5 ms·

Children Shouldn’t Be Dying at the Border. Here’s How You Can Help

15 points by whack 7y ago

michaelmrose 7y ago
We did not write angry letters to end nazi concentration camps. Any particular reasons we shouldn't all march on the camps and dismantle them?
- natalyarostova 7y ago
  Go for it.
- zaroth 7y ago
  Disgusting comment of the day.
  - michaelmrose 7y ago
    How is this disgusting?
    - zaroth 7y ago
      They are in no way, shape, or form “nazi concentration camps” and I think it’s pretty offensive to appropriate the Holocaust for political purposes.
    - rpiguy 7y ago
      Nazi concentration camps featured forced labor, torture, near starvation, rape, and ultimately ended in death via exhaustion, disease, or execution. Your hyperbole is offensive to anyone whose grandparents or great grandparents actually was in a Nazi concentration camp. Detention centers in the US have only superficial similarities.
      - michaelmrose 7y ago
        They didn't start by murdering the jews although that was ultimately the plan.
        rpiguy 7y ago
        Actually the whole thing started with man, Adolf Hitler, righteously calling on his brownshirts to march on the institutions he disagreed with while wearing the mantle of mortal authority. Sounds more like your argument than mine.
- rpiguy 7y ago
  They are not Nazi concentration camps. If the alternative is to effectively have an open border than I support the actions taken to detain and process illegal border crossers.
  - michaelmrose 7y ago
    Did your relations apply for citizenship from home and wait a decade?
    - rpiguy 7y ago
      My grandfather was Filipino and joined the US army in the Philippines during WWII he earned his citizenship (which was not granted until he completed a US GED) fighting in WWII and Korea.
    - basic7 7y ago
      Push for immigration reform then, not lawlessness.
      - michaelmrose 7y ago
        When the law is children imprisoned in cells sleeping on concrete floors bring on the lawlessness.
        rpiguy 7y ago
        The children are victims of their parents' decision, not our government. Blame the parents.
  - michaelmrose 7y ago
    You don't think there are any options between open borders and the current situation?
- lm28469 7y ago
  > Any particular reasons we shouldn't all march on the camps and dismantle them? Camps are only a small part of the problem. What do you do next ? The question is how do you handle such big influx of people without collapsing and without treating them like cattle, the answer to that is: you can't and you'll never be able to. What people don't seem to understand is that a homeless dude in Germany has it better than 80% of the world outside of the US/EU. Is it unfair ? yeah sure, can you solve it though massive migration ? No, you couldn't fit 10% of the third world in the US/EU without making it collapse. Seeing other comments downvotes it seems like this topic isn't even open for discussion anymore. Why does everyone have to go emotional and compare everything to Nazi Germany ? When you want to "march" on something you first have to understand why it's there and how it came to be. The cold truth is that this topic is extremely complex and all the solutions that are less than XX pages long can be completely ignored on the spot.
  - core-questions 7y ago
    > Why does everyone have to go emotional and compare everything to Nazi Germany? This rhetoric has been turned up to 11 recently and it is far more worrisome than any so-called white nationalists are, who at best have ineffective and lame demonstrations that most people ignore. Having a cultural narrative of guilt for actions of others imposed upon the descendants of people who actually fought them is insane and it will end up with a reaction of its own. There's only so long you can call people horrible names before they lose their power, and you end up with young people like youtuber Soph who are _so over_ caring about being labelled in this fashion. When the words lose their power, and when continual attempts to silence dissent fail, what's next?
- dang 7y ago
  Please don't go there here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
DiseasedBadger 7y ago
Vote Republican. Then we can actually get funding to fix these problems. Democrats did this, every step of the way.
- rpiguy 7y ago
  Agreed. Only congress can fix this, the law is the law. Do they really want to give Trump and the executive branch the power to pick and choose what laws to enforce?
- Chazprime 7y ago
  Except for the last step: separation of children from their families. That's all Trump, and I think I will not vote for that.
  - core-questions 7y ago
    Do you understand the reasoning for it? First of all, we don't know if these children belong to their "parents" or if they're emotional manipulation tokens. We don't know if they're abused, and it's hard to know until we take the children away. We also don't want them to be abused going forward, whether by the parents or anyone else; would you take a child and place them into a normal jail in America? It is extremely unfortunate, but it is also literally the only safe option. The children receive better care and a safer environment separated than they would otherwise. It's not amazing care, and obviously some of these children who have had horrific journeys northward are going to perish, but it's a far cry from a "nazi concentration camp" like other, over-the-top posters here are pretending. Don't want your children taken away from you? Don't try to illegally enter another country! Breaking the law _always_ separates parents from their children. It's not like we put kids in jail when their parents commit felonies, citizens or no.
core-questions 7y ago
Is there some reason why it is the responsibility of Americans or their government to provide for people that enter the country illegally? Parents are endangering their children's lives and committing crimes, contributing to a rising problem, and the biggest concern we're supposed to have is whether the children are comfortable enough? I'm tired of this emotional manipulation. It's perfectly reasonable for a country to have a border and to defend it against illegal entry. To suggest otherwise is literally to attack the very concept of a nation and to eschew any sense of respect for the existing tax base.
- threatofrain 7y ago
  Putting aside the lens of responsibility for a moment, the parents and kids are rational if in the sum of all things the grass is actually much greener on the other side of the fence. Of course the nation with the greener grass is also free to exercise a rational value of preservation of position, especially if scaling isn’t cheap or easy. In an increasingly disparate world nations may find themselves building more fences.
  - core-questions 7y ago
    > in the sum of all things the grass is actually much greener on the other side of the fence. Sure, but this needs to include a risk calculation - how tall is that fence, and what happens when you don't make it over, versus other options like migrating somewhere else more local, or refocusing your efforts in your own community.
zaroth 7y ago
The demographics of border crossers has changed dramatically over the last several years. We never used to have so many families and unaccompanied minors crossing. I believe this is a direct result of the incentives we provide by allowing families to stay, minors to be provided free transport along to waiting relatives (who may be in the country illegally themselves), and ultimately the promise of deferred action and citizenship. But all of this is contingent on having a child with you when you cross, or children crossing alone, which is totally ludicrous. Over 50,000 unaccompanied minors in the last year have crossed over that we know of. Assuming these children are not being returned back home, they obviously need to be sheltered while their relatives are located and screened. This is an incredibly vulnerable population which has grown exponentially and therefore now greatly exceeds the capacity of the network of non-profits which used to provide temporary shelter and housing. Parents in the US who leave their kids unattended in the car while they run in for groceries risk having their kids taken and being charged with child endangerment. Parents who cross into the US illegally with their kids get a free pass. Even aside from the question of “first safe country” - we have a legal system for processing asylum claims, and historically (going back several administrations) the types of people crossing do not qualify because they are mainly economic migrants. The best way to stop kids dying at the border is to stop encouraging their parents (or coyotes) to take them there.

