It was an organized effort. Families volunteered their homes. Before the children were offered asylum, the housing, etc. was arranged. They were spread out over the country.
These refugee children are not coming in under an organized program. They are just being brought here and dumped into nothing.
Have you ever been in a juvenile detention center in the US? Have you ever sat through the hearings in which children are taken from their parents and placed in foster care? Are you aware of the crisis in foster care in the US today?
If Democrats want to organize a program, religious or secular, to take care of these children, to find proper homes for them where they can be fed and clothed and educated, then maybe that is what we should do, but the children cannot be emancipated (yes there is a legal process for that) and sent out into the population to fend for themselves and eat from dumpsters or hang out in front of a Home Depot hoping for work. They need a pretty sizable welfare system to take care of them.
It may feel good, but it is irresponsible to encourage families to send their children to the US with no programs or people or family to greet them and care for them.
These are minors. That is a very big problem. A lot of DUers seem to think that those who are ringing alarm bells about this problem are fascists. How many of those same DUers are willing or able to take one or two of these children in as foster children? Because that is what would be needed if we are to keep them in the country.
My solution is to set up classrooms and housing on military bases. That would be about the only place they could go and be safe. This is not at all like adult immigration. These underage children cannot enter into enforceable agreements all on their own without someone to take responsibility for them. That means housing will be hard to get unless someone vouches for them. This is a complex problem. Each child will probably need all kinds of evaluation -- level in school, physical health and capacity (do they have disabilities, etc.? eyes, teeth, hearing, etc.)
This influx requires some kind of organization to handle the logistics. You cannot just send these kids out on their own and expect them to earn their living and take care of themselves. Either Congress has to allocate a lot of money for these children or Obama should take the money out of the military budget.
Maybe we could take it from the NSA's surveillance programs. That would be a good place to get it.
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