In 2008, President George W. Bush signed a law requiring that unaccompanied immigrant children from Mexico and Canada be screened within 48 hours and sent back home. The law goes on to state that children from countries that don’t border the U.S. must be turned over to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and go through a time-consuming immigration hearing process.

Over 50,000 children from Guatemala, Costa Rica, and Honduras have crossed several international borders to arrive in the U.S. without their parents. According to the law, U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) officials have handed the kids off to the HHS. The sheer number of children has overwhelmed HHS and immigration hearing officers. In the meantime, the kids are here.

Some people want to kick them out of the country immediately. Others want our government to welcome them with open arms. Congress wants to change the law to require these kids to be treated like Mexicans, a 48-hour screening and back to where they came from. President Obama wants more money to secure the borders and care for the children while the HHS processes them.

What a mess!

However this thing turns out, as a nation that wants to continue making progress on our journey to true democracy and freedom, we need to look at the impact of this border crisis from three perspectives: (1) The Humanitarian Crisis, (2) The Public Policy Crisis, and (3) The “Here We Go Again” Crisis.

The Humanitarian Crisis

It’s been all over the news. Children stuck at the border are sleeping in warehouses and prison-like military facilities, and eating less than nutritious meals. The HHS has attempted to provide more humane accommodations and healthier food. This has proven to be challenging as some local communities have expressed their disgusting desire to not welcome the youngsters.

In Murrieta, California, protesters turned them back by blocking federal buses, spitting at them, and spewing racist diatribes. We have to stop paying attention to these heartless people and take care of the children while the mucky-mucks in Washington try to figure it all out. That sounds humane to me.

The Public Policy Crisis

This is a tough one. Take away the political fringes of militarizing the border or opening it up to all comers, and the public policy answer is somewhere in the middle. Comprehensive Immigration Reform is the only way to get that done. If it’s up to our Tea Party conservative friends in Congress, that’s not going to happen in our lifetime.

Resolving the immediate issue is a challenge too. The President and cooler heads in The Capitol want to address the humanitarian issue before doing anything else. Others, including Latino Democrat Congressman Henry Cuellar from Texas, say that we need to change the law to stem the tide from Central America first.

I don’t know the correct answers to these questions. For the sake of those scared and lonely children, I can only pray and hope that our leaders do something soon.

The “Here We Go Again” Crisis

Every time it gets dicey on the border or in poor Latino neighborhoods, the Latino community is painted with one wide degrading brush.  Read my  June 19^th blog post to see how this phenomenon started: https://esereport.com/2014/06/19/new-feature-latino-thursdays/.

As images of kids gathering at the border fill the 24-hour news cycles, the anti-Latino crowd starts singing the same old song about drug smugglers, gangsters, and disease-carrying vermin that come along for the ride.

I saw Congresswoman Michelle Bachman and Congressman Rich Nugent on CNN express their “fear that gang members are invading our country” when discussing the current crisis. Here we go again! What a shame.

From Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor to newly appointed U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julian Castro to a kid sleeping on a cot in some warehouse tonight, Latinos exemplify what it means to be American.

Can the fear mongers just cut it out already? Negative stereotyping doesn’t do anything to help the kids at the border, nor does it do anything to help America. As my dad used to say, “first things first.” Let’s take care of the children.