what a complete and utter asshole this jerk is. I'm ashamed he's an American.

But he'd shoot living kids because of FREE-DUMB.

I favor granting citizenship to those young people who were raised in the US and are here.

I live in Los Angeles and I love my immigrant neighbors. We have immigrants in our family -- come recent ones although my family goes way back.

But, we are getting immigrants often college-aged from all over the world, from Asian countries like China, from Africa, from Latin America, from Europe (yes, from Europe. You don't see them, but they too come illegally in some cases. I know some.), from the Middle East. We get students who overstay their visas or who come on student visas and then look for some sort of a job and then have a baby and stay.

The numbers of immigrants coming to a country in which we are already suffering from an economic crisis, low wages and too few jobs? Immigration is great in times when the economy is good and jobs plentiful. That is not the case now. It isn't that the immigrants are bad. It is that our economy is in no condition to absorb them or take care of their needs.

And this immigration problem is not just in the US. The recent European election results in which in countries like France bigoted right-wing parties increased their share of the vote show that immigration is an international problem.

The idea of a global economy sounds idealistic. But in reality, it rapidly pushes indigenous people into lifestyles and economic realities that in turn push them out. The idea of the global economy has meant a lower standard of living for most people, lower than the new technologies would suggest it should be.

The heart says to have compassion for these children, and that is good. But the problem is far more challenging than that.

First, countries that are throwing their children out or scaring them out or harassing them out or that are not taking care of their own children need to be held responsible for the futures of their kids. Mexico sends illegal immigrants to the US in large numbers. They are economic immigrants. Remember. The richest man in the world is from Mexico. The disparity of wealth in Mexico means that Mexico has an extremely wealthy class and many very poor people. That is where disparity in incomes if allowed to follow its natural course leads.

Second, we need an international program on family planning. No family or nation has the right to have more children than it can reasonably provide for. Every child deserves at least to have a possibility of survival. At the same time, the earth does not have limitless resources, and our technology is also limited in terms of what it can help us provide.

So we should have compassion but that compassion should reach to resolving problems in the countries that are pushing their children out into our country. The Pope does not demonstrate compassion when he talks about charity for the poor but encourages families and entire countries to have children they cannot possibly provide for.

I do not oppose immigration, but these kids present serious problems. They are not prepared to take care of themselves in our society. What skills do they bring with them? What education? How will they make a living? Who is going to take care of them?

If they are escaping violence and gangs, they have come to the wrong place because we have more than enough of violence and gangs here.

The answer is not simply to give the kids a hug and offer them a hotel room. That would be easy. That is what we have done to some extent since the Reagan era. But it is much more complex than that.

When my ancestors came here, they could work and then buy land of their own. That is no longer possible. When the post-WWII immigrants through the administration of GWB came, there were jobs for them. There was hope. But what can we offer these newcomers when our own children are hard-pressed to repay their student loans on their pay in service jobs. We do not have a manufacturing sector that can hire as much unskilled labor as the world can send to our shores.

We need to have a rational discussion about this, an international discussion. This is not just an American problem.

but this idiot holding a sign advocating force and violence next time isn't a place to start and my post was about him. We have to accept these children like refugees are accepted in other parts of the world. America, unlike many other countries, has the resources to deal with them and we do have the resources.
While we have plenty of problems here, they can't compare to the economic strife and violence these children are fleeing. As a parent, I can't imagine being desperate enough to send my children away for their own safety, but that's whats going on here.

When we went into Iraq, we created many refugees. The problems that were caused by the creation of those refugees have only begun.

We have to get to the bottom of this. This country is not wealthy enough to care for all the refugees who would like to come here. That is my point.

We are no longer a country with a big frontier. We will always have and should always have immigrants. But immigration cannot solve the problems that cause the immigration. It takes some cooperation and wise management in the countries from which immigrants flow to ease the situation that forces immigration.

Sorry, but we will not be able to deal with all of these parentless children coming from Central America without our children paying a huge price.

