The witch's brew: Desperation, hope and children on the border

[Potoooooooo]

http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/17/us/immigration-overview/index.html?hpt=hp_t2
(CNN) -- Hope is a wonderful thing when it spurs struggling people to aspire to better circumstances and a more promising future, lifting communities out of poverty. But combined with misinformation, opportunistic politics and outright fraud, hope can be one of the cruelest harbingers of misery. And this is the role of hope on the border these days.

What is drawing thousands of children to America's doorstep unaccompanied by their parents, aunts, uncles or anyone else they know is hope. What is prompting their loving families to send them on perilous, expensive journeys over hundreds of miles in the hands of strange men is hope.

But what is awaiting them is confusion, conflict and despair.

So how did this strange confluence of expectations and suffering begin? And what is going to happen now? Here, in a series of short questions, is how this witch's brew was mixed.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

The ironic thing is that if they'd wandered over to a farm and started picking tomatoes and tobacco after they crossed the border, everybody who's screaming at them would love them.

 

[arkirk]

This is the tragic upshot of programs like NAFTA. Given the size of our country's land mass and natural resources, the number of these children is not huge. I keep hearing how we don't have room for more immigrants. What we have instead is an entrenched elite who has no use for these children and who skate by year after year lightly taxed or even untaxed. These children are refugees from countries whose economies have been destroyed by unfair trade deals and covert wars. IF YOU WERE ONE OF THESE CHILDREN, what would you do? What would you desire?

Outfits like ICE are not the answer. The long term answer lies in fair trade and limited competition with producers in the countries these children come from. The answer for today is to give these children the help they need and to start reducing capitalist predation in the countries of their origin. We probably won't get it right. Our government is just the pawn of the wealthy multinational corporate elite. It hurts to see these children met by angry protesters when they have done nothing to bring this on themselves. We must learn compassion and empathy or continue to see inhumane actions our government takes.

 

[Perspicuo]

The ironic thing is that if they'd wandered over to a farm and started picking tomatoes and tobacco after they crossed the border, everybody who's screaming at them would love them.

No, because they're brownish and speak another language. They're terrorists, man. Wake up. And they have tunnels, like the Palestinians, and should be dealt with according to God's law.

OMG, I think I've spent too much time on Facebook. You know, where the geniuses are.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

My question is, how is it so easy for the good Christian people of the USA to terrorize "the least of these?"

 

[Perspicuo]

Ever read "The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined", Athenaawakened?

Dang, it's a real drag to understand the phenomenon and be just as able to help changing it as I was before finding out.