I wish they could be treated as refugees. We give them temporary asylum while we figure out some way to help them relocate somewhere else. Since Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador are too dangerous, maybe we could help them settle in a South American country that is safer and less populated than we are.
They ARE refugees.
It's the 1980 Cuban Mariel boat lift crisis, only instead of a bunch of desperate Cuban adults and some Cuban ex-cons, it's children and there's no water involved.
This is a humanitarian crisis and the kids would be considered REFUGEES anywhere else in the world.
And last but not least, the countries they're fleeing? The violence is from cartels staffed with enforcers who are former members of the CONTRAS, and former L.A. street gangs many of whom are the CHILDREN of former Contras and death squad capitanos.
The violence in Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala and El Salvador is reaching unprecedented proportions. They didn't exactly have the best system of central governance to begin with but once the large multinationals decided it was time to start consuming the rich resources located there, what they had was quickly replaced with that stereotype we are all familiar with, the infamous "banana republic dictator" who was eager and willing to cooperate with any administration but who was most decidedly right wing in the extreme.
(Who do we think made that possible?)
And when resistance to the hardcore right wing came, it was often in the form of an equally extreme reaction, naturally from the left. The response was to finance right wing death squads and rebel armies. The civil strife that resulted rapidly exploded into decades long civil war, and in the ashes of these wars the cartels took control.
And these children are refugees fleeing a system which cares about one thing and one thing only, drug profits, primarily cocaine.
The entire region is part and parcel of a "silk road" commerce system controlled by gangs who learned first at the knee of their Contra grandfathers and then later as members of L.A. street gangs.
And when we deported gang members back to their homelands, which they barely knew, they brought the gang mentality back with them.
The role of the Central Intelligence Agency in cocaine importation into the USA is well documented and indisputable. It is part of the Congressional Record now.
MA Republican, it's really too bad your blood pressure didn't register any concern when the Central Intelligence Agency was funding drug trafficking flights carrying Central American produced and refined cocaine directly into the USA via Mena Airport, on its way to cities like Los Angeles.And as such, it is our responsibility to treat these kids, most of them under age 13, as refugees. The problem isn't going to go away with a few protests and some bus turnarounds, and some US diplomat sitting down with corrupt Central American government officials won't accomplish much either. They know what side their bread is buttered on, and their lives depend on them carrying water for the real power in those countries, the cartels and their street gang enforcers and distributors.
We helped to create this, so it's our responsibility to help fix it. These are children of war, OUR war.
These are, without a doubt, the "illegitimate grandchildren and great grandchildren" of Ronald Reagan and Oliver North.
Remember them? That's right, Ollie North and Ronald Reagan helped create the conditions which spawned this misguided generation and its unfortunate offspring.
So as far as I'm concerned, suck it up and deal with it, we broke it, we get to fix it.
