The People on the Trains
one train every day
I have given the massive influx of Central Americans, especially the unaccompanied children, a lot of thought, not just recently but over the years. Before I retired as Court Administrator from the Immigration Court in San Diego, I saw many such children put in removal proceedings. I met monthly with political activist groups and Department of Health and Human Services officials to discuss our handling of these cases in San Diego. The HHS and NGO’s mostly wanted toys and dolls for the kids and the judges to speak to them, even the M 13 teenagers, with the greatest of gentleness. I mostly wanted the custodians to get the kids to court on time. I believe there are several actions that need to be taken in the invasion of 2014. Following the law and returning the illegal entrants to their country of origin is the responsible decision. In the rare instance that government persecution can be proved by a preponderance of the evidence, asylum should be granted.
But legal and rational solutions to are not on the minds of many if not most leaders in Congress, the White House, or the Federal Departments. These professional political operatives are busy trying to exploit the situation for short term and long-term political gain. They are focused on maintaining their political power and administrative authority. They are busy shifting the labor cost curve or creating a new dependent political constituency . There will be wonderfully creative cover stories to the contrary but underneath the propaganda puff pieces and pompous posturing, true Machiavellian power politics is at work.
The average citizen may ache for these border crashing children even as we want the kids sent back home. I suggest little such compassion and caring is present in the loud activities of far too many of our national political factions, right and left. The right seeks in the short term to embarrass the Obama Democrats for their apparent incompetence and, in the long run, flood the labor markets and drive down the cost of labor. Evidence suggests that the progressive left on the other hand seeks, in the short-run, to accrue a reputation as compassionate lovers of children and in the long-run seeks to further dilute the institutional memory of, and allegiance to, the country’s constitutional republican form of government. There is also a concerted effort on the part of many to use this event to create more cultural and social divisions in the United States thereby making it impossible for broad public consensus to form in the United Sates. Union managements seek potential future expansion of their dues base and heightened ability to bring liberal victories at the polls. The far left wants to destabilize the operations of the Federal government as a means of justifying fundamentally changing our form of government to a full blown authoritarian state. All factions have their cover stories but underneath they seek primarily to acquire political wherewithal.
Sadly, this massive illegal flow of unaccompanied Central American children, their families, assorted criminal gang members and terror operatives is a well-orchestrated government setup. It was planned and intentional. The flow of illegal entrants did not just jump from a few dozen a day to well over a thousand a day by chance. Behind the scenes powerful political and administrative players deliberately made it happen and are continuing to make it happen. A careful six-year examination of the Obama administration leaves little doubt what happened. Regular normal illegal entry had drastically diminished due to the economic turn down and the Central American Train Plan was a cynical effort to restart the massive illegal flow. The fact that the plan feeds the organized crime cartels in Mexico is considered, by far too many, a necessary cost of political business. The players are many and include the Obama Administration, open borders political activist groups like La Raza, unions like SEIU, International Chamber of Commerce lobbyists, the American Bar Association’s Immigration Law Committee and several law firms practicing immigration law that have sent teams of hawkers to Central America in search of future clients. The ABA seeks to reward its members with loot from the public treasury in the form of government paid lawyers for hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens. The leftist ACLU seeks to exploit the situation to collapse the courts and unwind the rule of law.
Large numbers of the American public will not see beyond the cover stories, thus empowering the Machiavellians in both parties to continue their pursuit of power to the detriment of the greater good of the country. The media “human interest”stories about “the poor children” have already rendered return to Central America politically incorrect and practically out of the question, even for the adults and MS 13 members.
If we continue to open the border to all the worlds billions of poor, we only bring on the further weakening of our own financial condition, erode the political system and ensure cultural instability. Where is the virtue in that I wonder? What will these train people ultimately cost in lifetime welfare checks, food stamps, subsidized housing, emergency room care, schooling, and crime costs? Here is a tip in making the calculation: They are never going to leave. How many of them are M-13 gang members? Answer: No one knows. How many speak English? Answer: Almost none. How many of our tax dollars will be diverted from helping our own needy American citizens in order to feed, clothe, “educate”, medicate, arrest, try, imprison, and and rehabilitate this recent round of third world illegal entrants? Answer: Tens of billions of dollars. How many Americans will lose low wage entry level jobs to these people? Answer: Tens of thousands.
