The Democrats and the left have a rallying cry regarding
the Trump administration's policy toward those crossing the border
illegally. They point to the separation of children from their
parents and deplorable conditions. They claim that it is a humanitarian
effort, but how humanitarian is it to drop off numerous unaccompanied
children or release them into an unknown territory where they can become
the victims of predators? They never address the negative impact on
the poor American citizen.
They
are calling attention to pictures of children in cells, yet, in 2014, when
Obama was president, American Thinker interviewed then-governor of
Arizona Jan Brewer, who stated, "Each child has a designation of cells,
such as 'cell 7 or cell 8.' There is a chain link fence surrounding
them and they are sleeping on bed mats with just a blanket. It
breaks my heart to see babies being born in these facilities. I
spoke with a fifteen-year-old who is pregnant. I was told by a lot
of these children that they had to pay between $5,000 and $7,000 and that they
still owe money to those who brought them here. You know what these
cartels will do – use extortion. We need to question if there were
any children that never arrived, and what happened to them? What
about the potential for these children to be part of a human-trafficking
ring? Do we know anything about the people they are being released
to? As a mother, I can never conceive that these children would be
sent with a stranger to a strange land on a fifteen-day hazardous
journey. I understand the humanitarian argument and feel the
situation is pathetic and pitiful. But what about the children
who are American citizens living in ghettos and are fearful for their lives
because of gang violence? The bottom line is, America is not big
enough or rich enough to accept all these people."
Another
instance was told to American Thinker by a member of the Civil Rights
Commission, Peter Kirsanow, who also happens to be a great thriller-writer, his
latest being Second Strike. A few years ago, he and
his colleagues went to a Texas detention center and found the conditions to be
the opposite of Arizona's. "We found very nice facilities where
the people there were given three meals a day, dental/medical care, clothing,
and a nice recreational area. Yet the majority report included two
photos showing horrific conditions. My assistant discovered that
these were not of the detention center, but of prisons," which also
separate families when either a mother or father is incarcerated.
Kirsanow is frustrated with what is
happening in America today. He is a black American and believes that
illegal immigration has a devastating effect on low-income American
citizens. It seems that the Democrats and left are just using the
illegal immigration issue as a talking point, supporting aliens at others'
expense. "We need to understand illegal immigrants have some
negative competitive effects on American workers. They drag down
wage rates, drag down employment, and compete directly with blacks in
industries such as service, hospitality, and construction. Welfare
and college spots have been taken from Americans and given to illegal
immigrants. They are a net drain on the economy."
Steven
A. Camarota, director of research for the Center for Immigration Studies,
agrees. "Because the overwhelming share of illegal immigrants
residing in the country have not completed high school or have only a high
school education, it would require highly implausible assumptions to avoid a
substantial net fiscal drain from this population. In short, illegal
immigrants are a large net fiscal drain because of their education levels, and
this fact drives the results."
He
compared the amount in annual expenditures on children in detention centers to
those of American children: "the March 2017 Current Population Survey has
24 percent of American children living in a household making $35,000 or
less. And it is my understanding that is what we spend on kids in
detention."
Senator
Robert Kennedy was in the Mississippi Delta 50 years ago for a Senate
subcommittee examination of War on Poverty programs. Ellen B.
Meacham wrote in an op-ed, "What he saw on his widely publicized trip
shocked a nation, but Americans would be even more shocked to know that 50 years
later, the Delta remains desperately poor," with one in three people
running out of food each month. Perhaps this is because the
attention has shifted to the illegal alien.
Concerning
the separation of families, the Heritage Foundation found that single parents
make up the overwhelming majority of all poor families with children in the
United States. Welfare programs create disincentives to marriage
because benefits are reduced as a family's income rises, such as food stamps,
public housing, Medicaid, day care, and Temporary Assistance for Needy
Families.
It
is striking that the conditions of a poor American child do not draw the same
attention and sympathy as children of illegal aliens. Kirsanow wants
people to understand that 73% of black children are born to a single mother, up
from 20% in the 1960s. "Liberal policies have been responsible
for this. The Democratic policies facilitate single parenthood,
separating children from their families."
Kirsanow
cites the statistic that competition from illegal aliens has caused 40% of the
nineteen-point decline of black employment levels over a couple of
decades. "We are talking over a million jobs. Black
wage rates were suppressed by $1,000 annually. Democrats are
throwing blacks under the bus by appealing for the Hispanic vote by calling for
open borders. The lives of blacks in cities like Detroit, with
uninterrupted Democratic rule for decades, have not improved
significantly. These policies have been devastating to blacks."
All
Americans should strive to protect our fellow citizens and their interests
first. As Kirsanow summarized, "it is really disappointing to
see an entire party more invested in the plight of foreigners than in the
welfare of Americans. The Democrats understand that even though they
have policies devastating to blacks they still get 90% of their
votes. They have disjointed appeals to different identity groups,
with electoral politics trumping all."
The author writes for American Thinker. She has done book
reviews and author interviews and has written a number of national security,
political, and foreign policy articles.
