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<h1 class="gmail-page-header">Let's Change the Border Debate, for Both Humanitarian and Policy Reasons</h1>
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By <span><a href="https://cis.org/North" hreflang="en">David North</a></span>
on June 25, 2018
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<p>For both humanitarian reasons and to defuse the current and heavy
negative spin on immigration law enforcement, the administration must
move quickly to be seen as both a benevolent entity as well as a police
force. It should go out of its way in an effort to change the terms of
the current conversation about the Central Americans.</p>
<p>Let's face it, the former family-separation policy is a terrible one
on its merits and is close to disastrous regarding broader efforts to
enforce the immigration law, most of which do <i>not</i> involve the breaking up of families.</p>
<p>Let's hope that after Judge Dolly Gee, who is presiding over the <i>Flores</i>
settlement, shoots down the president's executive order saying that a
previous administration accepted an agreement that children could not be
separated from their families for more than 20 days — as she is sure to
do — that the president does not restore family separation policies as a
bargaining tool.</p>
<p>My sense is that both the judge's decision and the president's resulting reaction are all too predictable.</p>
<p>Let's turn to the policy of detaining whole families. When whole
families arrive illegally, it is absolutely essential to the enforcement
of the immigration law that they be detained. This, however, does not
help the image of the restrictionist position in the short run.</p>
<p>So the government should take a variety of steps to show that it is
dealing fairly, even imaginatively, with a detainee population that is
fated to be with us for many months, and perhaps a few years in some
cases.</p>
<p>The suggestions in this posting assume that the government will do
its best to house the detainees, to hire more immigration judges, and to
seek changes in the asylum law that currently encourages people from
Central America to come to our southern border.</p>
<p>But all of this will take time, and meanwhile there is a large
population (idolized by parts of the media) that will be with us for a
while. What we do to, and for, them should show America at its best. But
none of these actions should encourage further illegal migration — it
is a dicey balance at best.</p>
<p>Everything being proposed assumes that most of the Central Americans
will have to leave — some perhaps to other countries — and that the
United States has done smart things to make that re-location as painless
as possible. The goal should be to equip the former detainees to become
successful inhabitants of a place other than in the United States, in
most cases their home nations. Some of our suggestions are made,
frankly, with the hope that these actions will lead to more positive
press coverage.</p>
<p>We are also assuming that keeping the detainees detained will be
expensive, even without the actions we propose, and that cutting short
their stays will, on the other hand, save the Treasury many millions of
dollars. It will be far easier to raise money from Congress for these
activities than it will be to get billions for the wall.</p>
<p>This posting deals with health matters; others will touch on the
education of the children in detention, training some of the adults to
be agents of change after they return to their home countries,
vocational training in skills needed in the tropics, possible subsidized
relocations of some to third countries, and other detainee-related
subjects.</p>
<p><b>Health.</b> I suspect that this is a pretty healthy population.
They were not scooped up from refugee camps and flown here with
governmental help; they all had to make it across the length of Mexico
on their own. This presumably means that there are few badly disabled or
very sick people among them. But three health-related activities should
be started as soon as possible.</p>
<p>The first is a universal health <i>screening</i> by nurses and
physicians, to identify current and potential problems, and to record
these data both on a government-run electronic database, as well as on a
series of cards and or discs that can be enclosed in waterproof
envelopes that can be worn around people's necks. This process will
identify any diseases that the detainees may be carrying with them and
to put them on track for needed treatment. Some screening like this
already takes place, if not the suggested ways of recording the results.</p>
<p>The second step is a series of <i>vaccinations</i>, a set designed
particularly for people living in the tropics. Each of the shots should
be recorded in the health record systems outlined above. The
vaccinations are not mandatory, but the alternative would be immediate
deportation for everyone in the family. The president will be able to
brag, truthfully, some weeks or months from now that the detainees are
by far the healthiest, or at least the most vaccinated, of all Central
Americans.</p>
<p>The third phase would be, in needed cases, <i>operations</i> for both
emergent and some ongoing conditions. These procedures, particularly
emergency ones, might well be the subject of press attention, of the
United States as a caring government. If, in some cases, the procedure
is available in the United States, but not in the country of origin,
that should be noted.</p>
<p>We might also intervene — as the home countries had not done — in
non-emergency cases, such cleft-lip or club feet, in which not very
complex matters could be handled quickly, with or without publicity, and
would provide life-long advantages to the individuals. Efforts might be
made to recruit surgeons, nurses, and others to handle these matters as
pro bono efforts. (Similarly some of the vaccines might be secured from
drug companies willing to help, perhaps for a tax break.)</p>
<p>Some or perhaps most of what has been suggested above may already be
in the works, particularly for those headed to military facilities.</p>
<hr><p><i>This is the first of a series of postings on our government and the detainees.</i></p>
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<br clear="all"><br>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature">=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+<br><br> Harold F. Schiffman<br><br>Professor Emeritus of <br> Dravidian Linguistics and Culture <br>Dept. of South Asia Studies <br>University of Pennsylvania<br>Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305<br><br>Phone: (215) 898-7475<br>Fax: (215) 573-2138 <br><br>Email: <a href="mailto:haroldfs@gmail.com" target="_blank">haroldfs@gmail.com</a><br><a href="http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/" target="_blank">http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/</a> <br><br>-------------------------------------------------</div>
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