By Mike Appleton, Weekend Contributor
“Taking a child he placed it in their midst, and putting his arms around it he said to them, ‘Whoever receives one child such as this in my name, receives me; and whoever receives me, receives not me, but the one who sent me.’ “
-Gospel of Mark, Ch. 9, verses 36-37, New American Bible (Thomas Nelson, 1989)
“If kids come in my backyard, I’ll shoot them.”
-unidentified Murietta, California resident protesting the sheltering of undocumented child immigrants (July 1, 2014)
………………………………………………..
“Collective fear,” wrote Bertrand Russell, “stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd.” The ugliness in Murietta, California several weeks ago provided ample evidence, if any were needed, of the power of collective fear. But even more disturbing than the angry shouts at frightened children unable even to understand the words hurled at them has been the reaction of political leaders. Appearing on Fox News Sunday, Gov. Rick Perry demanded that the President dispatch National Guard troops to the border, for who knows what purpose. Rep. Louie Gohmert (R. Texas) has been even more vocal. Most of you may recall Rep. Gohmert’s rants several years ago about “anchor babies” born in the United States to be trained as terrorists. This time around he is claiming that the Administration is encouraging the influx of unaccompanied children as part of a plot to turn America “blue” and “ensure Republicans will never get elected again.” Of course, that will require that all of these tens of thousands of children survive the various diseases with which he also claims them to be infected and carrying over the border. Rep. Gohmert could be dismissed as another congressional crackpot but for the fact that he currently serves as vice chair of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security.
Fear-mongering is such an emotionally powerful tool that it is readily grasped by nascent politicians to fast-track their own careers. Several days ago one Adam Kwasman, a Republican running for Congress in Arizona, made headlines when he photographed a bus full of children and tweeted it to his supporters with the caption, “Bus coming in. This is not compassion. This is the abrogation of the rule of law.” Twitter is a social medium particularly well-suited for those adept at making fools of themselves in fewer than 140 characters. In a follow-up interview with a local reporter, Mr. Kwasman even described “the fear” he witnessed in the eyes of the children as the bus passed, only to later learn that what he had actually observed was what I, as a sometime camp counselor, call Camp Grenada Syndrome, the anxiety universally experienced by kids on their first trip to summer camp, this one run by the YMCA.
Assuming that the over 50,000 (to date) unaccompanied minors surrendering to the Border Patrol are not junior members of the Central America branch of the Young Democrats, why have they come? Well, has anyone been to Honduras or Guatemala or El Salvador lately? Those three countries, known collectively as the Northern Triangle, occupy three of the top five spots on the list of countries with the worst homicide statistics. Honduras leads the pack, with 90.4 murders per 100,000 persons. In Guatemala, over 300,000 children, fully 11% of those between the ages of 7 and 13, work, 21% of them in dangerous jobs, and are subjected to exploitation by organized crime in the sexual tourism and pornography industries. The homicide rate in El Salvador doubled between 2003 and 2011, and rose 44% in the first quarter of 2014 over the same period a year ago. To put this in further perspective, Latin America is home to 9% of the world’s population, and suffers 31% of the world’s murders.
The governments of these countries are weak and riddled with incompetence and corruption. Efrain Rios Montt, the former head of state in Guatemala, was convicted last year of genocide and crimes against humanity for atrocities committed against his own civilian population. But his conviction has been overturned and he faces a new trial early next year. The State Department has issued travel warnings for Honduras. And it is clear that much of the drug trafficking and gang warfare in the Northern Triangle is a direct result of the shifting of the drug trade from countries, such as Mexico and Columbia, in which the war on drugs has been particularly intense. It has also been argued that much of the instability in that part of the world is a legacy of United Fruit diplomacy and U.S. support of corrupt military dictatorships in Central America over many decades.
But regardless of the historical explanations for the problems plaguing these countries, how can any rational person fail to understand the desire of poor and desperate parents to protect their children from the violence and terror they daily face? How can any rational person not marvel at a parental love so powerful that it compels mothers and fathers to send their children on a lonely, dangerous journey? And who is honestly surprised that people gripped by fear and despair will believe the lies of the coyotes who promise, for a price, to deliver their children to the safety of the United States?
