Krystal Ball of MSNBC interviews 9500 Liberty filmmaker Eric Byler about the events going on in Lawrenceville, Virginia. The federal government attempted to sign a deal with a local defunct college to house some of the undocumented  children from the latest border crisis.

Eric was there in Lawrenceville filming the townhall meeting where the townspeople came out in full force to fight the deal.  He informed Krystal that the process was bad.  The towns folk felt that the federal government was trying to pull a fast one on them and therefore they came out “guns a blazing.”  All but 2 people spoke against the plan to house the young immigrants on the abandoned college campus.

Perhaps if the plan had been better presented, in the light of day, the children might have a residence.  The plan was scuttled because of town outrage.

The video begins with some footage some of us might find very familiar.

54 Thoughts to “Immigration: Flashbacks to our past!”

  1. Rick Bentley

    I always said that I’d rather have a reputation as rednecks than have another influx in my neighborhood of illegal immigrants. I see that EB is still helping to promulgate a reputation for us as xenophobes. So, thanks Eric.

    Now we need to make sure that his segments are seen in Mexico and other countries; let’s get the word out.

  2. Rick Bentley

    Looks like people get more agitated about thjis issue when it tangibly affects THEIR COMMUNITY. Lot of “xenophobes” in the world when their neighborhood gets affected.

    1. I think you make a good point about one’s neighborhood being affected. It’s very easy to be soft on an issue when you don’t have to live with it.

      Case in point–I love American Indians. You might just say I am a real bleeding heart on the subject. Low the poor Indian and all that. I have known several people from South Dakota, for example, who simply don’t see things my way. They are real Indian-pobes. Not sure what the word is for folks like that.

      I speak of flutes, tatanka, and the wind in the buffalo grass. Those people speak of poverty, drunkenness, and child abuse.

  3. George S. Harris

    So, just what would you do Rick? You seem to be long on words and short on solutions. I don’t have any solution for the problem except compassion at this point.

  4. George S. Harris

    P.S. Rick–the “problem” seems to be coming mostly from Central America. Of course, they have to transit Mexico but most of these kids are coming from Nicaragua, Honduras, and Guatemala.

  5. Starryflights

    The influx of migrants is caused by conservatives like Ted Cruz spreading rumors that Obama is granting amnesty to children. These rumors are false and vicious.

    Conservatives need to stop spreading rumors that Obama is granting amnesty to kids.

  6. This situation is sadly a humanitarian crisis. We all sit here talking about how horrible the situation is for Syrian children. We have the makings of the same situation here at our borders.

    The children are being sent to escape violence and extreme poverty. Think how desperate the parents have to be to send those children to a foreign country for their safety.

    Mexico is just the other border. The children tend to be from Honduras, Guatemala and Nicaragua. Maybe there is no one left in El Salvador.

    As an aside, I think that Saint Paul’s school was to be used as a temporary shelter for some of these children before they could be deported. You have to deport children to a responsible person and to the right country.

  7. BSinVA

    Rick: Xenophobia is a natural condition of tribal mankind. Embrace it for what it is. If you live in a small, close community, and strangers moved in, you would experience xenophobia (perfectly normal). Many of us live in larger, more diverse and more open communities and do not suffer that particular phobia as much (if at all). We are used to a multi-layered community and have had few to no adverse effects.

    My only advice for you is to try to learn from those of us that accept a changing demographic landscape. We have not contracted some foreign disease, we have not lost our livelihoods to “them foreigners”, we are not cowering under our beds fearing brown crime, we do not arm ourselves to the teeth to go to Wendy’s for a burger.

    1. It s normal. Let’s face iit. I think we all want to insulate ourselves from things that might become a problem somewhere down the road.

