The Wall Street Journal
What is happening at the southern border is a
true and actual crisis. News accounts justly use words like chaos,
collapse and breakdown. They feature images of children—toddlers, 4- and
5-year-olds—being shuffled to warehouse holding centers, sleeping
crowded at night on what look like pallets, covered only in Mylar
blankets. "I never thought we'd have refugee camps in America," said
Texas Sen.
John Cornyn,
"but that's what it's appearing."
All
this gives normal people a feeling of besiegement and foreboding. Is a
nation without borders a nation? Washington's leaders seem to recognize
what's happening as a political problem, not a real problem. That is,
they betray no honest alarm. They just sort of stand in clusters and say
things.
There seem only two groups that view the situation with appropriate alarm.
One
is the children themselves, dragged through deserts to be deposited
here. To them, everything is a swirl of lights, color and clamor, and
shouting and clanking. A reporter touring a detainment center in Texas
noted a blank, lost look among some of the younger children. Every
mother knows what that suggests. Children who cry and wail anticipate
comfort: That's why they're crying, to alert those who care for them
that something is wrong. But little children who are blank, withdrawn,
who don't show or at some point know what they're feeling—those children
are in trouble.
The other group
feeling a proper alarm is normal Americans, who are seeing all this on
TV and who judge they are witnessing a level of lawlessness that has
terrible implications for the country.
...The latest border surge has been going on
for at least two years. Children and others are coming because they
believe that under the president's leadership, if they get here they'll
get a pass to stay. (They're probably right.) This was predictable. Two
years ago Texas Gov.
Rick Perry
wrote the president that the number of unaccompanied children was
spiking sharply. He warned that unless the government moves, other
minors would attempt the journey and find themselves in "extremely
dangerous situations." The generally agreed-upon number of those who've
come so far this year is 50,000. Now government estimates are rising to
at least 90,000 by year's end.
...Meanwhile
some in the conservative press call the president incapable, unable to
handle the situation. But he is not so stupid he doesn't know this is a
crisis. He knows his poll numbers are going to go even lower next month
because of it. He scrambled Wednesday to hold a news conference to
control a little of the damage, but said nothing new.
There
is every sign he let the crisis on the border build to put heat on
Republicans and make them pass his idea of good immigration reform. It
would be "comprehensive," meaning huge, impenetrable and probably full
of mischief. His base wants it. It would no doubt benefit the Democratic
Party in the long term.
The little
children in great danger, holding hands, staring blankly ahead, are
pawns in a larger game. That game is run by adults. How cold do you have
to be to use children in this way?
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