The news is talking about these children, but the problem of exiled people, of refugees is international and the US taking in 100,000 kids a year out of compassion will not solve the real problems.

The giant flaw in this argument is immigrants need goods and services too. As a result, immigrants have historically created 1 new job per 10 immigrants.


So?


So now you're arguing that we get to decide not only how many children people in the US have, but we get to decide how many children people in other countries are allowed to have.

Do you realize just how horrifically Orwellian you're being here?


And so we should abandon these children today, because 20 years from now their home countries might be slightly less corrupt.


Actually, you do. You just like to pretend you don't in order to not have to deal with how horrific your position is.


Yes, we should send back all the 5-year-olds who haven't completed college.


They were being sent to live with relatives already in the US.


You fix that by fixing the insanity that is our student loan programs. You don't blame the student loan program's failures on immigrants, because that doesn't fix the problem.

Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.

Why isn't that being followed? If they have family here, there is no problem, but then why are they coming in without visas, without going through the legal process.

I am saying we need an international approach and solution to immigration problems.

When Mexico has the richest man in the world among its citizens yet has such severe poverty and crime (police not well enough paid and therefore very inclined to taking bribes and to corruption), the problem is not to just accept that fact. The problem is to throw the challenge of dealing with income disparity right back on Mexico.

I do not oppose immigration. My husband is an immigrant. My children were not born in this country. I lived overseas for years as a foreigner in other countries and saw the immigration problems there. In addition, I live in an immigrant neighborhood. My son-in-law is the son of immigrants who lived here only a short time before he was born. I support citizenship for the illegal immigrants who came in recent years or who grew up here.

But sending minors to America, sending them into a dangerous system of smuggling them into the US? No. I do not favor that. The parents who do that are acting very irresponsibly. Would you send your 14-year-old on a trip if the guide was most likely part of a gang himself?

This is not an American problem. This is an international problem. And it needs an international solution.

America no longer can reach out its arms and offer factory jobs that pay livable wages. Life really is not that promising here any more. You can't work on a farm and eventually save enough to buy your own land. You could do that a couple of generations ago. But in this age of corporate farming? No way.

And as I have pointed out, if these children really are trying to escape violence and gangs, the cities of America (which is where they will end up) is a strange place to come. Canada might make more sense. But the US? No way.

If immigrants only create 1 job per 10 immigrants, what are the other 9 immigrants to do for a living in a country that does not have enough jobs for the people who live here?

What kind of future do these children face here? What jobs will they qualify for? Are you ready to adopt one of them into your family. Because someone is going to need to do that.

by the time it is complete. Thus making it moot. Yes, even the 5-year-olds.

Because that has never worked before, but THIS TIME FOR SURE!!! Hey Rocky! Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat!


Your suggested policies say otherwise.


If my choices were that, or death at the hands of the local gangs, of course I would.


Methinks you don't quite understand just how bad of a situation they are fleeing.


So? You do realize the majority of adults already in the US do not own their own farm, right? Or any other kind of land.


Yep, you definitely don't understand just how bad of a situation they are fleeing.


The historic rate is 1.1 jobs per immigrant. The immigrant takes the 1, and creates the 0.1 via demand for goods and services. As a result, every 10 immigrants creates 1 additional job.


One that exists, instead of one in the ground.


Whatever they get training for. They don't have to cross the border and immediately go to work. They're still kids.


The unaccompanied minors are being sent to live with other family, not just thrown over the border. Those other family members may or may not be documented.

So, let's do something about that problem. To what extent do you think that the US caused that problem? The wars in the 1980s? What was it?

The point about the fact that we no longer have land relates to the question of what unskilled laborers will do for a living when they come to the US?

The question about immigration is not whether we on DU have the compassion to share, to make room for immigrants. The question is to what extent we can expect the average American to share and make room for immigrants.

We here may favor generous immigration policies. But the people in the US who will get lower pay because immigrants come in and are willing to work in fields like construction, etc. for less than an American-born worker would expect displace them.

