So how many kids are locked up at the border right now?
On Friday the Department of Homeland Security told us that between April 19 and May 31, exactly 1,995 kids were taken.
That brings the total up to 11,500 kids being held.
Remember, it was at the end of April that the ‘migrant caravan’ arrived at the southern border.
The LA Times told us that “most are from Honduras” and at one point the group swelled to 1,700 people, though only around 400 made it to the US border.
One 25-year-old man with a wife and 3-year-old daughter said that he was fleeing Honduras because of “organized crime and our country’s government.”
It’s clear to me and many others that the issue here is drug use in America, and the drug production/distribution in Central and South America that gets those drugs here.
- This creates the problem of crime, which leads to corruption, which leads to people leaving their country.
- Then they come to America, get detained at the border, and Americans get in an uproar about it.
Sadly, we’re just looking at a symptom of the problem, and not the problem itself.
And we even get more nit-picky than that, complaining about the conditions these immigrants are being detained under.
To me, the conditions aren’t all that bad…and probably a helluva lot better than some of the conditions those folks endured on their months-long trek.
Vox did a good job yesterday of giving us images of the detention centers, like the one in Texas – a former Walmart – that’s holding about 1,500 boys.
We see that there are in fact, fenced, cage-like areas. We also see:
- Rooms with 8 to 10 beds in them;
- Kids eating hamburgers and fries;
- Numerous ‘inspirational’ quotes and murals;
- Kids with new shorts and t-shirts and shoes;
- Organized towel racks and a neat cafeteria;
- Kids playing Xbox;
- Kids using the phone;
- Kids receiving medical care.
Damn...when I was in the Helena jail years ago, we didn't get hamburgers or Xbox!
Now remember...you’re providing all of this to these kids, mainly through the money you pay in taxes.
And trust me – the parents of these kids would never be able to provide this level of care.
I mean…hamburgers and Xbox? Even new clothes?
These people have nothing after their 1,500-mile journey north, yet we hear nothing in the media about how our government took them in from the sweltering summer heat to feed and clothe them and provide them with shelter.
I guess we could have just left them on the other side of the border to sit there and die. No doubt a lot of liberals would have liked that, as it would have increased the negative coverage of Trump even more.
And speaking of that coverage, boy am I glad that RD put up a post on how this detention policy has been ongoing for years, and how some Dems are questioning how we should move forward after this.
Mostly, we don’t want to talk about this old policy, as that wouldn’t play into the Democratic narrative of blaming Trump.
Personally, I don’t know why Congress doesn’t get together and do its job, which in this case would be a law to change this policy.
Again, solutions wouldn’t really play into the narrative of blaming Trump, however.
Both sides are using these kids as political pawns in their attempt to have a good showing in November.
And both sides aren’t even talking about the cause of this problem!!!
I looked into why Honduras is so violent, and found a piece from 2015 and another written more recently.
Mostly, it’s drugs. And it’s the governmental corruption that comes about when drugs are a problem.
No other country in the world has more murders than Honduras, and most are drug-related.
Most of those drug-related murders are being perpetrated by gang members.
And that’s why so many are coming up to the US, trying to seek asylum.
When you think about it, most of the drugs produced in Honduras are consumed in the US.
These include both cocaine and heroin.
So American citizens actually create the demand for these drugs, and Honduras creates the supply.
One of the main business components of creating, and controlling, a drug supply is that you have to use violence.
This is true simply because the product being supplied is illegal, meaning you run the risk of having your product seized by both law enforcement and rival gangs.
- So you use violence to make sure that doesn’t happen.
- Sometimes you have to recruit innocent people to run the drugs as well.
- And sometimes you have to pay off cops and government officials to keep that supply safe too.
That’s just a cost of doing business in the illegal, multinational drug trade.
So why don’t we just end this damn drug trade?
Seems to me that the simplest and fastest way to do that would be to legalize all drugs in the US.
Pot, cocaine, heroin, LSD…just legalize them all.
I know that if the local gas station started selling heroin shoot-‘em-up kits starting tomorrow, I wouldn’t be lining up to by one.
Most people wouldn’t.
In fact, just 948,000 Americans used heroin in 2016, or 0.02% of the population.
When it comes to cocaine, we know that 4.7 million Americans used it in 2012, or 1% of the population.
And big names are getting onto the legalization bandwagon…at least for pot. These include former Speaker of the Houses John Boehner, who’s now a consultant for a legal pot business, as well as former president of Mexico, Vicente Fox, who just joined the board of High Times magazine.
It’s “moving out of a crime activity, a criminal activity that causes death and blood on the streets,” Fox says, “into a business, an industry, that is proving every day that it is sustainable.”
While Mexico has legalized medical marijuana, it hasn’t gone as far as countries like Holland and Portugal and Uruguay and 20 American states in legalizing it outright.
Fox concludes that should that day come, “we’ll take away half of the money that cartels get from selling drugs in the United States, and that half of the money will reduce the amount of guns and ammunition bought by the cartels.”
That will in turn decrease the number of killings, and thus the number of people fleeing their country for a better life.
The solution is so simple, and so obviously staring us in the face, that it’s amazing more people don’t see it!
But that’s the propaganda of a 50-year, failed war on drugs.
Boy have some people made money, though!
Costs us $51 billion a year to fight this war, though states lose about $6.1 trillion each year in both spending and lost potential taxes.
If it wasn’t profitable, we simply wouldn’t be doing it.
Illegal drugs are very profitable for both American companies supplying the ‘drug warriors’ as well as the gangs supplying the drugs.