  8. ed myers

    Why don’t we view refugees as a gift? We get to add the finishing touches on these children’s education and get a semi-skilled work force that speaks excellent English and will do the less skilled jobs that our native born children detest. We need additional workers to fund social security and to do the service jobs that boomers will need in retirement. Likewise central America gets aid via money sent home by children to their parents without us having to raise taxes for foreign aid or leave central America to the ravages of a narco economy. If Guatemala is willing to give us their most precious assets (their next generation) in order to save them why should we return the gift?

  9. Scout

    This wave is fundamentally different from the usual economic migration that always occurs between countries of disparate prosperities and liberties. The peculiarity of this phenomenon is that it is largely children. As Moon says, it’s a humanitarian crisis similar in many ways to what’s happening with Syrian refugees (although the impelling cause is different). I don’t have any answers other than the observation that, if we treat this as though these children from Honduras and Guatemala are adults and simply throw them back across the line (and the line isn’t the Mexican border, it’s much farther south), we haven’t lived up to our own standards as Americans.

  10. Cargosquid

    @Moon-howler
    Mexico is dumping THEIR illegal aliens on our border, knowing that they won’t be back, unlike the case if they send them home.

    The Guatemalan ambassador has said that there has been no increase in violence in Central America. The increase in violence is in Mexico with the drug/civil war.

    1. You are going to believe the Guatemalan ambassador? Do you know anyone from Guatemala? Those three countries are violent.

      And to coin a phrase, in regards to Mexico, What difference does it make?

      I think you have been reading too many right wing rags. If there is no violence then why would the people send their kids to Mexico?

  11. Wolve

    As opposed to the left wing rags?

    1. I try to stay away from those things.

  12. Elena

    I simply can’t ignore that these are children. I’m sure we all know the starfish poem.

    STARFISH POEM

    One day an old man was walking down the beach just before dawn. In the distance he saw a young man picking up stranded starfish and throwing them back into the sea. As the old man approached the young man, he asked, “Why do you spend so much energy doing what seems to be a waste of time?” The young man explained that the stranded starfish would die if left in the morning sun. The old man exclaimed, “But there must be thousands of starfish. How can your efforts make any difference?” The young man looked down at the starfish in his hand and as he threw it to safety in the sea, he said,” It makes a difference to this one!”

    At times in our lives, we are all the old man, the young man, or the starfish. Sometimes, as the old man, we don’t see the purpose to actions. Sometimes, as the young man, we persevere and make a difference. And sometimes, we are the starfish who just need a little help.

    1. May we all be a young man to some starfish.

  13. Rick Bentley

    “So, just what would you do Rick? You seem to be long on words and short on solutions.”

    Enforce the law, keep illegal immigrants out, deport them whenever they are found and at any age. Obviously this would mitigate the problem.

    However, it wouldn’t make the rich richer, because it wouldn’t lead to increased wage degradation in America. So most of our elitists won’t do it. The fact that Obama has so successfully boxed the Republicans in politically now complicates the problem.

    1. Do you have a humanitarian side?

      I find the notion of paperwork as the deciding point to be morally bankrupt.

    2. The problem is, the immigration laws need a huge overhaul.

  14. Rick Bentley

    As I’ve said before many times, either the welcome mat is out or it is not. I say that it should not be; immigration should be controlled – and could easily be, and would be if illegal immigration cost the rich money instead of lowering wages.

    1. Rick, if the immigrants had a status adjustment, then they wouldn’t be “illegal.”

  15. Starryflights

    Consumers benefit from illegal immigration because it costs them less money to buy stuff that that labor makes.

  16. Rick Bentley

    Right. And it undercuts the value of labor – particularly for non-college graduates.

    I’m not against guest workers, and I’m not against legal immigration. but allowing people to profit by coming in illegally only encourages an unchecked system, that makes the rich richer (not only here, but in Mexico also) and hurts workers’ chances to make living wages.

