New Border Politics: Blame Obama First
The United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees estimates that almost 60 percent are fleeing conditions that warrant protection under UN conventions.
As Wendy Young, president of Kids in Need of Defense (KIND), which provides legal representation to unaccompanied immigrant children, recalls one desperate mother's explanation, "I would rather see my child die on the way to the United States than die on my doorstep."
Yet not every person from a high-crime country deserves asylum in the U.S., which, it goes without saying, also has a disastrous number of children growing up in high-violence communities of our own
Not many people noticed when President George W. Bush signed the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act during the presidential transition in late 2008.
Named for a 19th-century British abolitionist, the law prevents the government from returning children from countries that don't border the United States without offering a deportation hearing process, which can take months or years. Minors from Mexico and Canada, by contrast, can be sent back across the border more easily.
That law is just one small part of what American immigration law and refugee policy requires: comprehensive immigration reform. That means a full package of improvements, including the stronger border security demanded by conservatives and a pathway to citizenship or, at least, legalization promoted by liberals. Compromise is possible, although so far only in the Senate. Maybe next year.
In the meantime, Congress needs to fund improvements to speed up the process of distinguishing true refugees from other undocumented arrivals. The administration is broadcasting public service announcements in Central America to counter the propaganda of human smugglers.
But the most powerful message is delivered by those who, after making their way unlawfully across our borders, find themselves sent right back to their home country. Not everyone deserves to stay, but every case deserves due process.
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E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@tribune.com.
(c) 2014 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.
