Children as Pawns

Pawns in the Immigration Debates———————–

                A commentary

                By J. F. Kelly, Jr.

Advocates for open borders have accused the Trump Administration of using children as pawns in its efforts to end illegal immigration. By instituting a zero-tolerance policy for those who enter our country illegally, it criminalizes, they say, those seeking asylum or a better life for their children or themselves. Put aside, for a moment the obvious demagoguery here. What responsible parents aren’t seeking a better life for their children? Responsible parents, however, don’t break the law to obtain it. Actually, the administration is not just now criminalizing the act of entering the country illegally. It is already a crime here as it is in most countries, including those they came from.

 

My dictionaries define crime as an act committed in violation of a law and a criminal as one who commits a crime. Even Siri agrees. As much as we may sympathize with the plight of most illegal immigrants, they are, by definition, criminals and we are a nation of laws. Our own search for a better life for our children or ourselves does not give us license to trespass on our neighbor’s property and share it with him.  Moreover, they are not all asylum seekers or immigrants in search of a new land to pledge allegiance to. Illegal border crossing has spawned criminal industries including drug and human smuggling enterprises. In the final analysis, crime does not lead to good outcomes and decriminalizing or rationalizing it promotes disrespect for laws in general. We don’t have the luxury of picking and choosing which laws we will obey and which we will ignore because we don’t like them.

 

If anyone is using children as pawns in the immigration wars, it is those who bring children with them into our country illegally. What responsible parents would make illegal immigrants out of their innocent children, taking them from their homes and native countries, subjecting them to a perilous and probably fruitless journey to a strange new land, risking death, illness and abuse?

 

Attorney General Jeff Sessions recently announced the zero tolerance policy for those caught entering the United States illegally. That means they probably will be incarcerated pending prosecution for committing a crime, not just deported or released pending a hearing which they probably would not show up for. If they were foolish enough to bring children with them, these children will be taken from them and placed in shelters. This happens every day, by the way, when parents are arrested and prosecuted for crimes other than illegal entry. We don’t jail children for the crimes of their parents or excuse criminals because they are parents.

 

There is a correct way to seek asylum and it involves requesting it at an embassy, consulate, port of entry, or a border crossing, not just sneaking across a border and surrendering to a Border Patrol agent, who then has little recourse other than to enforce the law, that the agent took an oath to enforce, and arrest the law breaker. The granting of asylum is often a complex and lengthy process because the asylum seekers must convince authorities that their lives are at risk if they return to the country they left because of religious, political or ethnic persecution. Seeking a better life, or the American dream, or a job, or escaping crime, or criminal gang activity, or drug gang wars are not conditions that asylum was designed to address. It should be obvious that the United States cannot possibly provide a safe haven for everyone dealing with these conditions when it can’t even manage to solve its own homeless problem.

 

Parents who, in spite of warnings from the U.S. government, continue to bring children into this country illegally will probably stay in federal jails while their children are placed in Health and Human Services (HHS) shelters. These shelters, however, are at or near capacity and HHS is exploring additional options including using military bases, a particularly bad idea, since the problem would be out of sight, out of mind. Better to build or lease shelters among the civilian populace so that the open borders folks can see up close, right in their own neighborhoods, the results of the immigration policies they support so passionately. The charge from some of these liberals that the administration’s immigration enforcement policies result in ripping children and babies from the arms of their immigrant mothers is particularly ironic. Would that they displayed such compassion when late term babies are ripped from the womb as a result of their abortion on demand policies.

June 17, 2018

 

Immigration Politics

Immigration Demagoguery——————

                A commentary

                By J. F. Kelly, Jr.

There are plenty of things to criticize Donald Trump about, not the least of which is his communications style. But his impulsiveness and blunt speech are part of who he is and that’s not likely to ever change. We knew this long before he was elected. His critics may consider it to be not presidential enough but it is now because he is president. They may hate it but they’ve had well over a year to get used to it. Yet, hardly a day passes without another burst of outrage from the left and their media outlets over a Trump remark. The least that they should do is to consider them in context, but that would probably not generate enough fake news to suit them.

 

Case in point is the reaction to a Trump remark which supposedly described illegal immigrants as animals. He was, in fact, referring to those who were members of the notorious Salvadoran gang known as MS 13. The remark was immediately taken out of context by the usual suspects including, of course, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). Sen. Chuck felt compelled to insist that our ancestors and his were not animals. It’s a relief to know that. Rep. Pelosi pointed out that all illegal immigrants, which presumably would include those who are members of MS 13, are people, not animals. OK, but only technically in the case of the gang members. Anyway, lighten up. Mr. Trump was just using a common metaphor.

 

As New York Times columnist Bret Stephens wrote, this is sheer demagoguery. It is also a prime example of creating fake news by taking remarks out of context to score political cheap shots and it is one reason why public trust in politicians and the mainstream media is in decline. Many people don’t trust either to tell the whole truth when it’s in their interest to do otherwise. For politicians, that interest is in scoring political points. For the media, it’s generating controversy, keeping a story alive or generating a new one. The media should be in the business of reporting and commenting on news, not creating it.

 

The gangsters that belong to MS 13 are brutal criminals, most of whom came here illegally. They are not, of course, your typical immigrant. They are thugs who kidnap, murder, rape and extort. They have been described as the mafia of our generation and have been implicated in many of the homicides in the greater Los Angeles area. To compare them to animals, as Mr. Stephens wrote, is unfair to animals. But Mr. Stephens then reverts to more liberal sentiments. The gang was formed in the 1980’s in Los Angeles. Many of its members were deported by the Clinton administration only to grow stronger and return. Stephens seems to imply that their deportation was an example of the law of unintended consequences and he chides conservatives for not seeming to understand how deportation made matters worse. Is he suggesting that they should not have been deported?