  17. Ed Myers

    The point about restricting immigration to keep wages high will boomerange just as it did on auto workers the past generation. Trade protectionism (whether good or labor) makes us poorer as a nation even if labor policies in other countries is unfair. We need to import a certain amount of unskilled cheap labor. The problem: politics prevents us from doing that efficiently with temporary work visas so it is done illegally. Then we spend tons of money on border security that encourages temporary workers to bring their families because they can’t move easily across the border for visitation. Stupid policy results in idiotic results. Open the border to worker migration and document them. Then the migrant workers will leave their families at home and the xenophobics will see fewer brown children in the schools.

  18. Cargosquid

    @Moon-howler
    IF they didn’t come here or stay here illegally, then they wouldn’t be illegal either.

    1. It’s a matter of paperwork. Everyone has a story. I tend to be a little more understanding about kids escaping from violence.

  19. Cargosquid

    @Moon-howler
    They send their kids to Mexico to get here.

  20. Rick Bentley

    I agree with what Jeff Sessions says here – http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/06/22/Exclusive-Sen-Jeff-Session-Pro-Amnesty-Elites-Treat-People-as-Commodities

    “For too long, the immigration debate has been driven by the needs of politicians, business interests, and immigration activists who fail to appreciate that a nation owes certain obligations to its own citizens.”

    1. I am not going to agree with either of you but I am not going to disagree either. I am going to address the H1B visas. This isn’t illegal immigration either. I am not saying that there is something wrong with all of it, just some of it. Master chefs, dancers, and other foreigners with specialty skills are understandable. What isn’t understandable is why so many companies, many who do business with the federal government, import so many foreign nationals of other countries like India and Pakistan, to do computer work. They obviously are paying them less than they are paying their American counter parts. I have no proof of that statement but I strongly suspect it.

      I regularly correspond with a friend who works in the IT industry. His company deals mainly with federal contracts. I would be willing to bet that half the workers are foreign nationals–at least half. Don’t tell me that this company can’t find Americans to do these jobs. I know they can. There are too many IT workers out of work.

      Before these visas are issued, perhaps companies have to show salaries and efforts to hire Americans first. H1B should be issued to work that can be done by Americans. This plan obviously allows for French chefs, Romanian teachers and Russian ballet dancers to still come to the USA. The US labor department should be looking at all this data very closely.

      The one company I am bitching about I wont name. They have enough issues but trust me, you have heard of them.

      Immigration does need to be reformed. This is one area where a clean slate is needed. Sorry it doesn’t conjure up “papers please” or families running across the desert. It involves the middle class workers who are bumping middle class Americans out of jobs right under the nose of the feds–actually doing fed work.

  21. Furby McPhee

    Wouldn’t the logical conclusion from the Starfish Poem be that we should be returning the starfish back where they came from and are better able to survive? I assume that’s not what you are advocating though when it comes to these kids streaming across the border.

    And to the person who sees this as a gift, you really should use a tag. Someone might have thought you were serious.

    1. I don’t know what the answer to this is. I am sitting back and watching. There are components I simply don’t understand.

      It would be nice if all those who protest at abortion clinics would foster some of these little children until it could all be sorted out. To do anything else sort of makes a mockery out of being “pro-life.”

  22. Rick Bentley

    “What isn’t understandable is why so many companies, many who do business with the federal government, import so many foreign nationals of other countries like India and Pakistan, to do computer work. They obviously are paying them less than they are paying their American counter parts. I have no proof of that statement but I strongly suspect it.”

    When they get a worker on an “H-1 Visa” the worker can’t get a new job unless the new company is willing to “sponsor” them for a visa, which costs money. So they have less job mobility – important in the tech market. They are less able to resists pressure from management to work longer hours, and it’s less necessary to give them big or healthy raises to keep them in place.

    “Before these visas are issued, perhaps companies have to show salaries and efforts to hire Americans first.”

    There is some type of shell game in effect where the employer has to post the job listing somewhere and give US citizens a chance to apply for it, and then after that make an argument that they couldn’t find an american to do the job. Obviously this process is a massive joke.

