Nicholas Kristof: Why Does Trump Treat Immigrant Kids Cruelly? Because He Can

[babylonsister]

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/25/opinion/family-separation-border-immigration.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fopinion

Why Does Trump Treat Immigrant Kids Cruelly? Because He Can
By Nicholas Kristof
Opinion Columnist
April 25, 2018

snip//

Why do we tolerate a policy that is so cruel to young children? For precisely the reason Dr. Seuss identified in a 1941 cartoon, which accompanies this column. While Dr. Seuss is best known for the likes of “The Cat in the Hat,” he published this cartoon as a commentary on America’s turning away Jewish refugees trying to flee Hitler.



As Dr. Seuss wrote in the caption, “Those were Foreign Children and it really didn’t matter.”

Refugees are fleeing real terror. Consider a Honduran girl, Elena, who at age 11 was asked to be a gang leader’s “girlfriend.” One of Elena’s friends had been similarly propositioned but declined — and then Elena saw the girl stagger naked down the street after she had been raped and shot. Elena finally fled when the gang threatened to kill her entire family.

snip//

The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit on behalf of a different mother, one who fled violence in Congo and arrived seeking asylum with her 7-year-old daughter. Immigration authorities took the girl away from her mom, screaming and terrified.

The suit says the girl “sits all alone in a Chicago facility, frightened and traumatized, crying for her mother and not knowing when she will see her again.”

Trump has also slashed the numbers of refugees accepted for resettlement in the U.S., from a historical average of 95,000 per year. This year only about 20,000 will be resettled. As David Miliband of the International Rescue Committee noted in The Washington Post, more Syrians were killed by poison gas in Douma (at least 60) than have been admitted so far in this fiscal year (44).

I don’t believe in open borders, and immigration policy is complex and difficult. Yet Trump isn’t making hard decisions but unconscionable ones.

I am the son of a refugee myself, a beneficiary of America’s magnanimity, and today’s policies leave me ashamed. When immigration officials pry a crying young child away from a parent and send that child to foster care, that is not “immigration policy.” That is “barbarism.”

[tblue37]

1. "Immigration authorities took the girl away from her mom, screaming and terrified."

This reminds me of the most horrifying scene in Sophie's Choice, when the Nazis drag the little girl screaming from her mother in order to send her to the gas chamber.

[Sam McGee]

2. We also should ask . . .

Why do Republicans treat poor people so cruelly??

Same answer: Because they are evil bastards and because they can.

[lunamagica]

3. K&R. They are feeling terror. They should not be forced to endure terror once they get here.

[riversedge]

4. Why? Because most Republicans allow to and many also push and agree with him

[paleotn]

5. If not for moral and humanitarian reasons...

the current policy is terrible for economic reasons. We need them. In 2016, the US fertility rate overall reached it's lowest point ever. A vibrant, innovative society has a balance of young and old citizens. Without them a society calcifies and declines. For purely selfish reasons, we need them paying into the SS and Medicare systems. I've used that argument on right wingers and it does seem to make them stop and think about their positions on immigration.

[ck4829]

6. He can? Or because we allow it?

[bronxiteforever]

7. K&R.

[NEOBuckeye]

8. He is a bastard. n/t

[Ohiogal]

9. Trump and his acolytes

look upon anyone not white as less than human. His base is absolutely terrified that this country is becoming too brown. So treating immigrants and their children cruelly doesn't faze them in the least.

[Orsino]

10. Not "because he can."

It's because cruelty makes his most rabid fans cheer.