So what would you do about all the children entering the US via its Southern Border? Can't imagine parents' allowing tiny tots to travel alone; that boggles the mind!!!

Hi Jabber,

This is very timely question. And I will be the first to say I don't have a good answer. These parents say it is not safe for their children to live in their own country, so they have voluntarily given them up in hopes of the children finding a better life.

I'm sure they are also hoping that in the long run, the children will find a home, and then be able to send for the parents to come join them.

We have always been a nation of immigrants. After all, think about what the sign says by the Statue of Liberty. Something to the effect of, "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free...I lift my lamp beside the golden door."

For years I have felt that as we are a nation of immigrants, we should not close the door on new immigrants. Especially when these people are willing to work. They are willing to do jobs here in the US that our citizens don't want. Jobs like picking our crops, working in slaughter houses, working as dishwashers in restaurants, working as maids in hotels...

But a few years ago when I made those statements to my mother and step-father, living in southern Arizona, THEY could not agree with me.

They explained that they felt unsafe, due to the large numbers of people from Mexico and Central America illegally crossing the border and fighting to survive. They felt these people had guns, and were willing to break into homes and steal in order to survive.

And the thing is, the equation has changed now: these children coming over the border ARE NOT old enough to do the manual labor I mentioned above.

All I can guess is that their parents are hoping they will be ADOPTED, or at least warehoused in orphanages, where they will be safe from the terror of living among feuding members of drug cartels, and have a minimal amount of clothing and food provided to them, as well as gain some education.

On our dime, of course.

But getting back to the message on the Lady Liberty statue, we all know that it is technically addressing LEGAL immigrants.

Clearly we do grant "green card" status to immigrants for a number of reasons which break down to: family (you have family or a spouse here who will vouch for you and take you in), humanitarian, and employment (this third tenet meaning our country would benefit from the knowledge a person has, and an employer is willing to vouch for them and give them a job.)

I guess we might have to consider that these children are coming here for humanitarian reasons, as they are refugees from war-torn nations -- which fits the "humanitarian" reason, according to the article I linked to in this paragraph.

But these illegal immigrants are clearly more than our country can handle; we don't have places to warehouse them. Yet the visual of seeing them being shunted from place to place because no one wants them somehow brings to my mind the story of Joseph and a very pregnant Mary trying to find a place to sleep after fleeing Egypt...

I hope other people will join into this discussion, Jabber, as this is a huge human rights conundrum, and I don't have the knowledge to even begin to figure it out.

I'm hoping this might be the lynch pin that will finally get President Obama and the Congress working together.

So who else wants to jump into this huge question and try to make sense of it?

Here's an AP story with the latest update as of July 3rd: Citizens Tell Feds to "Send Them Back"

Many of these children have relatives already here. I can't imagine what the conditions must be like in their home country - war, famine, murders, drugs, child kidnapping for the sex trade, - that their parents are willing to send them here alone. But there are also women with their children coming in. These families give thousands of dollars to smugglers to bring them and their children here. It's a sad situation.

And 3.5 billion dollars later...
oops... 3.7 billion

Anne, you said that your Arizona relatives felt unsafe having the illegal immigrants in their state/area.

This is ..hypocritical when many Americans (not all) insist on owning guns for "protection", when theft can/is committed by some Americans, etc. Maybe it's more of anyone en masse not speaking English, not looking the same, etc., is too much for some Americans.

If more Americans (and Canadians) are willing to work as labourers in the farms, in restaurants, be janitors, chambermaids in hotels, landscapers, other dirty work, etc......wouldn't that solve a lot of labour shortages in certain industries.

Canada has just stopped the foreign investors immigrant program which basically gave priority to people who were willing show/invest $100,000 in a business or more when they got into Canada. I'm not against what the govn't has done, since I strongly feel that the discarded policy, skewed immigrant eligibility to Canada based on personal income. When some of the hardest working immigrants have been...low income folks with lower level of education. These are my parents, my great uncle (who sponsored my 21-yr. father just after Communists took over China in early 1950's), when my father yes, did sponsor my mother, who was his picture bride.

Then I was born 16 months later....in Canada. How unsavoury, how wrong wasn't it? To bring...in more immigrants into Canada. Is it also wrong that my mother hasn't learned to speak English after being in Canada and a citizen now for past 56 yrs.? I don't agree with it but no point wasting my breath.

this must be weighed against her job as a mother, role for raising 6 children in Canada who all each got a university education. So my criticism of her, would be pretty petty of me. It's been a long, hard journey.

This is why I do tend to be abit defensive about the strength of Canada and U.S. as immigrant and native Indian base countries. This IS the strength of both countries.

Until we as naturalized citizens, start producing a lot of babies in Canada and U.S., we will always need a bunch of immigrants. What might make more sense, is some U.S. jurisdictions provide legal incentives to encourage immigrants to settle in less heavily populated areas or areas that have chronic labour shortages within their state.

The latest strange attempt by some U.S. jurisdictions to send immigrants to another state, is abit..um undemocratic....the right to live as one chooses? After all, then people will eventually move to another state in several years.

Hi Orchid,

Thanks for your thoughtful comments. I haven't really had time to make it through all of your great comments. But I wanted to say one thing about your comment about the illegal immigrants in Arizona: My parents don't and wouldn't own guns. And the reason they said they didn't feel safe has nothing to do with any immigrants actually LIVING AND WORKING in their community -- lord knows many of these people are stand-up citizens (even if they're not yet naturalized citizens) and quite often they are willing to do the work no one else wants to do.

No, their feeling of not being safe has more to to with the illegal immigrants who are actually in the process of crossing over the border. The people who are in the process of fleeing Mexico.

Often these are people are thirsty, hungry and exhausted and sometimes desperate enough to commit small crimes in order to try to survive until they can find a safe haven.

Plus on the US side, there are the Minutemen, who try to patrol the border and keep the Mexicans out. Guns are frequently involved.

THIS sort of thing is what makes my mother and step-father feel less than safe. Vigilantes and desperate people. NOT the actuality of living with people who were born in Mexico or Central America. That is just a part of life in southern Arizona, as far as I can tell.

I feel more 'unsafe' here from the vigilantes and human smugglers than I do the immigrants coming across the border. No matter how you try to paint it, it's white vs non-white here. Anyone who isn't white must be bad and shouldn't be here. I've seen people cussing out Navajos, Hopi, Tohono O'odham to go back where they came from. It's really disgusting the amount of ignorance and racism there is here.

I came across this little gem just now. It seems this whole mess began with a law signed by Bush in 2008:
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/...tries-dont-bor/

That's fascinating, Yonuh!

And now, what are we going to do about it? Here in the Midwest, we actually have the Mayor of Davenport, Iowa trying to help by offering that these undocumented and unaccompanied minors can come to Iowa and live there.

While I think Iowa is a fine state, I am sure the culture shock the kids would experience would be huge. And I have no idea where the fine mayor plans to house the kids.

Still, I suspect he's not the only person in the US trying to help to come up with a solution.

What have you heard in your part of the world?