In 2008 Congress passed, and Pres. Bush signed, the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, named for the British MP who devoted much of his political career to the abolition of the slave trade in England. A portion of the Act establishes procedures for the processing and repatriation of “unaccompanied alien children” who come into the United States. In general, the Act requires that a minor child from a country that is not contiguous to the United States is to be transferred to the custody of the Department of Health and Human Services and placed “in the least restrictive setting that is in the best interest of the child” pending a determination of whether the child should be repatriated or granted refugee status. The Act affords such children what we as a nation believe essential to minimum due process-the right to a hearing and the right to counsel. 8 USC 1232 (2014). But the sheer numbers of children now in the country have overwhelmed the available resources. And, of course, it is all the fault of the Administration.
In one of the videos of the Murietta protests, a woman can be seen shouting, “Not our children. Not our problem.” In Vassar, Michigan, two weeks later, demonstrators, two carrying semi-automatic rifles, assembled in front of a social services facility selected to provide temporary housing for some of the children. The organizer of the protest, Tamyra Murray, was quoted as saying, “We must save America and stand up against this invasion.” Collective fear at work, one rope short of a lynch mob.
Nevertheless, I do not believe that the woman in Murietta, California or Ms. Murray in Vassar, Michigan truly believe what they are saying. If they do, they are wrong. It has also been suggested that this humanitarian crisis is Pres. Obama’s Katrina. That is also wrong. Hurricane Katrina was our Katrina, just as Hurricane Sandy was our Sandy. And these children, at least for now, are our children. While they are here, they deserve to be treated as part of the herd.
Sources: Bertrand Russell, Unpopular Essays (Simon & Schuster, 1950); “El Salvador Grapples With Upswing In Drug Traffic,” http://www.npr.org (May 31, 2011); “El Salvador murder rate up 44% as gang truce falters,” http://www.irishtimes.com (April 4, 2014); U.S. Department of State, “El Salvador 2013 Crimes and Safety Report,” http://www.osac.gov/pages/contentReportDetails.aspx?cid=13875; “Murders in El Salvador spike to record high for May,” http://www.mobile.reuters.com (May 26, 2014); “Honduras, Central America still lead the world in murder rates,” http://www.ticotimes.net (April 14, 2014); Human Rights Watch, “Honduras still # 1 in 2013,” http://www.m.hrw.org/world-report/2014; “Federal Agents With Riot Gear Arriving In Murietta To Subdue Immigration Protesters,” http://www.dailycaller.com (July 6, 2014); “Gohmert: Obama Is Flooding Texas With Immigrants To ‘Turn It Blue,’ ” http://www.breitbart.com (July 7, 2014); “Murietta Residents: Obama Admin Flooding Our Streets to Force ‘Immigration Reform,’ ” http://www.breitbart.com (July 8, 2014); “Murietta immigration debate: Should they stay or should they go?” http://www.america.aljazeera.com (July 11, 2014); Francis X. Donnelly, “Possible housing of Central American children meets with protest in small Michigan town,” The Detroit News (July 14, 2014); Igor Bobic, “GOP Candidate Mistakes YMCA Kids For Migrants, Describes ‘Fear In Their Faces,’ ” The Huffington Post (July 16, 2014).
The views expressed in this posting are the author’s alone and not those of the blog, the host, or other weekend bloggers. As an open forum, weekend bloggers post independently without pre-approval or review. Content and any displays of art are solely their decision and responsibility.
Appleton, I do not know a single person who denies climate change, much less someone who knows someone who does. However, I know lots of people who argue over the cause of climate change or its predecessor, global warming. You might want to rethink abandoning your original premise, least you find yourself in doodoo writing about people who do not exist. I’d like to see what you have to say about the impact of religious views on climate-science policy.
Bob Kauten:
In all the time you have posted here, that was the most articulate and readable post I have ever read which you produced.
Paul C. Schulte
Your ad hominem attack on my ad hominem attack on your ad hominem attack on my ad hominem attack is a textbook case of coitus interruptus in extremis.
Ex post facto ergo sum non illegitimi carborundum panem nostrum quotidianum da nobis hodie.
Sed libera nos a malo.
Quod erat demonstrandum.
Molon labe*
So dere, den.
*You have a mole on your lip. Better get that checked out.
Bob Kauten – your comment at 2:31 am is known as a “I’m rubber and your glue fallacy’.