    Most of the employers hiring foriegners by sponsoring their H-1 Visas aren’t doing it to get a less protected worker class. It costs them money to sponsor those workers, and they do it because they want to give opportunity to others. But the way it works out isn’t especially healthy for tech workers. I can see where on the whole this process is probably good for America, as it’s tech that drives our growth. But the reality of the situation is different than Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg tend to describe it as. There are Americans who can do this work, they would just prefer to suppress salaries and limit mobility for them.

    1. Think Beltway bandit, not Gates or Zuckerberg/

      I would agree with you if all tech workers in America had jobs. Many do not.

  23. Rick Bentley

    This would be a bigger issue if the whole tech area wasn’t so green. If I were going to thank God for anything, I’d thank him/her/it each day for giving me a brain that can effectively abstract things into parseable logic, so that I can make a living slinging code. The fact that I can speak English naturally and write with some precision (despite my sloppy blog postings – frequently done quickly between bursts of coding, I’m sorry to admit) gives me a value greater than most H1 Visa holders, too.

    (And the fact that I’m EXPECTED in this job type to have an at least moderately arrogant attitude and rebellious nature against authority … yeah I went into the right line of work. )

    1. It’s nice you found a match. 🙄 :mrgreen:

  24. Furby McPhee

    But shouldn’t the pro-choice people take them in instead? They (the immigrants) have made their choice.

    (No I’m not serious, but it’s just as silly to think pro-life people have any special obligation when it comes to immigration)

    I still don’t get why the June 2014 batch of immigrants has to go back but the previous ones get to stay. I guess these are the kind of inconsistencies you get when you make up the rules on the fly.

    1. Furby–uh—no. I guess I am just worried about those who are already on this earth.

      I haven’t sorted through who all is being sent back and who isn’t. I am mainly just looking at the crisis with all the kids.

    2. Furby, do you think these children at the border have a choice? I don’t think any of it is about choice. I also believe that when parents send their children on such a dangerous venture, they are desperate to protect them.

  25. Rick Bentley

    Can we all agree that :

    A. The influx is a direct reaction to Obama’s actions and rhetoric
    B. Obama was unprepared for this; he has not for the first time governed ineptly

    1. @Rick

      No I wont agree to any of that.

      Different people come to the presidency with different life experiences.

      Want to talk about unprepared? Let’s talk about Truman. FDR hadn’t even told him about the atomic bomb. He had only met with him a few times before he died. Now THAT is unprepared.

  26. Furby McPhee

    Do I think these children at the border have a choice?

    Absolutely! I haven’t seen a single one that was taken across the border against their will. Rather the reverse, they are paying to come. They are choosing to come to the US in the belief that they will be allowed to stay permanently. Can’t imagine where they got that idea.

    The parents of these kids are incredibly greedy and selfish to risk the lives of their children for money, which is what this is all about. If this was about protecting their children, why don’t they ever go south to Peru or Chile? Both are safe and they’d even know the language. But it’s not about safety. It’s about the greenbacks.

    1. Children don’t have a choice. They do what their parents tell them to do.

      You obviously don’t feel like sharing the American dream, do you?

  27. Cargosquid

    @Moon-howler
    Its not about “sharing.” If they want to immigrate legally, they are perfectly welcome.

    This is about the agenda of the Democratic party and Obama’s administration.
    This influx of illegal aliens is a planned operation.
    The feds planned for it back in January.

    http://weaselzippers.us/190573-government-advertised-in-january-for-escorts-for-65000-illegal-alien-children-to-be-resettled/

    Obama’s administration is purposely ignoring the law and aggravating the illegal alien situation.

    1. What do you think about the amount of immigration going on under George Bush? You are aware that it was significantly more? I simply do not believe it is a planned operation. The influx of kids started back in October.

      Just out of curiosity, why on earth would the Obama administration want to have a whole bunch of unparented kids?

      I call conspiracy theory on you.