The word “children” conjures up warm visions of our own beloved children in all their innocent glory. But these train children are not our innocent children, they are a varied mix of poverty stricken, damaged children their personalities already informed by a hard and difficult life. Some of them, at age 12 are already members of M-13 and other gangs. Some, many perhaps still retain more than a bit of innocence but most have been damaged. The children, with all their inherent deficiencies will have to stay. Political correctness demands it. Political correctness now trumps common sense in America. We are gong to be forced to make the billions of dollars in lifetime welfare payments and public support requiring yet more debt and the fiscal ills that debt will bring. We will have to accept an enlarged underclass that will contain not only these children but their children as well. We are going to have to accept yet lower standards in public schools, accept the increase in crime that is sure to come in the years ahead along with the increased costs of crime and punishment. We will be forced to accept a shift in the American culture and sensibility that always comes when a society is invaded or invites-in massive numbers of people with radically different value systems and frames of reference. Our leaders, in desperation to retain their political power, continue to steadily march the country in the direction of decline and decrepitude.
Media pundits and politician speak of a humanitarian problem, of a moral responsibility to the families of illegals sweeping across the border and immediately presenting themselves to border officials demanding care and support. There is flaw in the moral argument. Moral codes, particularly Judeo-Christian principles teach how we should treat one another in our individual human exchanges. Virtue that one possesses by the act of helping another human being accrues only from entering into person-to-person transactions. A person-to-person exchange results in virtue earned, in good reputation acquired but such virtue cannot be obtained by delegating the virtuous action to a government bureaucracy then claiming virtue as one’s own. That is a trickery and falsehood that washes the transaction of all its virtue. I am not saying that government assistance is not good policy, under certain circumstances it is good policy, but it does not convey virtue on the remote, passive individual taxpayer.
The future of our own children has been damaged. A lifetime of Treasury Department checks drawn on tax collections confiscated by politicians seeking favor and re-election does not make for responsible adults. True morality would be a willingness on the part of individual Americans to step forward and adopt one of these children or invite them to sleep and eat in our own houses. Adoption is the virtuous thing to do, the moral thing to do. But this is not what most Americans have in mind when they say save these children. The child saving is to be delegated to the Administrative State. Unfortunately, checks and bureaucrats do not raise a child to responsible adulthood, parents do.
Most of the media, seeking to be admired, portrays these children as innocents in need. There will soon be a hundred thousand, then two hundred thousand, then three hundred thousand, none speaking English, few having relatives. All are destined for HHS facilities, serial foster care, and public schools where they will be far behind and too many will gravitate toward Hispanic gangs. A few will find paths to prosper and that will be beautiful but most will languish and become part of the underclass. Then it is only matter of time until another massive onslaught of illegal entry occurs with the entrants expecting the same flow of government checks and assistance plus jobs to supplement the income.
There are hundreds of millions of third world poor around the world awakening to this grand opportunity awaiting them by simply walking across our border. At some point government action to limit the flow will become necessary but what will be the total damage by then? Will a majority of the next generation have no memory or awareness of American principles? We are now 18 trillion dollars in debt and borrowing an additional 1.4 trillion dollars every 12 months just fund the Warfare / Welfare State. What happens at the Treasury Department bond auction when lenders demand an extra percentage point of interest? The ultimate catastrophe looms in the future.
Despite their deficiencies, the children fare far better than they would have in Guatemala, Honduras, or El Salvador. Here, they will face several months in the custodial care of the DHS bureaucracy, followed by several years in the custodial care of the HHS. The luckiest ones will get serial foster homes. All will receive welfare and food stamps most of their lives. All will attend public schools. Some few will find relatives to attach to. Eventually most will drop out of school and find various ways to feed, clothe, and house themselves with considerable and ongoing assistance from the government. Not a small number will join gangs and become lifetime criminals. A tiny fraction will break out to become educated successful citizens. One might be the founder of a chain of highly successful grocery stores. This is the future wrought by this debacle.
Much of the third world’s people are in sad shape. And all decent hearts break for them. Yet, are we able to dissolve our borders, surrender our sovereignty and support the poor of the entire planet Earth? Apparently, our leaders, in pursuit of yet more power and an easily manipulated dependent citizenry, think yes as they abandon the rule of law and destroy border integrity. What is next? The millions of poor children of the African Continent followed by the millions of poor children in Asia? Continuing on the path of unobstructed unabated illegal entry, I can see no future other than a painfully slow descent into increasing chaos and national decrepitude.