When I worked for a homeless project that tried to give homeless people mostly Black males housing and jobs, I had the chance to talk to a leader in the African-American community who said that the influx of workers from Mexico, the immigrants, had taken the jobs that poor African-Americans had traditionally filled in our city. He blamed immigrants for some of the increased unemployment among African-Americans.

I do not know how justified his concerns were. But it is human nature to accuse the newcomer when you feel yourself displaced and disadvantaged, when you feel you have lost something that was yours or to which you had a right or which you at least had some hope of obtaining.

When my family came here very early on, as immigrants, they could work sometimes as indentured servants, and then earn their freedom and eventually buy land. There was lots of land, and it was opened to settlers who paid relatively low prices for it. We were then the land of opportunity, truly the land of opportunity.

Personally, I think, viewing the situation from California, that Central and South America are now the lands of opportunity. They are the countries in which the possibilities for improvement, for modernization, for development, for harmonious living are very great, probably greater than here in the US.

The countries from which the children are coming need to deal with the violence and crime. Sending their children here is a big mistake because unless our economy improves a lot in the next ten years, the children are likely to be the brunt of a backlash against illegal immigration.

We are a country that is struggling against decline. The countries in Central and South America are on the rise. It makes not sense for families to sent their children here. It makes sense for the families to organize in their own countries to fight the crime.

Tens of thousands of children first, then their parents and extended families. By the time it's all over, millions more American citizens, 90% + voting Democratic.

By forever changing the demographics of this country, White Privilege in this country will be smashed forever.

Our mature generation can come to grips with the issues or we can yet again kick the can down the road to a more desperate, and highly polarized, one.

We are here in this situation, today, due to the fecklessness of those who've been in positions of responsibility, and going back to the 1980's. And let's call it like it is. We are here today in this situation in no small part due to the efforts of those businesses, and the Chamber of Commerce, who's main concern is cheaper labor and undermining the position of existing labor.

They set out the welcome wagon, they should have to shoulder a large part of any expense and inconvenience. And the wrongdoing of unauthorized immigration is subordinate to the greater wrongdoing of those who instigated it. I can't strongly censure someone for not obeying our law, not when they are getting cheered on by supposed pillars of our society.

Relocation costs for recent unauthorized immigrants should be budgeted. And we should set it up so that part of that cost is assessed against businesses that exploit workers. That will set the right tone by not demonizing the workers, but rather those who instigated, and were essential in the continuation, of the unmanageable situation we have today.

what about the responsibility of US drug policy in contributing to the corruption of Latin American governments, and the prevalence of gang violence? What about US economic policies that exploit the labour and resources of developing countries while forcing farmers into poverty?

The drug trade is neither just an American problem nor just a South and Central American problem.

In a way, the drug lords and gangs play one country off another -- as with this immigration issue. On KPFK this evening, I think it was Ian Masters who said that the drug gangs profit both from the drug trade and from the coyote business (bringing immigrants across the border to the US).

So, this is a very complicated matter. We need international rules and solutions to the underlying problems including to the drug trade and to the exploitation of people in Central and South America not just by us, maybe even not primarily by us.

Beggary due to trade policy; NAFTA's effect on Mexican farmers has been catastrophic because the USA has been flooding the Mexican market with subsidised corn. And the drug trade is largely a US/Latin American problem as the US represents both the largest and geographically closest market (and cocaine doesn't grow anywhere outside the Andes).

How do they not explode from all the hate they're holding in their hearts? These are children they're doing this to. Don't they realize how bad this makes them look?

These are children whose parents have basically abandoned them in the hope that they will safely reach some relative or some imagined relative in a country that the parents know about only from movies and the news and gossip. It's horrific.

This is a huge international problem. Because it is not just happening here.

In Europe, right-wing, anti-immigrant parties gained a lot of votes in recent elections. That is a sign that the problem of immigration and economic disparity has gotten out of hand.

