America is fast losing its much accepted role of a big brother. Although the country, to the contrary belief, never had a ‘human’ face, but the phenomenal economic progress and camaraderie found in a common US citizen had attracted generations to its fold. But now what’s happening there only reminds us the days of Hitler. It reminds us a rescue operation known as Kindertransport started by Sir Nicholas Winton in 1939 at the outbreak of Second World War. It was a major effort to get children out of Germany, Czechoslovakia and other countries and into Britain. Parents had to give up their children to strangers, hoping for the best. After Great Britain agreed to accept Jewish children more than 11,000 children from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia streamed into Britain with help from five groups and thus they were saved from Nazi fires that extinguished the lives of six million Jewish people, including one million children.
America, which was considered to be the most independent and liberal society, even those days and a friend of the Jews community, had refused to accept the children. Although when some concerned people tried to get America involved and wrote to a lot of the senators they promptly got answers saying how concerned they were and how they wanted to do anything. Even a congressional bill to admit 20,000 child refugees was to be introduced but the idea itself died in committee. One of the arguments against the bill was that “accepting children without their parents was contrary to the laws of God.” How ironic that religion was used as a silly excuse and justification.
The same America is now being accused separating children from their parents. The official figure says that more than 2,300 children have been sent to shelters and foster homes. It has also sparked an international outcry against its “zero tolerance” policy of criminally charging thousands of Central American asylum seekers flocking to the border.
The US president’s family separation policy has unleashed a reign of chaos and confusion around the U.S.-Mexico border. As the government removed thousands of boys and girls from their mothers and fathers, and scattered them across the country, many parents are asking: Will I ever see my child again? Some worry they may be deported without their children, a legitimate fear since deportation cases tend to happen much faster for adults than for children. Others are weighing whether to abandon their asylum claims in the hopes it will speed up the reunification process.
Parents being released from custody now must navigate a maze of bureaucratic red tape to locate their children. Still with the uncertainty of their own asylum cases. Technically, adults have been held under the auspices of the Department of Homeland Security, while children are being handled by the Department of Health and Human Services. Newspaper reports claim that by most accounts the two agencies don’t communicate with each other.
Trump ended the practice in a June 20 executive order, promising to keep migrant families together, while still finding a way to charge and detain parents. Trump has maintained that family separation is technically not a new policy as Federal prosecutors have always had the power to criminally charge anyone who crosses the border illegally, and remove their children. So this time it’s not the garb of religion but the law.
It speaks a lot about the way this world is being run by arrogant leaders around the globe when some anguished parents feel that being detained or separated from their children was a better alternative to the risks they faced back at home in countries that have been rocked by violence, corruption and poverty. But a majority of the people say they would have never tried to migrate to the United States had they known the government would take their children.
Anyway a California federal judge has ordered that children must be reunited with their parents within 30 days, or two weeks for children younger than five, saying the federal government had not presented a credible plan to reunite families. However, it will not take away the lasting effects on migrant children of the prolonged government detention away from their parents.
Mr Trump! Be a Leader Man!!!
