CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, AUGUST 5, 2014 OR THEREAFTER
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, AUGUST 5, 2014 OR THEREAFTER
BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“WILL HISTORY REPEAT IN CHILD IMMIGRANT CRISIS?”
For some people familiar with the
history of the runup to World War II, there’s a sense of déjà vu in today’s
humanitarian crisis along the Mexican border these days, as resistance rises
against the tens of thousands of unaccompanied children attempting to enter and
stay in the United States.
Eyewitness reports in the New York
Times, Chicago Tribune and other major newspapers indicate that about half the
children coming without parents are actual refugees fleeing murderous Central
American drug gangs who would kill them without qualm or consequence if they
refuse to become addicted or go to work for the gangs as drug runners,
prostitutes or worse. Even if they’re only six or eight years old.
But many Americans are skeptical of
those reports, doubting so many could be induced to become refugees so suddenly
without a motive that is mostly economic.
Back in the early to mid-1930s, there
were also doubts and skepticism when Alan Cranston (later a longtime U.S.
senator from California) described in detail German persecution of Jews via the
old International News Service wire. Similar reports in the New York Times were
greeted with the sort of skepticism that’s rampant today.
When the German-Amerikan (cq) Line
steamer St. Louis attempted to land 937 Jewish refugees from Europe in Cuba in
1939, Havana residents protested en masse on the docks of their city, forcing
their right-wing government to turn away the ship, which was then denied even
the privilege of docking in nearby Miami. Those aboard were returned to Europe,
to face the Holocaust.
Conservatives in America led the
resistance to taking in those Jews, claiming many were Communists. Similarly,
some of today’s protestors claim without any evidence that the youthful wave of
immigrants includes terrorist “sleepers.” There is no more proof of today’s
canards than there was 75 years ago.
Seeming to echo the reception the Jews
got in Havana, tea party members and other screaming protesters waved and wore
American flags while carrying banners inscribed “Return to Sender” as they
blocked buses carrying illegal immigrant children to a temporary shelter in the
Riverside County city of Murietta.
The parallels between the St. Louis
saga, now widely recognized as one of the most shameful episodes in Western
Hemisphere history, and today’s humanitarian crisis, of course, are not
precise.
For one thing, all passengers but one
aboard the St. Louis were genuine, unquestionable refugees from persecution and
near-certain death. It’s probable that only about half the 50,000 to
60,000 undocumented children attempting to enter the U.S. in the last year fit
that category.
Most of the others want to join
parents already here illegally or simply gain an economic foothold in America.
So it’s important to determine who
fits into which category. Federal law provides that every person claiming
refugee status – which the United Nations is now pressuring American
authorities to grant many of the recently arrived kids – must get a judicial
hearing to determine the validity of each claim. A 2008 law demands those
hearings be held quicker for children than others claiming asylum.
But no one anticipated a wave like
today’s, so there are nowhere near enough immigration judges to hear all the
cases.
That’s one thing President Obama wants
to fix via a $3.7 billion emergency funding request to deal with the crisis.
But partisanship in Congress makes it all but certain the funding will not
come, leaving the children’s fate up in the air as there will likely be no new
or even temporary cadre of immigration judges. Some kids will find foster
homes, some will no doubt be deported, but the fate of the vast majority is in
doubt.
The ultimate solution, of course, will
have to be improvements in the children’s home countries, but since America is
not about to police hundreds of Central American towns, this country can’t cure
the situation on its own, but must deal with symptoms.
There is no doubt, though, that it’s
incumbent on us to avoid another shameful humanitarian disaster like the St. Louis
episode, which is far from forgotten even after three quarters of a century.
-30-
Email
Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough:
The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch
It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias
columns, visit www.californiafocus.net
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