Not like they have over there Cody...and poverty over here looks like middle class living compared to the poverty they are going through over there in most cases. I can't agree with them coming in illegally but I certainly understand why they are doing it and until we make a better way for them to come in legally they will continue to come in illegally. Most of them are good people who are willing to do the work most Americans don't want to do anymore so it's not like they are taking our high paying jobs from anyone. Of course John McCain did think they were making $50 an hour picking cabbages...and he said he would certainly take that job. That man has no concept of reality in my book. There is still room in America for good families, etc. who aren't afraid of hard work and who are willing to do what it takes to become an American citizen...but we have to make it possible for them to do that. And the laws we have now don't do that. There's plenty of land here in America...there's plenty of places to live that just sit empty and rot because greedy people don't want to ask fair rent, etc. America still is a land of plenty....with plenty of room for some more good people who want the same things we want. A safe place for our families and a job that pays enough to take care of them.
When I worked EMS in Los Fresnos, the INS detention facility was in our area, so I transported patients out of there often. They have always separated the juveniles from the adults, as they cannot legally house juveniles and adults together. That has been the policy for at least thirty years and became law in 1995 or 1996. The Brownsville and McAllen facilities that you hear so much about are temporary holding facilities until they can find a more appropriate placement. If the juvenile has relatives who are here legally, they would be considered first. Otherwise, there are foster parents. Either way, it's an expensive proposition. Letting adults with children go free will simply result in more adults coming with children and, in most cases, there is no way of even knowing whether they are actually the parents, as a child would become a ticket for a free ride. Another thing that isn't being considered is that, barring actual danger, a parent who would take his children on a dangerous trek, crossing multiple international borders illegally, doesn't seem to be a fit parent to me. When an American citizen endangers her child, the social workers get involved.
Parents who are doing just that are doing it because they believe it is more dangerous to stay where they are. Whether the danger is from people or a lack of a way to feed their families...it is still a danger they evidently feel they have to get away from. It takes an awful lot of courage to take that trek too. Most of these people deserve the chance at a better life and an easier way to make that happen so they don't have to do things illegally. And I don't think a parent wanting better for their children and doing what they feel they have to do to make that happen should have their children taken away from them...not with the Mexicans or us Americans.
Sure, there are bleeding heart conservatives. The Clinton-era law was designed (I think) to keep children from being confined with criminal adults. I think the adults crossing illegally are confined in similar facilities; it was thought that children should be housed in better places. The result of the law, however, led many children to be released to sex traffickers during Obama's last term. Trump is trying to prevent that, and is being criticized for it.
Many of them go to friends or relatives who are already here in the States. Some may go into the foster system. Many are returned to their families too. We need to change things so they all are with their families and that can be done.
You are the target audience, and you are responding as they want you to: emotionally. The next step would be that everyone coming across the border will be dragging a kid with them. Once they get their get-across-the-border free card, they can sell the kid or maybe even recycle them. It would be perhaps the dumbest policy ever enacted, and it will be the end of us. That's the plan. No one was crying about kids being separated from their parents when Clinton did. No one cared when Bush did it. No one cared when Obama did it and, in fact, most of the pictures of kids in cages come from his Administration. No one cares when children are taken away from American parents, and that happens every day. How many criminals are we going to release from prison so that they can be with their children? They are looking for an emotional response that denies even a hint of common sense, and they are getting it. Yes, some parents are actually coming here for the reasons you suggest, but most are coming simply because they think they can do better here, and at our expense - in more ways than financially. Those who have a good reason to seek asylum can check in at a port of entry, and apply for asylum. The ones who are coming across the border illegally are doing so either because they know they would never qualify, or because they have been led to believe that it would be easier that way.
