Hoping for a change in scenery for these migrant camps there is finally knowledge on what the insides look like.
The camp meant to hold 250 migrants was found to hold more than 4,100 people inside. Which 3,400 of them were minors and 2,000 waited longer than the 72 hour limit. Families are packed in tight rooms with aluminum foil like blankets to keep them warm. There were kids outside playing soccer.
The camp is 184,000 square feet with 500 agents watching over it. The camp takes 16 million dollars a month to run. Children were allowed to call their family members at least once during every 48 hours in the camp.
This allowed for immigration authorities to quickly remove unaccompanied migrant children (Usually in their teens) and they were sent back to Mexico within hours of entering the camp. This health code was decided to be unnecessarily cruel. Biden has started to put more care into kids who come to the camps without parents.
Relating to economics: With the budget of US 16 million dollars a month to take care of these migrants is kind of harsh. Since America is the “Land of the free”, commonly known to accept all people, there should be more money going into helping people enter and succeed in this country.
Questions:
What else do you think can be done to help these migrants?
Is it wrong to coop these people up here or is America doing the best it can to help?
6 comments:
I think the first thing that should be done in order to help these migrants is not separating families or un-accompanied immigrants because it instills a sense of fear and injustice. I do not think they are doing the best that they can because they are not helping protect these kids and these camps are making it worse for them because the un-accompanied teens either get forced to migrate back to Mexico or barely talk to their families.
It's certainly a difficult situation. Of course, children shouldn't be living in crowded facilities, especially if they are unaccompanied and feel that they have no where left to go. Is the answer to build more facilities? Possibly, but then wouldn't more migrants come (illegally come or stay past limits) to fill those up? Other countries have an unlimited amount of people living in poor, deplorable conditions that would be happy to move to the U.S. If it were possible and the U.S. had no homeless population of itself or infinite room/resources, it would be good to bring in all these people. However, I feel that we almost always ignore our own homeless people in the pursuit of trying to help others. We have people living in poor, deplorable conditions everywhere as well, especially in cities where migrants also come illegally. It is complex because often migrants who come illegally contribute to the economy/taxes, but clearly the homeless in our own country still don't have homes/adequate jobs. This never-ending amount of people willing to immigrate to the U.S. has made me interested in one thing especially: overpopulation. Whereas Western, 1st world countries' birth rates are almost uniformly going down, 3rd world and in general undeveloped countries' have many of the highest birth rates. I believe it's because our education and often less reliance on dogmatic religious beliefs allow us to be safe and conscious of how we reproduce. An effective way to curb these problems in other countries that we're often expected to solve afterwards by admitting whoever wants to immigrate to the U.S. can better be solved earlier. Go in to those countries, set up better sex education systems, access to birth controls, cooperate with the local governments to show why an excessive population can be harmful (though many of these religious and corrupt governments may not care). If we can have other countries reproduce at a reasonable population, perhaps: 1) their homeless population will decrease as supply of labor decreases yet demand remains greater, and 2: we'll be able to admit a more reasonable rate of people to the U.S. that will allow us to also use the laws of supply and demand and government laws to uplift our own poor and homeless populations.
I think this entire situation is extremely sad to begin, but it is a very hard issue to be dealing with. These children should not be treated the way they are and they certainly shouldn't be separated or treated as poorly as they are. I'm not entirely sure how to solve this issue, and Danny mentioned above building more facilities could possibly invite in more migrants, but at the same time they way these facilities are running now are inhumane. I propose a discreet way to building more facilities but not making it as known to the public so it doesn't seem like an invitation to fill up the new facilities. Whatever the outcome may be, there needs to be a change in the way these people are being treated and to fix the awful separation of families because it's just creating more problems and not solving anything.
Packing these children in detention facilities is sick and inhumane. Under the Trump administration, social justice advocates loudly expressed their outrage to the media, but I do not see the same outcry for the Biden administration. In fact, the Obama administration needed to be held accountable as well. Building more detention facilities seems outrageous to me. It's a short-term reactive solution that doesn't circumvent the root of the problem. I agree with Danny that a large number of immigrants are aiming to seek residency here. However, we must understand that these people would not uproot their lives in their home countries if they were living under better conditions. Instead of spending 16 million dollars a month to run the modern-day equivalent of Japanese concentration camps, let's spend a fraction of that money to develop micro-business for native South Americans and support their infrastructure.
This is a sad and difficult issue. Children should not be in such inhumane conditions crowded in cages and probably terrified and unaware of what’s going on, being separated from their families and terrified of a possible language barrier. It’s difficult finding a perfect solution to this conflict, as Danny said bringing up the idea of more migrant facilities insinuates the invitation for more immigrants, which will cause more people living in these conditions. Ashley also proposes the idea of discrete facilities, but that means there would be no way to actually see what goes on to the children in these facilities since it would be disclosed to the public. Building facilities are unnecessary to me. It's a short term solution as Anoush said, and I think that instead of spending so much money on building these facilities we should aid in their infrastructure so they don't have to immigrate here in order to improve their life.
I think there can definitely be a better way for these people especially children to be living. It is a very hard situation that these families are in and being separated from their loved ones does not make it easier. I think the government should work harder on trying to ease this stressful situation for these families by trying to make them as comfortable as they can. I think keeping these people like this is wrong and America does not need to be "caging" them up like this. I think there are better ways to help these families and forcing them to live like this is not the right solution.
Post a Comment