Posted on 09/02/2006 3:58:59 PM PDT by Kitten Festival
QUETZALTENANGO, Guatemala -- Across Central America, growing numbers of impoverished children appear to be setting out for the United States on their own, risking robbery, rape and death as they try to sneak illegally through Mexico and across the U.S. border.
Last year, 6,460 underage illegal immigrants from Central America were detained in the United States while traveling without their parents and sent to government shelters, a 35 percent increase over the previous year. Many others likely slipped in undetected.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Of course WE as a nation do. Of course you can do more individually if you like.
While most feel badly for these kids we have to harden ourselves knowing we can't become the Third World's orphanage at the expense of our own progeny (and I'm speaking as a product of an orphanage). Here's an excellent mission for a United Nations seeking relevance and prestige.
Excellent points all.
Do a google search for the MILLIONS we give Guatemala each year, on top of taking their residents "temporarily - 5 years ago because of flooding)
This is just part of it:
http://www.multinationalmonitor.org/hyper/issues/1993/04/mm0493_05.html
o Guatemala received nearly $91 million in U.S. assistance in 1991, despite the fact that U.S. military aid and commercial arms sales to Guatemala were suspended and the U.S. ambassador to Guatemala was recalled in December 1990. To maintain the money flow and gloss over its wretched human rights reputation, Guatemala spent more than $650,000 for Washington lobbyists and public relations experts. The law firm Patton, Boggs and Blow - at which Commerce Secretary Ron Brown was a former partner - was the biggest recipient, charging Guatemala $220,000 in 1991. Steven Schneebaum, chair of the pro bono committee and partner at Patton, Boggs and Blow, has been a member of the board of the International Human Rights Law Group for 12 years and says that the firm has done extensive work "in defense of human rights norms." As far as Guatemala is concerned, he says, "We have a client thatÆs done some bad stuff, but IÆm tired of taking the rap for every bad thing that a client has done." He attributes CPIÆs focus on Patton, Boggs and Blow to "a trend in the media now against successful firms."
Then take a look at this, so you can understand why we CAN NOT help them all!
http://www.techniguy.com/Newsletters/archives/ImmigrationasanEnvironmentalIssue.htm
1991 is too long ago. We haven't done anything for them lately and in any case, those kinds of aid packages go to employ bureaucrats, they don't help people. There needs to be a way to HELP these people with what they need right now. I'd rather that mother of that kid had a decent job in Antigua or Guatemala City and I'd rather see us - maybe the private sector, maybe someone else - do something to give it to her. Too much suffering and government throwing money at the problem in 1991 obviously hasn't done a whit of good. How did that $91 million help that lady and her son? How?
That was a great presentation.
Nonetheless, it tends to convince me that indeed environmental mythology is being used to promote racist policies.
The presentation gives no evidence that immigration is destroying the United States. Rather, immigrants are portrayed as a "red" scare while us citizens are green.
Zero population growth-- remember that bogus argument-- is portrayed as ideal. "family planning" is also idealized. "They" need to have fewer children.
The decades portrayed as immigration disaster-- since 1965-- are the most prosperous the US has ever had. In fact, the entire globe has massively profited from the growth of the US economy leading to massive reductions in poverty across key "overpopulation centers" such as China and India.
If the immigration disaster that the presenter suggests has happened since 1965 is true, why is the US economy the biggest and strongest in the world?
There is no good answer to this.
The idea that there is a practical way to stop immigration is ridiculous. As long as global conditions continue to be so transparently horrible, huge waves of human beings will try to escape. There will never be an easy consciencious solution to these human waves.
The clinical effort to appeal to the long discredited overpopulation myths and ecological collapse will not make the painful medicine go down any easier.
When our forefathers faced oppression and taxation without representation, they risked their lives and fought for their freedom. They didn't whine and complain and illegally move to another country.
I was going to post something, but you summed it up perfectly already.
The U.S. economy has been coasting on the tremendous lead it achieved after World War II. Now that our productive capabilities have been crippled for the sake of global interdependency, technological superiority has been compromised to China (wonder who's responsible for that?) and technological innovation itself has been retarded by an unneeded and uninvited population of menial laborers sucking off the infrastructure provided by and meant for citizens - don't expect your apple to look so polished in the immediate future.
We need to return to pre-1965 immigration standards that favor the best and the brightest from all over the planet rather than retain this Ted Kennedy-built monstrosity that has favored third-worlders lucky by proximity for the last four decades.
Your mistake is that it is not a case fo a more pro-immigration policy. What is needed is a pro expansion policy.
The way things are in Central America will never be allowed to change by the ruling thugs. Most of the governments Sout of the Us are failed, failing, communist, narco-communist, narco-corrupted, or some variation on that theme.
Mexico for an immediate example is a failed socialist model overrun by the narco syndicates. Doesn't mattter who the ruling party is the corruption continues unabated, as does the tidal wave of illegal emigration to the US. It is clear the Mexican government can not exert control along it's northern frontier.
This failure of the Mexican government has caused chaos in it's northern states. One could call this a de facto abandonment of territory and therefore the US would be justified in acquiring the abandoned territory as it's current situation has created a threat.
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