Mexico's Children

Update: This article says that the children at the Nogales Border Patrol station are mostly from Guatemala, El Salvador, or Honduras, NOT Mexico. (It also says most of them have parents already in the US and these children will only be released to parents. Shouldn't the entire family be sent back when mom and dad come to get them then? What in the world is going on here?)

It seems that Mr. obama's blatant refusal to enforce US law - US immigration law in particular - and his recent statements saying he would not deport illegal alien children has spawned a wave of children being sent over our borders. What should we do? Send them back or adopt them.

Americans have been conditioned to think of Mexico as some third world h**l hole. A country so awful that it would be inhumane to deport illegals back to it - especially children.  In truth, Mexico is not even on this list of the world's most miserable countries. (And just for the sake of bursting the bubble that such people will have a life of beer and skittles once they come here, the US was not on this list of the world's 5 happiest nations.) Mexico is a nation with its own problems, just like any other and the USA has no obligation allow unfettered access to the resources provided for our own citizenry to the citizens of Mexico. (I reference Mexico here, because, at this point in history, the largest numbers of illegal immigrants are Mexican citizens - although this solution can and should be applied to all illegal immigrants.)

Why are we rounding up these children, vaccinating them and sending them further in to our nation? Round them up, give them a good meal and send them home. Then charge the government of Mexico for their "vacation" here. We owe them no other obligation than to treat their children more humanely than to send them trekking back to their homes through the desert unaccompanied.

For those who object that these are just children and their folks are sending them here in hopes that their lives will be better out of a sense of sacrifice for them, okay. Here's the other alternative. We keep them. All of them. We send them to child protective services where they will be assigned to an orphanage and adopt them out to American families. But here's the catch. If you send your child here, unaccompanied, for a better life, you give up that child in perpetuity. The Mexican government (and other governments that are allowing their citizens to come here undocumented) should be made either to pay for the maintenance and return of these children or to declare them orphans and allow them to be stripped of their former citizenship to be adopted by America.

This would not be amnesty because the caveat to the loss of their old citizenship lies in this: They will be declared orphans in the sense that they will be giving up all former familial ties. In addition, when a child is pushed across the border for this purpose, their adult relatives lose, in perpetuity, the right to apply for American citizenship.

That's right, if these parents really think their children will be better off in America, then they send them knowing that they will lose, not only their child, but any hope of rejoining that child once they have been granted citizenship here. They should also know that the foster care system here is not exactly spectacular either and their children would be at its mercy. Since there is an argument to be made that these children are being used to gain citizenship down the road for their relatives, this incentive needs to be removed.

These children should not be used as the rope in a political tug of war. It needs to be made clear to other nations, and any discontented citizens of those nations, that US citizenship cannot be gained by risking the lives and health of children.

"Lo, children are an heritage of the Lord: and the fruit of the womb is his reward. As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; so are children of the youth. Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them: they shall not be ashamed, but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate." ~ Psalm 127:3-5