Ilegals Being Separated From Their Children And Its All Blamed On Trump

Thanks, @Cody Fousnaugh.

 

If we didn't make it more attractive for people to sit at home and have their bills paid for by others, you'd better believe they'd take those jobs.

However, if we didn't have so many illegals who were willing to work for less, companies would pay more, and once it becomes more profitable for someone to earn a paycheck than to stay at home, they'll work for a paycheck.

 

That was done for a while and, of all people, it was Bill Clinton who did that. Then there were lawsuits against the employers, claiming that asking for proof of citizenship or a work visa was discriminatory, and the courts ruled against the employers for enforcing the laws that were put in place by congress. By then, I think George W. Bush was in office, and they had no backing from the government.

 

Legally, he doesn't.

Obama was doing that, but only because no one was ever willing to restrict Obama to following the laws that were in place. He was releasing them with an appointment for an immigration hearing, which almost none of them showed up for.

Not only was it illegal but it was not a workable solution. Obama knew that too, which is why he didn't start doing that until the last couple of years of his second term, knowing that he was creating a problem that he could pass on to his successor.

With Trump's encouragement, Sessions is enforcing the laws. It's the same as with the marijuana laws, Congress has the authority to change the law but neither the president or the justice department should have the authority to ignore the laws.

It would be cheaper, but he doesn't have the authority to do that either. When they come from a country contiguous with the United States (Canada and Mexico), they can be simply turned away but, by law, he doesn't have the authority to send someone from Central or South America back. You might argue that it's a dumb law, but it was put into place by a Democrat-controlled Congress.

Most of the people who are being dealt with now are not from Mexico, or at least they claim not to be from Mexico. There is no way of knowing because they are undocumented. For that same reason, there is no way of knowing - short of a DNA test - whether the kids they are bringing with them are even their own.

After eight years of lawlessness, the Trump Administration is enforcing the laws. Laws are enacted by Congress and they can be modified or repealed by Congress. Ignoring them is not a solution for a stable government.

 

I apologize for being repetitive because I know that I have spoken of this elsewhere in the forum, but not everyone reads every thread, and maybe there are those who don't realize that the places that are in the news lately, such as the immigration processing centers in Brownsville and McAllen, is where I lived and worked for more than twenty years. I still have dozens of friends who are working there in EMS, FD, PD, and even a couple in the border patrol.

Los Fresnos is only seven miles north of Brownsville. When I was EMS Director in Los Fresnos, the INS detention center near Bayview was in our service area, so I have toured the facility and have transported dozens of people from there. The Bayview facility is a long-term facility, and it is huge. Detainees are segregated by nationality, sex, and age. Children are housed separately. The place is not unlike a prison, except that they have access to the yard and other facilities throughout the day, and maybe they are treated a little nicer than prisoners are treated. I don't know about that, except that there seemed to be a lot of back-and-forth joking and conversation going on between the detainees and the facility staff at the times that I was there.

I am not certain, but I believe the children who were housed there were those who couldn't be placed elsewhere or whose placements didn't work out. Often this would be because of behavioral problems, and they were mostly teenagers, fourteen or older, many with tattoos on their faces and arms. Yeah, I know. They could still be perfectly nice people but it's indicative of something else, and it would make them harder to place.

The Brownsville and McAllen facilities are temporary processing centers that were set up only in recent years to deal with the huge influx of people coming across. These are mostly repurposed school buildings, for the most part, and intended to hold people only while they were being processed.

So it's not like these kids are being held in cages for years and, for that matter, the ones who are in these facilities are still with their parents, if they crossed the border with their parents. There may be individual reasons for doing otherwise, but they are not generally separated until after they are processed. Keep in mind too, that the pictures you see couldn't be more deceptive if they were done with Photoshop. The photos are intended to elicit an emotional response and are not necessarily indicative of the actual conditions, and some of them are years old but being circulated as if they represented something going on now.

Most of the children who cross the border are not the cute little tykes with the sad faces that you see on television, in the newspaper, and circulated through social media. What you see in the media is a production that is intended to elicit an emotional response that will further a political agenda.

Most of these people aren't escaping death squads in their home countries either. Most of them are here because they have been led to believe that we will give them a free ride, particularly if they bring a kid.

That doesn't mean that there aren't parents and children who are trying to escape actual threats in their home countries, and it doesn't mean that conditions in these countries aren't bad. But we can't be everything for everyone, and maybe if some of these people would stay home and help to fix the problems there rather than bringing their problems here, we wouldn't be in this position.

Those who have actual reasons for seeking sanctuary can apply for that at a port of entry, and the rates of acceptance are said to be pretty high, and the waiting time would be more reasonable if not for a large number of people who chose instead to cross the border illegally, and the manufactured demand that they receive equal consideration.

After a child is processed at the temporary processing centers in Brownsville or McAllen, the first choice for a placement would be a relative who is here legally. If such a relative is available, they would be paid for taking the child in.

The next choice would be a foster parent. The cute little kid with the sad face will probably have no problem finding a foster placement. I used to be a foster parent, so I know some foster parents are taking kids in for all of the right reasons, while others are simply earning a living. I was a short-term emergency placement so I was paid handsomely for any kids who were placed with me. Usually, they would come to me without much or anything in the way of clothing and other needs, so we'd go shopping. I was being paid well enough to buy them what they needed without any of it coming out of my pocket.

After several months of this, one of the childcare workers asked me why I had never put in for expenses. It turned out that besides being paid well for taking a child in, I could put in for reimbursement for clothing, food, and even entertainment expenses. After that, any kid that was placed with me, if only for a day or two, went on a shopping trip, and whenever I could afford the time, we went to Disneyland or Knott's Berry Farm.

Some foster homes are profit-driven. When I was suing for custody of the boy I adopted, I first had to be licensed as a foster parent, which is what got me into this. Before I was licensed, he spent a few months in another foster home. It wasn't a terrible placement, and certainly, there were worse ones, but this wasn't family dinners, quality time at home, a white picket fence, and a dog. He shared a room with six other foster kids. Although looking back, it's quite likely that they put in for reimbursements, there were no shopping sprees or trips to Disneyland. A towel had to last him a week, and they had to be in their room and quiet by 9 pm. From there, he went to a much better one for a while before I got custody.

I am mentioning this to illustrate that if we run on emotions alone, this is going to be a very expensive proposition.

Kids who can't be placed in foster care are often those with behavioral problems or whose appearance would lead potential foster parents into anticipating behavioral problems, such as older teenagers with gang tattoos and so on. They are likely to end up with one of the church-related or secular child-care group homes or facilities, which are also largely profit-driven.

It is my admittedly biased opinion that Obama's policy of releasing parents with children on their own recognizance was intended to create just the problem we're dealing with now. He didn't begin this policy until the last couple of years of his second term. Prior to that, he was doing much as Trump is doing now.

There is also the fact that there is a law, enacted by Congress during the Clinton administration and modified slightly during the Bush administration, which prohibits this. There are also good reasons not to do this. For one, very few of those who are released ever show up for their scheduled hearings. But there is also a concern that these children are not necessarily related to the people who are claiming to be their parents.

One of the Republican proposals asks for funding to build family facilities so that parents and children weren't separated, and also to fund DNA testing. Most of those coming across illegally are not documented, and so on. But now, I am getting into areas that I have already covered so I will leave it at that.

Remember this. Things are not always as they seem.