Fox News reported that in March alone, “Border officials encountered 172,000 migrants at the border … a 71% increase from February and the latest indicator of the extent of the crisis at the southern border. The 172,000 migrants … included 18,890 unaccompanied children – a 100% increase from the already high numbers encountered in February, and the highest number recorded.” Once across the border, these children are crammed into “pens” where thousands occupy spaces that were built to contain no more than 250 children. These pens are not only grossly overcrowded, they are a breeding ground for violent and sexual assaults on helpless children. Already, the stories coming from these coops are heart-wrenching. By all accounts, this is a horrifying humanitarian crisis, and its solution is nowhere in sight.
Currently, a humanitarian crisis is defined as “a series of events that are threatening in terms of health, safety or well-being of a community or large group of people.” To solve such crises, various aid organizations provide material assistance to those affected by the predicament. In this way, we do not prevent future crises, do not help the people affected by them, but merely keep them alive and suffering. Emergency provision of food, tents, and basic medical assistance may look good in pictures circulated in order to draw more funds for the organizations that thrive on the suffering of the victims, but they do nothing to solve the problem.
Therefore, I think we need to redefine “humanitarian crisis” to include the human part of the crisis even before we consider the material part. The reason these crises are happening is that people do not receive the proper education before they immigrate. They are promised a land of unlimited opportunities and end up in cages, or refugee camps, or dropped off from buses in a small town in the middle of nowhere and left alone.
A border should be closed for everyone except those that a country wants to admit after testing that applicants meet the required criteria. If people want to immigrate to a new country to improve their condition, they should first make the necessary preparations: learn the language of the new country, acquire required work skills so they don’t become a burden on the new country’s welfare system, and acquaint themselves with the basic civics of their future home.
The current situation where people are flooding the border is a recipe for disaster. It is already happening, but it will grow much worse! In simple words, it is a suicidal policy. If it continues, we will begin to see migration in the opposite direction where the educated and affluent “relocate” to more sustainable societies. The pouring of migrants into the United States rattles the pillars of democracy. It will not be long before they collapse and America falls from the zenith to the nadir.
Still, as long as this scenario has not materialized, it is possible to avoid it. It takes resolve, but I don’t see what other option this mighty nation has.
#immigration #cbp #children
[Migrant children rest inside a pod in the Donna Department of Homeland Security holding facility, the main detention center for unaccompanied children in the Rio Grande Valley run by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), in Donna, Texas, March 30, 2021. Dario Lopez-Mills/Pool via REUTERS]