  28. Furby McPhee

    I’m all for sharing the American dream. Sharing is when I voluntarily give you something. I get to desire if I’m going to share something and with whom I’m going to share it. If I just showed up and took your car out for a spin, would you call that sharing? I didn’t think so.

    I support a legal immigration process much like Australia’s, where applicants are assessed points based on age, language, technical skills, education and other factors like family reunification. The more points you have, the easier it is to immigrate. If you really want to immigrate to the US, then you take steps to increase your score, like learning English or securing a job before arriving.

    I don’t support creating a system that encourages the exploitation of children and puts them at serious risk of injury, rape or death. These kids belong with their families and they should be taken to the embassy of their country of origin for repatriation as quickly as possible.

    1. Just what do you do if the embassy won’t take those kids?

      I believe that we should know who is in the country and have some say-so over who enters and who doesn’t.

      On the other hand, there are a lot of people here who got through the back doors. There are now children. You don'[t just drive to the border, tell them to do a tuck and roll and push them out of the car. Not sure what the answer is but not that.

  29. Cato the Elder

    Rick Bentley :
    Can we all agree that :
    A. The influx is a direct reaction to Obama’s actions and rhetoric
    B. Obama was unprepared for this; he has not for the first time governed ineptly

    Um, no. He knew exactly what he was doing and he was totally prepared for it: http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/06/20/govt-confirms-authenticity-of-contract-request-for-escort-services-for-unaccompanied-alien-children-at-the-border/

    Strange how 65k is approximately the number we have. If only all government forecasting could be that good.

  30. Furby McPhee

    You really think the embassies wouldn’t take their own people back? That’s just fantasy. But for the sake of an argument, let’s pretend a country was dumb enough to do this. Here’s how I would respond:

    1) According to reports, most of the kids coming over in the current surge are OTMs (Other than Mexicans. That’s the phrase the government uses.) So they don’t share a direct border with the US. That means remittances go through Western Union and other wire services. Put an exorbitant tax on remittances to any country that refuses to take their own citizens back. Something high enough to effectively shut down the money pipeline for some time. As a bonus, the money can be used to offset the costs of providing aid to these kids.

    2) Greatly curtail visas for citizens of that country so that personal money transfers are much harder to do as well as well as putting domestic pressure on them.

    3) Freeze some financial assets of the host country until they take their citizens back. Not a complete freeze but a few hundred million to get their attention.

    4) Suspend aid to the host country until they take their citizens back. Biden just announced more aid this week. Make it clear that the aid money doesn’t go until the kids are gone.

    You wouldn’t need to do all of these. Even one or two would put enough of a financial squeeze on them that they would get back in line with their obligations to their own citizens and take them back. Also note that none of these need to be permanent measures. They can be undone easily enough once the country is back in line. (And of course, turned back on when we need them too.)

    1. Who is going to make this law? Congress? bwahahahahahahahahahaha! Yea, right.

      Meanwhile, what do we do with the kids?

      We are talking little people of the age and station in life that constant care is needed.

      Perhaps your plan for a long range fix is feasible. However…right now…what do we do?

  31. Furby McPhee

    Who is going to make this law? Well, Obama seems to have no problem writing his own immigration laws without Congress, so why not him? Obama put sanctions on Russia without Congress, so he can do the same for any country that won’t take their kids back. The GOP wouldn’t oppose any of those actions anyway though.

    What do we do with the kids in the meantime? We continue to house them and feed them for the few weeks it would take for these sanctions to bite. Then we load them onto buses and take them home. They could all be home by the end of summer.

    If you look at what I proposed a number of them are targeted at the ex pat community that are an economic lifeline for these countries. Disrupt the flow of money from America and they’ll do anything to get it flowing again.

    But like I said, all this is theoretical. In reality, the embassies wouldn’t (and under international law, couldn’t) turn away their own people.

    1. At least you have a solution. Most people don’t. Not sure you are going to score humanitarian points. You could probably work some in there though.

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