Refugee Kids? Sez Who?

I hate to write provocative stuff.  Maybe if I were a little bit smarter.  I know just enough about a subject to get myself in trouble.  I know it is illegal to enter our country without proper documents.  I know that a country that can’t protect its borders isn’t much of a country.  And that’s where I find us.

At the present time, we have a crises.  Tens of thousands of unaccompanied children from Central America are crossing our borders.  We can’t seem to stop them from coming and we aren’t equipped to handle them when they get here.  I can’t help but think about the old spoof that someone wrote during the Vietnam War.  In this spoof, the author had China entering the conflict.  But rather than fight, they were marching south and surrendering.  Twenty abreast and as far as the eye could see.  They just kept marching and surrendering (The thesis was that China had so many people that they could just keep it up).  In this wild story, the US demanded that the Chinese stop surrendering.  They didn’t.  Since we had no choice, we nuked them.  If there was a moral in the story, it got lost in the mushroom cloud.

Now, we have children from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador marching across our border and surrendering.  Again, the similarity to the Vietnam spoofs striking.  We can’t handle them and they are overwhelming our border authorities.  I wish I understood more.  To me, it just makes sense to call out the National Guard and secure our border.  I’m afraid that might screw up somebodies political agenda and that is when I start mumbling and frothing at the mouth.

At this particular moment, I can’t stand either political party.  Our president is a smug doofus who has done damage to our national security at so many levels that I don’t  know if we will ever recover.  Periodically, I wonder if he is doing it on purpose.  I’m starting to froth again.  Then, our Republican leaders insist on doing nothing for fear that Obama might get credit for something good that happened.  And because the Republican party refuses to address the immigration issue (which they should and that means compromise), they are losing most of the Hispanic vote.  Then they lose the women’s vote over the abortion issue.  Thank goodness there’s still us old farts clinging tightly to our rifles!

The other day, I read a post on Facebook.  It said, “If you think fertilized eggs are people, but refugee kids aren’t – you’re going to have to stop pretending your concerns are religious.”  Whoa.  What does this mean?  Talk about provocative.  Talk about slick.  First of all, I’m not excited about the abortion issue, but I understand that there are religious groups that believe a fetus is a human being.  They have the right to believe that.  But who said anything about killing the kids crossing our borders?  Who made them refugees?  Refugees are those crossing borders “for safety or to escape persecution.”  I’m not sure that applies, but “refugee kids” gives them a sympathetic sound.  Heaven forbid someone call them illegal aliens .

I wish I were smart enough to figure out who is behind all this.  Thousands of children don’t start a long trek from Central America to our southern border on their own.  We love a good conspiracy theory, but I haven’t heard it, unless it is the Administration trying to bankrupt our nation ($3.7 billion).  If this situation gets  serious enough, Obama will probably blame Bush.  Now, I’m being told that if I don’t have empathy for these children, I’m heartless.  Say what?  For once, I am agreeing with Nancy Pelosi.  She said we are all Americans and she would like to take all of them home with her.  I, too, wish she would.

Written by PJ Rice at www.ricequips.com

Copyright 2014