15 points by whack 7y ago

We did not write angry letters to end nazi concentration camps. Any particular reasons we shouldn't all march on the camps and dismantle them?

natalyarostova 7y ago
Go for it.
zaroth 7y ago
Disgusting comment of the day.
- michaelmrose 7y ago
  How is this disgusting?
  - zaroth 7y ago
    They are in no way, shape, or form “nazi concentration camps” and I think it’s pretty offensive to appropriate the Holocaust for political purposes.
  - rpiguy 7y ago
    Nazi concentration camps featured forced labor, torture, near starvation, rape, and ultimately ended in death via exhaustion, disease, or execution. Your hyperbole is offensive to anyone whose grandparents or great grandparents actually was in a Nazi concentration camp. Detention centers in the US have only superficial similarities.
    - michaelmrose 7y ago
      They didn't start by murdering the jews although that was ultimately the plan.
      - rpiguy 7y ago
        Actually the whole thing started with man, Adolf Hitler, righteously calling on his brownshirts to march on the institutions he disagreed with while wearing the mantle of mortal authority. Sounds more like your argument than mine.
rpiguy 7y ago
They are not Nazi concentration camps. If the alternative is to effectively have an open border than I support the actions taken to detain and process illegal border crossers.
- michaelmrose 7y ago
  Did your relations apply for citizenship from home and wait a decade?
  - rpiguy 7y ago
    My grandfather was Filipino and joined the US army in the Philippines during WWII he earned his citizenship (which was not granted until he completed a US GED) fighting in WWII and Korea.
  - basic7 7y ago
    Push for immigration reform then, not lawlessness.
    - michaelmrose 7y ago
      When the law is children imprisoned in cells sleeping on concrete floors bring on the lawlessness.
      - rpiguy 7y ago
        The children are victims of their parents' decision, not our government. Blame the parents.
- michaelmrose 7y ago
  You don't think there are any options between open borders and the current situation?
lm28469 7y ago
> Any particular reasons we shouldn't all march on the camps and dismantle them? Camps are only a small part of the problem. What do you do next ? The question is how do you handle such big influx of people without collapsing and without treating them like cattle, the answer to that is: you can't and you'll never be able to. What people don't seem to understand is that a homeless dude in Germany has it better than 80% of the world outside of the US/EU. Is it unfair ? yeah sure, can you solve it though massive migration ? No, you couldn't fit 10% of the third world in the US/EU without making it collapse. Seeing other comments downvotes it seems like this topic isn't even open for discussion anymore. Why does everyone have to go emotional and compare everything to Nazi Germany ? When you want to "march" on something you first have to understand why it's there and how it came to be. The cold truth is that this topic is extremely complex and all the solutions that are less than XX pages long can be completely ignored on the spot.
- core-questions 7y ago
  > Why does everyone have to go emotional and compare everything to Nazi Germany? This rhetoric has been turned up to 11 recently and it is far more worrisome than any so-called white nationalists are, who at best have ineffective and lame demonstrations that most people ignore. Having a cultural narrative of guilt for actions of others imposed upon the descendants of people who actually fought them is insane and it will end up with a reaction of its own. There's only so long you can call people horrible names before they lose their power, and you end up with young people like youtuber Soph who are _so over_ caring about being labelled in this fashion. When the words lose their power, and when continual attempts to silence dissent fail, what's next?
dang 7y ago
Please don't go there here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