The signs are awful, but they are just the extreme expression of what is or will be a very common feeling if we don't act internationally to deal with the underlying causes for this swell of immigration.

The global economy has increased the economic pressure on people in third-world countries. The internet has opened up information about what it is they are missing in their home countries. This is an international problem. Our opening our borders and letting everyone in who wants to come will not solve it.

Never have and I never will. I understand how one becomes a new citizen of the USA, probably more than most DUers. It's a qualification process which can take years to complete. You don't just show up without refugee status and expect to be welcomed with open arms and to become an American down the road. I know that.

You seem to have some strong opinions on this topic. I'd like to ask you a couple of questions if you don't mind?

First: What do you propose we do with these children immigrants who are already in the country? I'm not asking about the short term, we're doing the best our system will allow us to do already. I'm asking about in the long term. How do we deal with those who have no legal reason to have been entering the country, and have no family here to help mitigate their care? What should be the US's official response to the unaccompanied children crossing our borders today without proper documentation and parents to oversee their well being?

Follow up question: How do we deal with Mexico's apathy in their part with letting these immigrants pass through their country to arrive at our borders? Mexico has unofficially taken the stance of, "once they're on your soil, they're your problem." Understanding that Mexico is dealing with more of these immigrants in their country than we are at the moment, and that they know most of them would leave Mexico for the US if given the chance, how do we persuade them to help us by stopping more of them at their southern borders? Take into consideration that the countries these children are coming from are either dealing with worse issues, painfully corrupt, or both. It's not as if any of these countries have any real concern in the exodus that's currently taking place. How do we manage to slow the influx of these immigrants through Mexico from reaching our borders?

Also, there's the fact that many of the current influx of immigrants are coming here due to false information reported in their media that they'd be welcome here. It's almost as if this "crisis" was by design. Offer a lifeline to a society rife with gangs, violence and youth deaths, and then stand back and watch the show. With no regards for the fact that it's children's lives you're turning into political footballs.

They are as unprepared to go to the home countries of their parents as the children and teenagers arriving here on their own are to come here.

I'm pondering the same questions you ask.

What is really compassionate in this situation? What is realistic? What is the best for the children? What is the best for our country in the long run?

And let's keep in mind that we also accept people including students and young people from many other countries, people who go through at least some admission process before coming here.

It seems cruel to send these unaccompanied, visa-less children back to the environment they came from, but is it really? How will they survive, how will those who really have no family here or whose relatives don't want them fend for themselves. I live in an immigrant area. It's really tough to be an immigrant anywhere in the world (I've lived in other countries as an outsider), but it is going to be very, very tough for these kids.

I notice poverty. I worked with homeless people on a homeless project. My father was a minister and a social worker. He dealt with impoverished people "immigrating" from the South to the North. The adjustment was difficult for most although they were "immigrating" within the same country.

Each case of each immigrant child will take a lot of work and investment and time just to process. We have to deal with the core problems in the countries of origin. That is just as true for these children as it is for the North African and Middle Eastern immigrants into Europe.

I wish I had the answers. The people holding the nasty signs certainly don't, but neither do the idealists who seem to think that we can handle the numbers of immigrants who would like to come here if they could, the immigrants who watch our TV shows or movies or hear gossip and think this is the land of milk and honey. The reality is that our country's economy is not expanding. Growth is slow here. There is a lot more need and capacity for economic growth and therefore jobs in Central America than there is here. It's a matter of reform in the Central American countries.

That's jumping into the lions den of hate and ignorance.

Kind of puts DU's endemic Texas hatred is perspective, don't you think?

They would have been welcomed in Los Angeles. But that would not solve the terrible problem, the crises that are creating so many refugees and immigrants at this time.

The parents of these children are so wrong to send them up here as they have.

We need fair immigration reform, and we need it now, not next year.

It's sort of a return to sender situation. Or, to be more precise, it's political hot potato with a bunch of children.

My first year in Texas I drove from Houston to Phx.

