Apparently, I am in a Hillary Clinton kind of mood today. But it’s not all good.
After it was made official that Clinton is running for president, someone on Facebook reminded me of the insensitive comments she made last year on unaccompanied minors from Central America.
I just have a general issue with the one-dimensional “solution,” if you can call it that, of “just send them all back,” as Clinton said in a June 2014 interview with CNN.
I’ll start with this: It’s confusing that in many things, like establishing Walmart, Starbucks, the United Fruit Company and other corporations in Guatemala—and funding the overthrow of past presidents (such as Jacobo Árbenz, one of the best presidents my country has ever had, who was ousted in 1954 because he wanted nothing to do with the United Fruit Company)—some U.S. politicians don’t have a problem with interfering in Central American business.
But when it comes to interfering in the form of offering positive, valuable, long-term solutions to disturbing issues (such as tens of thousands of children fleeing from the region), a lot of U.S. leaders don’t want anything to do with Central America, aside from the old chant of “send them back.”
It’s a bipartisan collaboration!
The Huffington Post posted a recap of that interview. Her response on the influx of Central American minors wasn’t surprising. The Obama administration has also failed to provide any thoughtful, human solution. The “let’s send them back and by some miraculous event they will understand to never come back to the United States” is not how things work.
For as long as there continues to be gang violence and poverty corroding Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras (where most of these kids come from), there is going to be an influx of people escaping and heading North—that plus the fake tales that they will get some sort of asylum once on U.S. soil; it’s all a very shitty recipe for an even shittier outcome. A lot of them see coming here as their one and only option, and overlook any type of explanation that tells them A. it is a dangerous and expensive trek and B. things here aren’t easy for immigrants south of the border anymore.
Here’s a section of the Clinton write up:
“They should be sent back as soon as it can be determined who responsible adults in their families are, because there are concerns about whether all of them should be sent back,” the potential 2016 presidential candidate said in an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour. “But I think all of them who can be should be reunited with their families.”
Clinton’s answer mirrored the Obama administration’s tough position on how to deal with unaccompanied minors, who are entering the country through the U.S.-Mexico border in Texas at rates some have called a “humanitarian crisis.” Those minors are put into deportation proceedings by the Department of Homeland Security, but then are transferred to the Department of Health and Human Services. That department looks for family members in the United States who can care for the children, although that does not mean they won’t be deported later.
It’s concerning that neither side of the political spectrum cares about getting past the “deportation is the only solution” route and explore the reasons these kids are pushed out of their native countries.
I hope Clinton’s views have changed a little…maybe?
I’m eager to hear what the immigration insight will be like for her this time around.
This article appears in Apr 9-15, 2015.
She will tell you whatever you want to hear. Does it really matter? You have no other choice. I hope a lot of voters stay home.
No one has a solution that they are acting on. Actively seeking and deporting will not happen. The status quo is that illegals come across the border like drugs, many different paths, and are deported only in the most extreme cases (somewhere between random and vindictive). So is the Taracena solution that the borders be open?
I do not always like the decisions made or opinions expressed by the lawmakers I vote for . However, I step back and look at the big picture and I will vote for Hillary in a heartbeat over any Republican. I will let my opinions be known to her as I do to President Obama when I do not like something like the TPP. I think he will go down in history as a great president and I think he has done some great things. As for illegals and what to do about them? I have witnessed them brought to different states by companies for cheap wages so I have no tolerance whatsoever for people who cry about the illegals. Work on the companies and a lot would change. They do this at resorts, building construction companies and farms. I wish this country would quit being so hypocritical. Companies want cheap labor and people want cheap goods. Then they don’t want them to have anything. We need reform but let’s start with honesty. I do not know what to do with all the children sent here. Do we put them in foster homes? Where else would they go? Is that necessarily good? It is not easy.
What you are forgetting here, and so many others forget, is that it is precisely because of U.S. meddling that children and others are forced to migrate.
We are spending billions of U.S. taxpayer money to fund a failed “Drug War” in Central America, train and arm the corrupt military and police of Honduras and Mexico for what? All it does is add more fuel to the fire, and if you even bring up the fact that these policies need to be reevaluated, all you get is silence.
Foreign policy cannot be separated from the immigration debate.
This is a true, “third rail” political conundrum. There are really no right answers. None of the answers do not cost the tax payer money. Sad for the kids, but America first.
So this fool commentator proposes that Tucson and other taxpayers pay for the hurt, shame, violence and lack of political will for every country in the world. Let them in is her position, and then watch an increase in violence here as a number of the ‘children’ are already gang related from central america, illiterate, unhealthy and a huge burden to our country, financially, and to the the failed Tucson schools, over burdened public healthcare system and although Ms. Taracena could care less, the taxpayers of the USA and Arizona. Follow her advice and the USA is one step close to bankruptcy (up to $40 trillion in debt/deficits and counting) and to becoming a Banana Republic like the countries for where these illegal interlopers come from!
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: “f you trace the history of the United States vis a vis Latin America and Central America, there has never been a time where a country made a revolution for the poor people where it was not overthrown by the CIA or the United States government, or the marines. Salvador Allende was democratically elected by the people of Chile. He made the mistake of believing that his job as president of that country was to represent the people of Chile. And he did his best. And he was overthrown by the CIA. So the interesting question is why does the United States government think, whether its Nicaragua or any other country in Latin or Central America that it has the right to overthrow those governments.”
http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/bernie-sanders-has-been-against-cias-role-destroying-democracy-his-early-days
I wish Bernie had brought up the coup in Honduras by then SoS Clinton in 2009. There has been so much bloodshed since then, most recently the assassination of award-winning leader Berta Caceres. Shill bowed to pressure by Dole and Chiquita to take over all of their farmland that was once successful farming co-ops, one of many corporate abuses happening in that region, causing the migration of children for survival. Zelaya was a beloved democratically elected leader. She had him ousted and INSTALLED A FASCIST DICTATOR. How dare she lie in the debate last night denouncing these leaders when she instigates this policy around the world.
http://www.democracynow.org/2016/3/4/remembering_berta_caceres_assassinated_honduras_indigenous
Maria — I hope you are now supporting Bernie Sanders and the people’s rejection of the corrupted politics of the Clinton machine and the DNC. Hillary Clinton will say anything, do anything, promise anything, to anyone, anywhere, anytime, and for any purpose, so long as it gets her what she wants: elected. She has a long history of this, including at least 37 years of baggage going back to the “cattle futures” scandal. Her history of positions on issues and her baggage prove she has few true “core” convictions, and the few she holds are actually quite far to the political Right. The academically researched “political compass” analysis at politicalcompass.org is not fooled by her recent reversals and “evolution”; it places her ideologically directly below Ronald Reagan’s soulmate Margaret Thatcher, and barely Left of George Bush. Hillary cannot be believed to voice support for sending children back to Central America one time, then do an about face and say she didn’t mean it. That is no different from her recent “evolution” on gay marriage or NAFTA, CAFTA, TAFTA, or even the TPP she that promoted around the world for years (her speeches are archived on YouTube). She did not “evolve” on these or the many other topics. For Hillary to claim that she has changed her core conviction about a topic so sensitive is to play the voters for fools. She is simply a political chameleon not to be trusted.
Bill and Hill are lawyers. End of story.