DiseasedBadger 7y ago

Vote Republican. Then we can actually get funding to fix these problems. Democrats did this, every step of the way.

rpiguy 7y ago
Agreed. Only congress can fix this, the law is the law. Do they really want to give Trump and the executive branch the power to pick and choose what laws to enforce?
Chazprime 7y ago
Except for the last step: separation of children from their families. That's all Trump, and I think I will not vote for that.
- core-questions 7y ago
  Do you understand the reasoning for it? First of all, we don't know if these children belong to their "parents" or if they're emotional manipulation tokens. We don't know if they're abused, and it's hard to know until we take the children away. We also don't want them to be abused going forward, whether by the parents or anyone else; would you take a child and place them into a normal jail in America? It is extremely unfortunate, but it is also literally the only safe option. The children receive better care and a safer environment separated than they would otherwise. It's not amazing care, and obviously some of these children who have had horrific journeys northward are going to perish, but it's a far cry from a "nazi concentration camp" like other, over-the-top posters here are pretending. Don't want your children taken away from you? Don't try to illegally enter another country! Breaking the law _always_ separates parents from their children. It's not like we put kids in jail when their parents commit felonies, citizens or no.

core-questions 7y ago

Is there some reason why it is the responsibility of Americans or their government to provide for people that enter the country illegally? Parents are endangering their children's lives and committing crimes, contributing to a rising problem, and the biggest concern we're supposed to have is whether the children are comfortable enough? I'm tired of this emotional manipulation. It's perfectly reasonable for a country to have a border and to defend it against illegal entry. To suggest otherwise is literally to attack the very concept of a nation and to eschew any sense of respect for the existing tax base.

threatofrain 7y ago
Putting aside the lens of responsibility for a moment, the parents and kids are rational if in the sum of all things the grass is actually much greener on the other side of the fence. Of course the nation with the greener grass is also free to exercise a rational value of preservation of position, especially if scaling isn’t cheap or easy. In an increasingly disparate world nations may find themselves building more fences.
- core-questions 7y ago
  > in the sum of all things the grass is actually much greener on the other side of the fence. Sure, but this needs to include a risk calculation - how tall is that fence, and what happens when you don't make it over, versus other options like migrating somewhere else more local, or refocusing your efforts in your own community.

zaroth 7y ago

The demographics of border crossers has changed dramatically over the last several years. We never used to have so many families and unaccompanied minors crossing. I believe this is a direct result of the incentives we provide by allowing families to stay, minors to be provided free transport along to waiting relatives (who may be in the country illegally themselves), and ultimately the promise of deferred action and citizenship. But all of this is contingent on having a child with you when you cross, or children crossing alone, which is totally ludicrous. Over 50,000 unaccompanied minors in the last year have crossed over that we know of. Assuming these children are not being returned back home, they obviously need to be sheltered while their relatives are located and screened. This is an incredibly vulnerable population which has grown exponentially and therefore now greatly exceeds the capacity of the network of non-profits which used to provide temporary shelter and housing. Parents in the US who leave their kids unattended in the car while they run in for groceries risk having their kids taken and being charged with child endangerment. Parents who cross into the US illegally with their kids get a free pass. Even aside from the question of “first safe country” - we have a legal system for processing asylum claims, and historically (going back several administrations) the types of people crossing do not qualify because they are mainly economic migrants. The best way to stop kids dying at the border is to stop encouraging their parents (or coyotes) to take them there.