 

The fault, of course, lies not in having deported them, but rather in allowing them to enter the country in the first place by failing to address the growing problem of illegal immigration. This president is trying to address that problem but these efforts are hampered by liberal myths and demagoguery including the notion that all illegal immigrants are good people seeking a better life. Not all of them. Not by a long shot.

 

The MS 13 gang in Salvador is just one of the gangs in Central America that have driven hordes of asylum seekers north through Mexico to the U. S. border. As long as these gangs are allowed to flourish in their native countries, they will continue to generate asylum seekers, all of whom would prefer to come to the United States. While we should show compassion for these people, the United States simply cannot be a refuge for all of them especially when we are not doing enough for our own homeless population. Eventually countries have to clean up their own crime problems. Their people must demand it instead of fleeing from their country.

 

Unemployment is no longer a problem in the United States. While it may not be one’s dream job, there is a job for every unemployed person who really wants to work. Moreover, our population is ageing and the birth rate declining, so yes, we do need immigrants; legal ones, that is. And, yes, we do need to overhaul our immigration policy to align it more to our county’s needs rather than to the needs of the immigrants. But first we must fix our broken, still-porous borders and stop, not just slow, illegal immigration with its associated drug and human trafficking. Blocking the president’s efforts to do this by denying needed funding and rallying opposition by cheap demagoguery will only delay needed immigration reform. Democrats should keep this in mind.

June 10, 2018

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Anti-Israeli Bias at the UN

The UN’s Anti-Israeli Bias—————————–

                A commentary

                By J. F Kelly, Jr.

President Donald Trump kept yet another of his campaign promises by moving the U.S embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. Previous presidents have promised to do so but none followed through. Imagine that; a president that actually does what he promised. What a novel concept!

 

The move, naturally, enraged the easily enraged Muslim world. This was expected. But the volume of criticism from elsewhere, including our European allies, was disappointing, if not entirely unexpected. It was a needless provocation, a reversal of policy and a threat to the peace process, critics said. “What peace process?” one might ask. The U.S. has taken upon itself over the past decades multiple efforts to broker peace between Israel and the Palestinians leading to an independent Palestine, all to no avail, largely because of the intransigence of the PLO leaders. No matter what has been offered by the Israelis in terms of land for peace, it has been rejected by the Palestinian leaders and, of course, their ultimate wish is for the destruction of the Jewish state. How do you bargain with people who wish for your destruction?

 

Had the Palestinian leaders bargained in good faith, they would have had an independent state by now. As matters stand, there is no peace process and it is doubtful that even a dealmaker like Trump could broker one. Israel has largely lost interest in offering land for peace. Who can blame them? They don’t need another hostile Arab state on their border. They pulled out of Gaza, leaving the Palestinians in control and look at how that’s turned out, with Hamas, a terrorist organization, now in control.

 

Mahmoud Abbas has said that by moving the embassy to Jerusalem, the U.S. has disqualified itself as an unbiased peace broker forever. So be it. It was a fool’s errand, anyway. And yes, we are biased in favor of our ally, Israel, after years of moral equivocation, trying to show balance and contrived objectivity. Twice invaded by Arab armies, Israel remains the only pro-American democracy in an area where that is in very short supply. This administration, for all its faults, keeps its promises and supports its friends.

 

Speaking of support, we could use a little more of it from our European friends and the world community. When Palestinians in Gaza rioted after the embassy opened, hurling rocks and firebombs and rushing the border, Israeli soldiers opened fire, killing over fifty Palestinians including some women and children who reportedly were recruited by Hamas so that they might become casualties and inflame public opinion against the Israelis. It worked and the leaders of the formerly great colonial powers of Europe were quick to condemn the Israeli response. “Deeply troubling,” sniffed U.K.’s prime minister, calling for an investigation.

 

“Israel has a responsibility to calibrate its use of force,” said the U.N.’s special coordinator for Middle East peace. “It must protect its borders,” he generously allowed, “but must do so proportionally.” How do they do that, I wonder? By laying down their rifles and picking up the rocks thrown at them to throw back at the invaders? Must they make an effort to ensure that there are an equal number of casualties on both sides? Kuwait, which the U.S. rescued from Saddam Hussein’s armies not long ago, accused Israel of being an occupying power. Israel, a tiny nation, was never the aggressor but fought to defend itself from numerically superior invading Arab armies. It won each time against all odds and kept some of the land it seized just as we did in wars we fought against Spain and Mexico.

 

Fourteen members of the Security Council condemned Israel for using excess force against unarmed civilians. When the Palestinians rushed the border, they were armed with sling-launched rocks and incendiary devices. One is equally dead whether killed by a rock, a firebomb or a bullet. Said U. S. ambassador to the U.N., Nikki Haley, Israel did no more than any other country would do to protect its borders. She walked out while the council debated another of its resolutions condemning Israel, which the U.S., of course will veto. Here’s a better idea. How about cutting U.S. funding to this bloated and dysfunctional organization that provides comfortable employment to hordes of feckless diplomats who specialize in criticizing America and Israel. Even better, let’s give the world body notice that it’s time to look for another country to host its headquarters. I’m sure we can find a far more productive use for the land.

June 3, 2018