It was a long, long trip. And that was just to the Texas border. El Paso. 770 miles.

Saying it's "return to sender" is like saying, "They're from New York City. Send them back to Chicago. Same country, return to sender."

Only 45 miles difference in the distances.

Dallas county led by county commission Clay Jenkins and Dallas mayor Mike Rawlins are preparing to take 2000 of most vulnerable of the kids. Meetings are taking place right now to choose locations to house them under humane conditions and the churches and charities of this region are stepping to plate to help. Dallas took in thousand of New Orleans refugees after Hurricane Katrina and they are doing the right thing now. I am proud of Dallas and hope other cities and towns will follow in its steps.

I hope Houston steps up - Houston also took in Katrina refugees.

Angel in Texas

for the GOP/T.Party that will not bode well come the Nov. elections.

We had 11, Hispanic/Latino, Spanish only Unaccompanied Minors on a flight...the word is going around by text, that they are showing up on all kinds of commercial flights, all around the country...one segment day before yesterday had 20+.

or are they flying off to a detention facility?

I'm a little confused with your post.

Only by nagging a gate agent, did someone hear that all these kids were in involved in the illegal children mess...we had them LAX-ATL...the 20+ were on a LAX-MSP flight. I didn't have time to dig through their documents (they all had different seat assignments and it was a challenge to get them boarded and seated...as well as not lose track of any of them upon arrival) but if I see more this coming weekend, I'm going to ask more questions.

Many years ago I was traveling stand by from PHX-Yuma...19ish seat aircraft at the time...the flight was virtually empty until moments before boarding, Immigration showed up with about 17 guys, illegal from Mexico, that had been picked up in PHX area. Gate agents said it happened almost every day...they were flown to Yuma and then driven to the border. He said that most would be back within a week...he had even seen some of the same guys several times! Ha! Seems at the time, Immigration just kept doing the same thing over and over.

I understand that conditions in many parts of Central America are terrible, but this just seems so risky.

And this country was not prepared for the large influx of very young people, it seems.

Were you flying on the Beechcraft 1900D? My family lives in a very rural area of Michigan, and for awhile, that was the commuter plane that went to Milwaukee where you could change planes. Folks called it the "flying cigar tube." The ride could get pretty bumpy over Lake Michigan, I'll tell you.

It should have been a (Fairchild) Swearingen Metroliner, usually just called a Metro...I just can't tell you which version. I used to think it was like a mosquito with the shape and "whine"...the thing was damned frick'n loud inside even with earplugs!

So this also makes me think about a time from Yuma to LAX (I would go to Yuma in the winter months to see my folks) on one of these aircraft. I was sitting in the very back and as we started to line up for LAX, East of the airport, we began to parallel an American DC-10...it was funny watching the whole cabin leaning to the right, watching what looked like a monster right next to us, as we or they would float up or down, all the heads would strain to look uuuuuupppp and then doooowwwnnnn. One of those memories.

Thanks for sharing.

Are they flying in from Central America or are they flying off to a detention facility?

I'd say none of these flights were originated in Central America. We're not going down there to pick people up.

As far as are they flying off to another detention faciility, in way yes, but not as ill prepared ones that were emergency shelters while ICE tried to locate relatives to send them permanently.

I'm a little confused with your post.

I think he was just stating what the flights he works on or has witnessed are composed on, not the origin or destination?

I am glad to hear Dallas is prepared to take at least 2,000 of them into a more homelike place.

I didn't think that we could be flying them in from Central America or Mexico. That would cause a major Freeper/TPer riot.

I hope that the children and teens all find a better spot very soon. The pictures from the initial detention facilities really were awful.

Today july the 4th more buses full of children are going to try and make it thru murietta california. The n.r.a. tea bagger gun nuts say they are going to stop the buses again. We must escort them thru murietta california on ours and now the children's first independence day! All liberals and democrats who can get their need to protect the children. Can you think of a better reason to lay down your life on this independence day then to protect the children.