The Surprising South Carolina Evangelicals Who Support ImmigrationIn conservative Spartanburg County, pastors who worship alongside newly arrived immigrants soften their views on a thorny issue.
By Alexia Campbell
July 16, 2014
http://www.nationaljournal.com/next-america/population-2043/the-surprising-south-carolina-evangelicals-who-support-immigration-20140716
Excerpt:
SPARTANBURG, S.C.—Something is changing in the most conservative corner of conservative South Carolina. Some tea-party Republicans and evangelical Christians are softening toward immigration.
The Upstate region, around Spartanburg and Greenville counties, is home to more than 500 evangelical churches and a Hispanic population that has tripled in the past 10 years. It’s a place where “amnesty” is a dirty word and where undocumented immigrants are often detained for driving without a license.
But local farmers, church leaders, and business owners who once kept out of the immigration debate have recently thrown themselves into the middle of it. In the past year, they’ve held local press conferences and traveled to Washington to urge their Republican representatives to legalize the status of millions of undocumented immigrants.
you might write the first thread to go into 5 digits.
pete:
LOL. The funny thing is that I’ve been reading some stuff to do a column on the impact of religious views on climate science policy. But after reading some of the exchanges on this thread, I’m thinking that maybe I should avoid the effort and simply go with something like, “Climate Change Deniers Are Doo-Doo Heads.”
Mike – maybe you should do an article on the effect of government grant money on climate change research.
depressing, ain’t it Mike.
Thanks, Darren, for diving into the Vortex of Doom again!
Help! Lost a post!
Kraaken:
I love that poem, “The New Colossus,” which was added to the Statue of Liberty. It’s beautiful and moving. And I believe in immigration . . . legal immigration.
Now let’s talk about why we, and every other country in the world, establishes the levels of legal immigration. Can we accept the entire population of Mexico, South America, and Haiti? Haiti, one is to recall, has the highest rate of sexual assault in the world, the Tonton Macoute “boogeymen” who did savage, inceivable crimes under the previous Voo Doo leader (like making mothers march through the streets with the severed heads of their sons to frighten villages into compliance.) Our infrastructure would crumble under such numbers, and we might have some concerns about screening people for violent criminal history, or associations with organizations like drug cartels or the Tonton Macoute.
So if we can agree that every nation has a duty and a right to determine the level of immigration it can absorb into its infrastructure and economy, and screen applicants for things like violent criminal history, then we agree that legal immigration is good, and illegal immigration is bad.
Karen, I retrieved your comment at 10:41.
I support legal immigration, and oppose illegal immigration.
The majority of Americans do not support Amnesty. People are angry because Obama’s policies caused this deluge. He claimed to be blindsided but the WH posted a job listing for contractors to transport 65,000 unaccompanied minors this year, which is more than double the figure for last year, which was higher than the year before. 95% do not show up for their court dates. We bus them anywhere they want to go in the US.
If an American citizen breaks the law, we get arrested.
If a non-American citizen breaks the law, and immigrates illegally, he gets a free ride anywhere he wants to go, and an open border.
People are just angry about this.
It’s not the kids’ fault. It’s our federal government’s fault for not enforcing our border. For creating the Dream Act which entices parents to send their precious children with coyotes, where some are sexually assaulted, lost, or murdered.
Nothing has changed in South America. The problems that exist today existed in 2007. What’s changed is our policies, which attract illegal immigration.
This can all be solved very simply:
Make illegal immigration very hard, and improve our legal immigration system.
People will naturally immigrate from low economies to better performing ones. But if they want to come, they need to do it legally.
A country has a duty and a right to screen prospective immigrants for criminal history, terrorist ties, and diseases such as antibiotic resistant TB. The people I know who immigrated legally had to get vaccinated because they forgot to bring their vaccination record. I don’t want any sex offenders, drug cartels, or other violent criminals here. And I want the quantity of good, hard working people who just want a better chance at life to be at a level that we can absorb with our economy and budget. Rather than just flinging them away once they get here, I want them to have classes on our laws and language. And if we didn’t have such a crush of illegal immigration, we might have the funds to do that.
