out, one would think people would look elsewhere? Eventually, wouldn't family entry drop to very little as a result?

Of course, it has to be done so the children are well cared for. Since folks don't trust government to pave a highway or run a social program, one has to wonder how we can possibly trust them to take care of actual, living children in their charge?

Bottom line, I don't know what to think, yet. It sounds horrendous. It might be necessary. It's rife with potentials for disaster.

Dunno...

[Starlight]

But, but, what about when the Obama administration did something bad like this one time!?!