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A New Commentary Each Wednesday          July 16, 2014


The flood of children from Latin America, Part 3

FLASH: Democrat Senator Feinstein of California says a Federal "Human Trafficking" law can be used to stop the flood of refugee children coming to the United States from countries in Latin America, while Republican Representative Rogers of Michigan says President Obama should deport the illegal crossers now, using Executive Orders. 

   Does Senator Feinstein really expect that the coyotes in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico can be made to refrain from their murderous business? I hope she doesn't mean that we can expect their own countries to arrest them—a very difficult exercise—probably next to impossible, for the flow of money-orders from illegal workers in the USA is too precious to their economies to forsake.

   You can bet that the millions of dollars VP Joe Biden hopes to spread around in Latin America in an effort to slow the flow, will disappear down a monumental black hole of corruption, without any noticeable salutatory effect on the problem.

    Apparently Representative Rogers and a lot of other people, including two Republican candidates for Governor of Arizona who are trying to outspend each other with TV advertising; both claiming they will stop the influx—are apparently unfamiliar with Federal Public Law 101-649, better known as the Immigration Act of 1990 and the portion that deals with unaccompanied minors. I admit with no little embarrassment, that I was unfamiliar with the nuance in the law that pertains to them, until informed of my ignorance last week. 

    The bill is not new. It was introduced in the Senate by the late Senator Ted Kennedy, passed by an 81 to 17 vote and then was approved by a unanimous vote in the House of Representatives. It was signed into law on November 29th, 1990 by the 41st President of the United States, George Herbert Walker Bush, Republican—not exactly your most extreme, leftwing, screaming liberal.

    It is apparent from a cursory reading of Public Law 101-649 that the main thrust of the law pertains to keeping families together, and I think we can agree that this is a commendable humanitarian goal, despite the horrendous cost to American taxpayers. 

    The Crux: If any illegal crosser faced with a removal order can convince a federal judge that their removal from the United States would result in "exceptional and extremely unusual hardship," it is within the purview of the judge to convey upon them the status of permanent resident.

    Here is the sticking point: Each unaccompanied minor has the right to have face-time before a Federal judge, even if the jurist ultimately refuses them relief and orders them to be deported. Fair or not, stats show that getting a lawyer to plead one's case is hugely important. Either way, this protocol and procedure will clog the deportation pipeline for months, more likely years, even if a huge new flock of hearing examiners is appointed by the president today or any day soon. 

    I read this morning about illegal crossers being deported to Honduras. These included children accompanied by an adult illegal crosser, most often, a mother—not unaccompanied minors, who must be treated differently. 

    The talk of putting more "guardsmen," as one candidates call them, along the Arizona border is ludicrous. I doubt if the 101at Airborne and First Cavalry divisions combined, would be enough to stem the tide. They would be spread too thinly. The late George Patton or Norman Schwarzkopf, Junior would fail at the task.

    We will never "finish the fence," as another gubernatorial Arizona candidate is promising. It would cost enormously to hook up the few tiny stretches of the latest mutation of border fencing now being defeated by the type of high wooden ladder featured in a recent photo that has gone viral in the Internet. Janet Napolitano predicted this scenario before she was Secretary of Homeland Security. "Show me a 50-foot fence," she said, "and I'll show you a 51 foot ladder."

    As usual, politicians are making promises they can't keep. They are depending on the "blame game," to bail them out later.  

    Just one more number: according to the Pew Research Center, a conservative think tank founded by the heirs to the Sun Oil estate, by 2010, a quarter of the residents of the United States under 18 years of age are immigrants or immigrants' children.


-Phil Richardson, Observer and Storyteller


*"Water Dream," an Amazon eBook novel in which al-Qaeda operatives smuggle an atomic bomb into the USA. http://www.al-qaedajihad.com


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