The detention centers in McAllen and Brownsville are not long-term facilities. They have been set up because there are too many people coming across to be processed by regular means. The kids who are detained are detained only until a better placement can be found. That is exactly the area that I worked when I was in the Rio Grande Valley and I have dozens of friends there yet who I am in touch with. These kids aren't being kept there for long periods of time. They are there until a suitable placement is found. First, they will check to see if there are any relatives who are here legally. Next, they will look for a foster placement or, if there are reasons why a child cannot be placed (generally behavioral in nature), there are group homes. In most cases, according to someone who was speaking for the immigration department, they have no way of even determining that the people who come across with children are actually their parents. Don't expect suitable placements to be cheap. Even when they can find relatives to take them, they will be paid for doing so. When I was a foster parent in the 1970s and 1980s, I got more than a thousand dollars a month per child, plus all of their expenses, such as food, clothing, entertainment, etc. I was paid more than regular foster parents because I was licensed for emergency care, meaning they could bring someone to me at 2:00 in the morning if they needed to, but that was also more than forty years ago, and I don't think costs have gone down.
A couple of other things to consider. Don't think for one moment that if the folks doing the processing make a mistake and place a child with someone who does harm, even if it's the person who came across the border pretending to be the child's parent, that there aren't going to be lawsuits and settlements. These people are coming across with no reliable documentation. Given the outcry and the insistence that anyone who crosses the border holding a child's hand be allowed to enter the country freely, it's quite likely that many of these people aren't actually the parents of the children they crossed with. Given that the politicians won't allow the government to close the border, and the huge influx of people crossing, there are no safe alternatives but to hold the children somewhere where they are safe until something reliable can be figured out for them. Otherwise, the next outcry will be of the children who were molested, killed, or otherwise abused because the border officials didn't do due diligence. Another thing is that groups like Catholic Charities are making a killing on housing children, and they are not housing them in two-parent families, with a picket fence and a dog. No, these are group homes, and you'd better believe they are making sure that they collect every cent that they can. By the way, I am not naming Catholic Charities as a means of slurring Catholics - that's just the only one that I can think of by name at the moment, probably because they have been one of the more vocal non-profits. There are plenty of Protestant and secular groups who are in the same business, but I don't know the names of their agencies. This is going to be a costly endeavor. Mostly, this is intended to distract from the IG Report, anyhow.
No, it isn't about the children but it involves the children...and those who are using these children to try to make Trump look like he doesn't care about them or their families are the ones who really don't care about either one of them. There have always been Mexicans coming across the border because they want a better life for their families and although I have said before that I don't agree with them doing it illegally...I still understand why they are doing it. And who gets to decide what that good reason is Ken? Maybe many have already tried coming in through the Port but have been told their reason for wanting to take their families away from the evil and violence in Mexico and their need to be able to find a job that will feed and provide for their families is not a good enough reason to be let in. Well if they have checked out as good people, then that is reason enough to let them in my opinion. Most of these people will are not criminals, nor drug pushers, or terrorists...yet they have no papers to prove that because they are poor, etc. And many of them have given all the money they had to corrupt people who have promised to get them over the border. These families do what they are doing in most cases because they are desperate to get their families to a place where they can be safe and their families can find minimum wage or less jobs that will provide for them. If it was safe in Mexico and they had jobs that would provide for their families they would not feel the need to go somewhere else. So maybe Mexico's Government needs to start working on these things on their end so their people won't have to feel they have to go somewhere else. That being said, the families...especially the children are being used to distract us from other things that are going on in our Country and to try to make Trump look incompetent and uncaring, etc. Trump's first priority has to be the safety of Americans and America. He has to make sure terrorists, drug pushers, and criminals are kept out of our Country...and most of us want him to do just that no matter what it takes or how it may look to others. The immigrant families and their children are a separate but very important issue and since this issue has been interwoven with the other issues of keeping terrorists, etc. out and making Trump look like the bad