Fields: How To Control Kids On The Border
BY SAM FIELDS
Controlling our borders is one of the basic responsibilities of government. It looks so simple when you believe we only need to put up a fence like the one with your neighbor…just longer and taller.
Decades of drug smuggling should tell us that it’s not that easy.
(Note: Although the attention is always on the border, the vast majority of illegals are people who lawfully came in as tourists, workers and students and overstay their visas.)
Tens of thousands of children are fleeing violence their country in the mistaken belief that we will allow them to stay because of their age. It is a humanitarian crisis.
For every dead child found in the desert, it is estimated that dozens go unfound. That border area has a square mileage greater than Florida. A hundred thousand beat cops couldn’t do the job.
A Bush-era law prevents immediate deportation to countries other than Mexico or Canada. Even if we could do immediate deportation, are we going to drop off ten year olds at the airport in Tegucigalpa? After all, these children are victims of a drug war fought in their country to protect Americans from our own bad habits.
Nevertheless, we need to stem the tide of children without risking their lives.
I have an idea.
Ordinarily, if an immigrant contesting deportation leaves the country, either voluntarily or involuntarily; it extinguishes any claim to stay in America.
Ever heard of the term “legal fiction”?
It is when the law allows something that is contrary to the facts. A common example is sealing a criminal record. Henceforth, a judge allows you to lie about an arrest on a job application. Diplomats and their embassies are physically in this country…but not in the eyes of the law. There are a hundred other examples.
We need to work with the governments of Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala to establish repatriation zones in their countries where these children would be able to reside while being treated as if they were still legally in the USA. It’s a legal fiction, but it could work.
The facilities would be operated by Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO like Save The Children or OXFAM) and secured from the street gangs that drove many of them to flee to the States.
Under the current scheme we are paying to house them here while they work their way through the immigration courts. Why not house them in their home country? Using SKYPE, hearings would be conducted on the Internet.
Most importantly, word would get out on the street that the dangerous and expensive trek to the border is a waste of time and money. You will be shipped back home in a heartbeat.
Undoubtedly there will be problems. But the measure of success is whether these problems are less onerous than the current “Children’s Crusade” under the control of human traffickers.
I suspect it would.
July 14th, 2014 at 12:10 pm
Interesting concept. A fresh idea, for a change, from Sam Fields.
July 14th, 2014 at 12:24 pm
Nice write-up. But that was never the plan or intent of the current regime.
We have a census to take in 2020. You get counted even if ‘illegal’ or undocumented or whatever the PC terinology is for that status.
Here is the RFP for the project advertised January 2014
https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=c6d7c0050b912fbc917a46d6709d38bd&tab=core&tabmode=list&=
Escort Services for Unaccompanied Alien Children
Solicitation Number: BERKS-RFI
Agency: Department of Homeland Security
Office: Immigration & Customs Enforcement
Location: ICE-OAQ-DM
July 14th, 2014 at 3:50 pm
Children escaping a Communist government (Pedro Pan) are good and can stay; children escaping narco-criminal governments are bad and should be sent back.
July 14th, 2014 at 4:20 pm
That is actually a brilliant idea: no harm to anyone involved and a clear statement that there actually are laws in the USA.
July 14th, 2014 at 4:48 pm
It’s called a headcount because we … count heads.
And are you suggesting we “train” the census workers to determine who to count or not?
And these folks who are here… Do they not require support, use our services, pay taxes?
Now perhaps you’re worried about these ______ (insert PC adjective) voting?
Between 2000-2010, there were 105,654 unjustified homicides using firearms. In that same timeframe, just 10 cases of in-person voter fraud.
July 14th, 2014 at 6:23 pm
and what about disparity of wet foot-dry foot for Cubans and Haitians are “repatriated”?
maybe we should just let ’em all come. We could save alot of money if borders were open.
July 15th, 2014 at 9:23 am
“…Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
This sonnet from the “The New Colossus,” written in 1883, by Emma Lazarus, is graven on a tablet within the Statue of Liberty pedestal on which the statue stands.
It means absolutely nothing to some many people 131 years later.
July 15th, 2014 at 9:31 am
There was a movie some years ago, whose title I don’t recall for the life of me, where all the illegals in the country stopped working for just one day. Does anyone remember that? The U.S. was going nuts. Supermarket shelves and freezers were going empty. Nothing was functioning right. And it was just for one day. Since we, Americans, are so sophisticated and so advanced that won’t work the fields, clean, or do all the “sub-human” work these illegals do day in and day out, (and after all the complaining and the bitterness many feel towards them) where would we be without them if they all decided to stop working for just a week?
July 15th, 2014 at 11:34 am
“…Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
Papers please.