Where Was Your Voice?

The Curmudgeon has wanted to weigh in on the topic of children being separated from their parents at the border for several days now. However, I'm not sure where to begin. There is so much disinformation around this topic, it's so emotionally charged, and the truth is so obfuscated by the hysteria, that it's hard to present a cogent discussion of the topic, regardless of one's views regarding it.

However, the Curmudgeon has, as usual, uncovered the unerring truth. So here it is:

1. None of us knows the full facts surrounding this situation. I don't. You don't. Your friends don't. Your friends' friends don't. There's too much disinformation, too much emotion, too much partisan spin, to get at the facts. I've been trying, harder than most - and I generally know where to look. But it's become buried deeper than a coyote's tunnel under the border. The bare facts of this matter won't be found on CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, NPR or any other news outlet, let alone in the blogs and memes and mis-dated viral pictures floating around the internet.
2. The rhetoric has become hysterical. Not hysterical as in funny; hysterical as in hysteria. The inevitable references to Hitler, Nazi Germany, concentration camps, "babies being ripped from their mothers' arms" ... it's all just so much noise. And when you start spewing that nonsense, I just can't take you seriously. I've studied history. I know better. This is no Holocaust.
3. The vast majority of the public outcry has been politically motivated, whether from the talking heads in the media, or from your Facebook friends. It's yet another partisan reaction stemming from the inability to accept the results of the last presidential election.

Don't believe me? Consider this.

My Facebook feed has been inundated with friends speaking out about this situation - lending their voices to the call to end this practice. To those friends, I would respectfully ask a few questions:

When Boko Haram kidnapped hundreds of young girls - separating them from their families - and subjected them to unspeakable horrors - where was your voice?

As long as human trafficking and sex slavery has been a global problem, with children separated from their families, with more slaves in the world today than at any time in human history - where was your voice?

When children are gunned down on the streets of our cities, separated forever from their families by senseless gang violence - where was your voice?

When the same practice is in place in other countries - including some of our allies, such as the U.K. - where was your voice?

When U.S. citizens who are parents are incarcerated, and separated from their children - where was your voice?

And what about when 186 abortions per 1,000 live births per year literally rip unborn babies from their mothers - where was your voice?

(To that last point, the irony is not lost on me that the very people who, when arguing the climate change issue, scoff at those who disagree with them, saying, "You can't deny the science," yet they themselves deny the irrefutable science that proves beyond a doubt when life begins.)

I ask these questions because none of the people I've heard lending their voice to this matter, lent their voices to these - and countless others - concerning children's issues.

It leaves one with the impression that this concern for children, this passion for their rights, began around, say, November 2016.

To wit: many of my friends who are speaking out about this are members of the United Methodist church, as am I. The bishops of the church recently released a statement calling for President Trump and Congress to end the practice of separating families at the border.

The bishops released a similar statement in 2009, calling on President Obama and Congress to end the same practice. Yet I don't recall any of my church friends speaking out then.

Ah, you may ask, so is the Curmudgeon in favor of separating families of illegal immigrants?

Here's the answer: no. I am not in favor of unnecessarily separating families of illegal immigrants. However:

I recognize that the very act of crossing our borders illegally is a crime (that's what "illegal" means), whether the border is with Mexico or Canada. I do not believe the solution is unfettered access to our country - open borders haven't worked so well in the EU. And Presidents from Reagan to Clinton to the Bushes to Obama have spoken in favor of securing our borders and stopping illegal immigration. They just failed to do anything about it.

I have concerns about incarcerating children with their parents. That is more cruel to me than separating them, if the parent is going to be incarcerated. The idea of jailing a kid just because the parent has broken the law isn't appealing to me.

I also have concerns about detaining parents and children together, which is now the at least temporary solution under the President's executive order. Because not all of the "parents" are parents. Some of them are posing as parents and are in fact smugglers and child traffickers, either using the children as chits to get themselves across the border, having paid the parents on the other side for the use of their kid, or are planning to sell the kids into slavery once in this country. To be candid, in situations in which we can't verify that the "parents" are actually the children's parents, I'd rather all of those kids be separated from the adults than hear of one child suffering abuse at the hands of an adult not his or her parent, while being detained with them.

I question the veracity of all the claims of asylum. More illegal immigrants come to the U.S. from Mexico than from all other countries combined, by half again. Mexico is far from an oppressive dictatorial regime. I've visited that country many times, and I've found her people to be delightful, hardworking and friendly. None of them seemed to be in fear of their government. I've personally always felt safe there, even when I got lost in less than the best part of one of her cities. So a defensible argument for the "credible fear" standard of asylum is hard to support.

I wonder why the parents themselves don't care if they are separated from their children. All of them, upon crossing the border, are given the option (after a brief amount of time, less than a day) to return across the border with their children. Yet large numbers of them choose willingly to be separated from their children so that they don't have to go back home (and again, the "asylum" argument is hard to buy in the vast majority of cases). If they themselves don't care if their children are separated from them, maybe those kids are better off in the care of relatives or foster parents, at the very least until the parents' cases are adjudicated.

And as for the much-decried "deterrent" argument - yes, I believe we need some kind of deterrent to the massive increase in immigrants crossing our border illegally with children in tow with the explicit intent of using those children as a chit to get to stay illegally in this country, whether those bringing the children are their parents, smugglers or child traffickers. We only have so many resources, especially when Congress refuses to act to curtail the activity.

(Why, by the way, does Congress refuse to act - especially the Dems, who have been such outspoken critics of this practice? Because there's an election looming, and if they can keep this political football bouncing on the field until November, they might be able to eke out a majority. Using these kids as fodder for partisan political gain is more abhorrent to me than any of this.)

In short, this is a very complex issue, one whose nuances are far beyond the simple outcry of these recent converts to passion over children's issues. There is not a simple solution; if there were, I'm sure that one of these protesting voices would have offered one, and I haven't seen a single solution offered. As a CEO, I always told my employees that people who brought problems to my attention were a dime a dozen - after all, I can see the problems for myself - but people who brought me solutions were invaluable.

If these comments don't apply to you, your conscience is clear. Thank you for always and consistently speaking out in support of justice for children, both in the U.S. and across the globe.

But if you haven't done that - if this is a new concern for you - you might want to do some soul-searching, and ask yourself whether your concerns are nothing more than just another brick to add to the anti-Trump wall that's been building since his election.