It makes zero sense to keep importing low skilled workers at huge levels when our economy is struggling. Black youth unemployment is at 26%. Immigration levels should be lower in bad economic years, and higher in better performing years. It just makes basic mathematical sense. We should never have so many immigrants that it overwhelms our infrastructure, such as when ERs closed in AZ because they could not handle the influx of non-paying illegal immigrants. And it is shameful to have signs on US land stating that it’s unsafe to be there because of the drug cartels.
We need to determine a quantity of immigrants that our infrastructure and economy can handle. We need to ensure that immigrants meet our standards, such as no violent criminals.
Allowing illegal immigration makes no sense at all. And no country in the world allows it. Including Mexico, where you get thrown in jail and immediately deported if you immigrate illegally.
Paul C. Schulte
Why thank you!
Wow! Ad hominem! Coitus interruptus!
I’m impressed at your perceptiveness, but less impressed at the attempt to sound educated.
P.S. Educated people don’t throw latin phrases about, to broadcast their erudition. Educated folks don’t need to.
I give you credit for trying, though.
Bob Kauten – your attack on my calling out ad hominem attacks is an ad hominem attack of its own. I have spent my life around educated people and I am well aware of how they talk.
When I was in, I believe it was fifth grade, one of the assignments that we were given was to memorize a poem. That poem included these lines:
“Give me your tired, your poor
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free
The wretched refuse of your teaming shore
Send these, the homeless tempest tossed to me
I lift my lamp beside the Golden Door.
_ Emma Lazarus_
My guess is that since this is no longer applicable, we should remove it from the base of the Statute of Liberty. Maybe we should remove the Statute as well.:
Kraaken – there is a difference between coming in legally at Ellis Island and sneaking across the border.
Vince Jankoski,
Should and shouldn’t are abstractions.
We are talking about reality at the moment.
Join in if you get a chance.
Like the First Responders do when people need people.
“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” –plaque on Statue of Liberty
Spinny sez: “never mind we got people to kill, maim, and destroy in order to save them.”
All these arguments and comments would be moot if we had a real, just big enough government in the business of governing a people for their earned benefit along the lines of the American Constitution. We DO NOT HAVE SUCH A GOVERNMENT! We have the Illuminati Corporation run by psycho’s who bring you things like endless war and the NDA Act!
1995 Steamy Guatemalan love story. NJ Senator Robert Torricelli and Bianca Jagger (Rolling Stones Ex wife of Mic Jagger). Old news, but fun.
SCORCHED-EARTH TACTICS. Despite so many GOP-friendly positions, Torricelli’s scorched-earth tactics have made him more than a few Republican enemies.
Many GOP lawmakers haven’t forgiven him for leaking intelligence in 1995 that linked a Guatemalan colonel on the CIA payroll to the murders of an American innkeeper and a guerrilla leader.
At the time, the divorced Torricelli was dating Bianca Jagger, the human rights activist and former wife of Mick. “He’s more interested in getting press attention than in getting things done,” scoffs a GOP Hill staffer.
Progressives are morons:
I know what you mean. I have been to parties where people know I am a conservative/llibertarian and will stand right in front of me and start talking about how stupid conservatives are and other things along that same line.
It really amazes me no matter how many times it happens. At some point they are insulting me as well as the people they are speaking about. Most seem to be government workers with at least a BS so they arent ignorant.
The same for many of the progressive/liberals who post here, they are quick or were quick to call people with whom they disagreed sociopaths, psychopaths, racists and other horrendous things.
I would just ignore it if I were you, most of the liberals who post here or did post here are no smarter than anyone else. Although they think they are, which is amusing in itself.
SMM, raff, I don’t think Progressives are Morons likes you. You must have really hit a nerve to induce so much hateful spew. It’s amazing how much energy is spent is such hateful rhetoric. It can actually shorten one’s lifespan. (“One” is the person spewing the hate.) It affects those to whom it is directed only if they pay close attention and internalize it. In all of those posts, including the back and forth, I don’t see a single honest critique or idea. What a waste of space.
Progressives are morons,
Thank you for supporting my position. My point, exactly. Exemplary.
Yes, we’re cowards. Only brave children such as yourself invent anonymous nasty slogans for profile names, before spewing fighting words.
Does your mom know how you’re using her computer?
I pity you for the mind that you live in. Adolescence is a rough time, but some of us grow out of it.
Good luck with that.
Bob Kauten – nice ad hominem attack