guy in all this...that doesn't negate the fact that all these issues are important and need to be addressed and changes made where possible. And change is possible. Change should have been made a long time ago...but it wasn't. There is a better way for immigrants to be able to come into our Country so they don't feel they have no choice but to do it illegally. But those better ways are going to mean changing old laws that clearly aren't working and making the path to citizenship easier for good people and their families. I don't have a big problem with the children being separated as I do know they are being taken care of and we have to make sure their parents are not any of the "bad guys" who want to fill OUR CHILDREN with drugs, or kidnap them to sell into sex slavery, etc. or even kill them as part of an act of terrorism. This has to be Trump's #1 priority in this area at this time. We have to remember that so many here in America and other Countries not only hate Trump but they hate America too...and they want to see both destroyed. And they will do whatever it takes, use whoever it takes, to accomplish their Agenda. Right now we have a lot of enemies within our Country already....we can't afford to let more in. I know President Trump has a heart for children...you can see this in the way he is with his own. So I know he cares about the immigrant children too and has others working behind the scenes with him to see what can be done in this area. But he will not put our children's safety on a back burner for this...America, Americans and American families and their children safety is his first priority. It's been a very long time since we had a President who has made these his priorities...and he needs all the prayer and support we the people can give him.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/kirstjen-nielsen-obama-separated-immigrant-families-too "I want to be clear on a couple of the things. The vast, vast majority of children who are in the care of HHS right now, 10,000 of the 12,000, were sent here alone by their parents. That's when they were separated," she said. "So somehow we have conflated everything. There is two separate issues — 10,000 of those currently in custody were sent by their parents with strangers to undertake a completely dangerous and deadly travel alone. We now care for them. We have high standards. We give them meals. We give them education. We give them medical care. There's videos. There's TVs. I've visited the detention centers myself," she added. "That would be my answer to that question."
One of the major problems is...……..a lot of them don't want to become citizens. Then what do we do? Many don't even want to learn to speak English, however, the Mexican restaurant we go to, all of the people there, from South America, speak English excellent as well as Spanish. I can totally understand what they say and I verbally commend them on their English. As far as having space here for them, when was the last time you looked at the population of the U.S.? As of 2017, there are 325.7 million people here. We will have to take the prairies and other wide-open spaces and development them into housing. There goes the wildlife in those areas! These people just can't keep thinking that America is the best place to go, especially if they don't want to become citizens or learn English.
Congress, for the most part. While details are worked out in regulations, Congress decides what qualifies for asylum status. Rather than fixing the problem, they want the government to ignore the laws that they passed. Just like with the marijuana laws. Congress passed these laws, yet we have members of congress complaining when Jeff Sessions says that he is going to enforce the laws. Rather than repealing the law, which would be their job as elected lawmakers, they demand that their laws be ignored. Trump has said he would be willing to sign a law decriminalizing marijuana. I think most of those who go about it properly are granted asylum, at least when they have qualifying reasons for it. That's what someone with immigration said, anyhow. Asylum in this country is not granted - or isn't intended to be granted - because someone thinks they can do better financially here. We cannot be the welfare department for the world. How on earth do you expect anyone to fix the problems in other countries if everyone who is dissatisfied moves here? It would be far cheaper for us to help them in their own countries. The more people we bring here, the lower wages are going to be here in the United States. It is wrong to say that they are doing jobs that Americans won't do. Americans would do these jobs, but not for the low wages that they will pay illegal immigrants. People used to be able to work construction jobs for their whole lives, and do very well with only a high school degree, or perhaps not even that. Now, illegals hold most of the construction jobs so the only ones who can earn a living wage doing construction in many parts of the country are the owners, who now pay lower wages and offer fewer benefits. I haven't talked to him lately but I have a friend who moved from California to Colorado because he owned a construction company and the only way that he could compete on bids in California was to hire illegals, paying them low wages. A few years after moving to Colorado, the same thing was happening there. So even as US citizens are expected to foot the bills for all of these people, jobs will be harder to come by for US citizens and wages will be lower. Economically, it can only spell disaster.