Separating immigrant families and imprisoning children

[Starlight]

Amusing tweet from MSNBC's Chris Hayes today:

Currently, the Trump administration is arguing that its family-separation policy:

- is a deterrent

- is biblically compliant

- is the Democrats' fault

- does not exist.

[Starlight]

In general I am in support of a more hard-line stance on illegal immigration. The problem is close to out of control, and it needs to be reigned in.

All the studies I have seen suggest that the number of illegal immigrants in the US has been decreasing since 2008. (With the US economy doing poorly and some of Mexican & central American economies doing a bit better a lot of illegal immigrants left the US)

If the yearly flows of illegal immigrants have been net negative for the last 10 years, I struggle to see how it can be accurately labelled a "problem [that] is close to out of control". What appears out of control are the perceptions of Americans, who seem to think their country is being flooded with illegal immigrants, when actually that was true 2 decades ago but isn't true now.

[Yttrium]

I saw pictures of some of the cages on the news. I can't really object to children being separated from their parents during detention. I can object to putting the children in prison-like conditions. Not only is it inhumane, but it negates the reason for separating the children from the parents.

[seer]

I saw pictures of some of the cages on the news. I can't really object to children being separated from their parents during detention. I can object to putting the children in prison-like conditions. Not only is it inhumane, but it negates the reason for separating the children from the parents.

They are only held there for 72 hours until they are transferred to HHS. It is only the initial intake according to the news conference today. And yes, both Obama and Bush did the same thing.

[seer]

But, but, what about when the Obama administration did something bad like this one time!?!

Where did he do it just one time? It was policy under both Bush and Obama.

[carpedm9587]

All the studies I have seen suggest that the number of illegal immigrants in the US has been decreasing since 2008. (With the US economy doing poorly and some of Mexican & central American economies doing a bit better a lot of illegal immigrants left the US)

If the yearly flows of illegal immigrants have been net negative for the last 10 years, I struggle to see how it can be accurately labelled a "problem [that] is close to out of control". What appears out of control are the perceptions of Americans, who seem to think their country is being flooded with illegal immigrants, when actually that was true 2 decades ago but isn't true now.

I'm am finding some substantiation for those claims. I find that the volume of illegal immigrants in the U.S. climbed from 0.54 M in 1969 to about 11.5M in 2006, and has stayed roughly at that level since then. The steepest rise in this population was between 1983 and 2000 (presidencies of Reagan, Bush, and Clinton). If it has been essentially flat since 2006, that suggests a significant drop in inflow and/or a corresponding increase in outflow. I don't know which. I do think 11M illegal immigrants is more than I would like to see be the case.

[Yttrium]

They are only held there for 72 hours until they are transferred to HHS. It is only the initial intake according to the news conference today. And yes, both Obama and Bush did the same thing.

Sounds like a pretty traumatizing three days for young children.

[seer]

Sounds like a pretty traumatizing three days for young children.

Are you kidding me? How traumatizing do you think it was being brought here with the myriad of dangers on the way? If the parents were worried about them being traumatized they should have stayed home.

[Starlight]

Ann Coulter went on Fox News and claimed the kids are "child actors". Just when I thought the crazy right had reached the bottom of the barrel...

[Yttrium]

Are you kidding me? How traumatizing do you think it was being brought here with the myriad of dangers on the way? If the parents were worried about them being traumatized they should have stayed home.

No, I'm not kidding. Any dangers that were being faced were with the parents there. Then they're forced into a scary situation without their parents. Just because the parents screwed up doesn't mean we should take it out on the kids too. Just make the situation less scary looking, that's all I care about.

[Tassman]

Amnesty International has some very interesting points on the current situation:







Here is the entire article: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/ne...ation-torture/

But by a large, 20-point (55 percent to 35 percent) margin, Republicans supported the policy."

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-polit...milies-parents

But we're not surprised are we?

[Tassman]

Ann Coulter went on Fox News and claimed the kids are "child actors". Just when I thought the crazy right had reached the bottom of the barrel...

[Starlight]

They are only held there for 72 hours until they are transferred to HHS.

One of the problems that's coming out seems to be that the Trump administration is not doing a good job of reuniting the kids and parents at the end of the process. So if mother and child turn up at the border seeking asylum, the child gets stolen by the government and caged and sent away somewhere with HHS 72 hours later who don't much bother to track the kids, and then when the mother's asylum petition is rejected and she is turfed out back into Mexico to wander back to whatever nasty country she was fleeing from... and her child is not returned to her.

[Starlight]

But by a large, 20-point (55 percent to 35 percent) margin, Republicans supported the policy."

It's pretty simple: They hate immigrants and/or love Trump and/or love triggering the libs, more than they love families. #RepublicanValues

[oxmixmudd]

One of the problems that's coming out seems to be that the Trump administration is not doing a good job of reuniting the kids and parents at the end of the process. So if mother and child turn up at the border seeking asylum, the child gets stolen by the government and caged and sent away somewhere with HHS 72 hours later who don't much bother to track the kids, and then when the mother's asylum petition is rejected and she is turfed out back into Mexico to wander back to whatever nasty country she was fleeing from... and her child is not returned to her.

There is much more than that. On the issue of asylum. At the 'official' entry points guards block the way. The people are afraid. They are running from in some cases certain death at the hands of corrupt governments or cartels. They get here, they see they'll be arrested or worse if they try to go in the 'official' entry points so they try to go across at what might be a safer entry point and face this where they may get deported and their children not returned to them. And in some cases they would PREFER that because they know they return to almost certain death and at least if their kids are here they might survive.

I would not want to be standing before Christ at judgement having supported these policies.





Jim