It’s just not in America’s interest to end the drug trade. We know this from Afghanistan, where in 2001 the Taliban had reduced opium production to near-zero, effectively wiping out 75% of the world’s supply.
Then came 17 years of American rule there, and opium production shot up to a record high in 2017.
In fact, in just one year production increased by 63%, bringing the country’s total production capacity up to 328,000 hectares, “the most in Afghan history.”
Much of that opium ends up in the US, either on the street via heroin and fentynal, or in the pharmacy via Oxycontin and other legal opioids.
It’s big money – since 1995, Oxycontin has made its manufacturer $35 billion.
Conclusion
There are simple ways to end this border kids problem.
First, have Congress work to change the law so kids aren’t removed from their parents.
While I have to admit this does seem a bit odd to me – we don’t allow convicts or those awaiting trial to take their kids to jail with them – it should be a simple and fast fix.
Sadly, Congress would rather play politics than create change.
Second, we have to end the war on drugs.
People are just going to keep rushing north from their shithole countries until we take a hard look at why those countries are shitholes.
When it comes to Honduras, we know the issue is crime and corruption, both of which are driven by the drug trade…a trade that has its origins in America.
By simply legalizing all drugs across the board, we get rid of this problem in the shithole countries.
Now all those young gang members will have to find a new product to push.
Yep, they’ll have to get a real job.
I suspect most will just kill each other for a few months first, but then when they’re all gone things will improve.
I mean, you gotta eat…and if you can’t sell drugs and buy off corrupt politicians and policeman anymore, what are you gonna do?
Simple – get a real job or die.
And with no more drug problem in places like Honduras, the asylum argument that so many immigrants are using will dry up.
Third, we have to educate people.
Remember, just 0.02% of people are using heroin right now and just 1% of people are using cocaine.
If we legalize tomorrow, sure…those numbers might tick up a bit.
But most people aren’t going to go out and become junkies and crackheads.
In fact, most people aren’t going to go out and try these newly legal drugs.
Why?
Because they know the dangers of them, and how the high isn’t really worth the lows that inevitably follow.
Why do they think this?
Because they’ve been educated, either by our education system, the media, or by themselves.
Most of the time it’s parents that do this. They tell their kids not to use drugs, mostly because of how much it can damage their lives.
While it’s true that most of those damages can come about because of the legal repercussions of possessing and using drugs, just as many damages can come from long-term use.
These drugs play havoc on the body, and we see that quite clearly with the 64,000 deaths drugs caused in 2016.
Mostly, if we keep trying to do the same thing we’ll get the same results.
Currently those results consist of dozens of Central and South American countries overrun with drugs and drug violence, which in turn has created a massive diaspora of people to the US.
If we don’t address the underlying problem of drugs and corruption – and the American appetite that’s fueling this – then we can expect these asylum-seekers to come for a long time.
Nothing will change, as we’re not even looking at the problem.
First, have Congress work to change the law so kids aren’t removed from their parents.
While I have to admit this does seem a bit odd to me – we don’t allow convicts or those awaiting trial to take their kids to jail with them – it should be a simple and fast fix.
Sadly, Congress would rather play politics than create change.
Second, we have to end the war on drugs.
People are just going to keep rushing north from their shithole countries until we take a hard look at why those countries are shitholes.
When it comes to Honduras, we know the issue is crime and corruption, both of which are driven by the drug trade…a trade that has its origins in America.
By simply legalizing all drugs across the board, we get rid of this problem in the shithole countries.
Now all those young gang members will have to find a new product to push.
Yep, they’ll have to get a real job.
I suspect most will just kill each other for a few months first, but then when they’re all gone things will improve.
I mean, you gotta eat…and if you can’t sell drugs and buy off corrupt politicians and policeman anymore, what are you gonna do?
Simple – get a real job or die.
And with no more drug problem in places like Honduras, the asylum argument that so many immigrants are using will dry up.
Third, we have to educate people.
Remember, just 0.02% of people are using heroin right now and just 1% of people are using cocaine.
If we legalize tomorrow, sure…those numbers might tick up a bit.
But most people aren’t going to go out and become junkies and crackheads.
In fact, most people aren’t going to go out and try these newly legal drugs.
Why?
Because they know the dangers of them, and how the high isn’t really worth the lows that inevitably follow.
Why do they think this?
Because they’ve been educated, either by our education system, the media, or by themselves.
Most of the time it’s parents that do this. They tell their kids not to use drugs, mostly because of how much it can damage their lives.
While it’s true that most of those damages can come about because of the legal repercussions of possessing and using drugs, just as many damages can come from long-term use.
These drugs play havoc on the body, and we see that quite clearly with the 64,000 deaths drugs caused in 2016.
Mostly, if we keep trying to do the same thing we’ll get the same results.
Currently those results consist of dozens of Central and South American countries overrun with drugs and drug violence, which in turn has created a massive diaspora of people to the US.
If we don’t address the underlying problem of drugs and corruption – and the American appetite that’s fueling this – then we can expect these asylum-seekers to come for a long time.
- We can expect to see more kids separated from their parents, locked up, and recruited into the MS-13 gang.
- We can expect to see Dems and Republicans at each other’s throats, with little in the way of congressional compromise.
- We can expect to see the 24/7 news media decry the problem without ever looking into ultimate causes of that problem.
- And most of all, we can expect the same thing day in and day out, month after month and year after year.
Nothing will change, as we’re not even looking at the problem.
