Immigrating to The Philippines

[Guest shiloh357]

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/01/hhs-handed-child-migrants-to-human-traffickers.html

The United States government placed an unknown number of Central American migrant children into the custody of human traffickers after neglecting to run the most basic checks on these so-called “caregivers,” according to a Senate report released on Thursday.

In the fall of 2013, tens of thousands of unaccompanied minors traveled to the U.S. southern border, in flight from poverty and gang violence in Central America. At least six of those children were eventually resettled on an egg farm in Marion, Ohio, where their sponsors forced them to work 12 hours a day under threats of death. Local law enforcement uncovered the operation last year, prompting the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations to open an inquiry into the federal government’s handling of migrants.

“It is intolerable that human trafficking — modern-day slavery — could occur in our own backyard,” Senator Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio and the chairman of the subcommittee, told the New York Times. “But what makes the Marion cases even more alarming is that a U.S. government agency was responsible for delivering some of the victims into the hands of their abusers.”

As detention centers became incapable of housing the massive influx of migrants, the Department of Health and Human Services started placing children into the care of sponsors who would oversee the minors until their bids for refugee status could be reviewed. But in many cases, officials failed to confirm whether the adults volunteering for this task were actually relatives or good Samaritans — and not unscrupulous egg farmers or child molesters. The department performed check-in visits at caretakers’ homes in only 5 percent of cases between 2013 and 2015, according to the report

The Senate’s investigation built on an Associated Press report that found more than two dozen unaccompanied children were placed in homes where they were sexually abused, starved, or forced into slave labor. HHS claimed that it lacked the funds and authorities that a more rigorous screening process would have required. However, the investigation also found that HHS did not spend all of the money allocated to it for handling the crisis.

The agency placed 90,000 migrant children into sponsor care between 2013 and 2015. Exactly how many of those fell prey to traffickers is unknown, because the agency does not keep track.

[Guest shiloh357]

52 minutes ago, Badjao33 said:

Which is exactly why children shouldn't be separated from their parents at the border and sent to institutions for weeks and months at a time. In almost every case, the trafficking of children occurs either before or after the children arrive at the border. Not when they are crossing. 

Wrong.   They have to separate them from the adults because they don't know which ones are the parents and which ones are the traffickers.  The last thing you want to do is put the children in the detention center with traffickers who the ones abusing them.   I realize that for you 1% of children being abused is an acceptable price to pay, but I don't share that view.

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There is no need to separate a child for more than a few hours to one day at most. It doesn't take long for professionals to determine if that child belongs to the adult they are in the company of. Separating children from their parents and shipping them across the country alone is child abuse and causes irreversible psychological trauma. It also puts them at a higher risk of being trafficked. 

This administration is not taking children from their parents and shipping them across the country.  That was the Obama administration that did that, when no one cared about the children.
 

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In order to find out that 99% of the families were legitimate, then the 1%  that weren't had to also be screened which means they were probably didn't get away with anything. No child is expendable. 

 

Apparently 1% of them are expendable, ultimately.

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Since there is a problem with gun violence in the US, if the government started a policy that all gun owners must surrender their guns until they can sort it all out, would you support such a move?  

Gun ownership and gun violence is not analogous to this situation.  Gun ownership is a constitutional right.   Immigrating to the US is not a right that we afford to foreigners.  It is privilege we grant out of our good graces.  No one as a right to be in the US except citizens.   That also includes the illegals who come here to sponge off of the American people.

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Not one of these links proved that most illegals crossing the border do not show up for their hearings. DHS and the US Department of Justice puts the percentage of no shows at less than 25% on average since 2012. I'm going to go with that number.

Since they don't know how many illegals are in the US, they can't actually give percentages like 25%.  

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I'm not spewing a liberal narrative.

Yes you are.

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I am producing facts many of which come directly from the US government. 

And you ignore the facts that don't fit your liberal narrative.

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It does matter and I don't want it happening at all either. 

But it does and ultimately, it is a small enough number that they can be ignored.

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In 2017 there were 46 cases of fraudulent family claims of those crossing the border, and in the first five months of the 2018 fiscal year, there were 191 cases. Since the government had to process these fraudulent cases, that would mean they were caught if they were found to be traffickers. 

And part of that processing was separating the kids out from the traffickers posing as parents.  The notion that it is child abuse is a dumb argument given that facilities that the children are housed in are better than what they had in their country of origin.  They eat better, are cleaner, get fresh clothes, get medical care, but to you, that is "abuse."  Totally irrational.

 

[ayin jade]

3 hours ago, Davida said:

I am reminded that you can't reason with the Liberal Narrative because the views are not arrived through Reason, but is selective, hypocritical and sidesteps the facts that don't fit the Liberal narrative. I think Frontpagemag nails it in the Article: Weaponizing Compassion in case people didn't come across Shiloh's thread which is linked below this article.  

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270514/weaponizing-compassion-bruce-thornton

Bruce Thornton is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.

The Democrat “resistance” has managed to break its own record for hysterical and hypocritical invective. Literalizing the clichéd punch line of a thousand gags––“Will no one think of the children!!!” ––the Dems are hyperventilating about the illegal alien parents and their children being separated upon detention, as the law requires. Once again, we see how much “conspicuous compassion,” as Alan Bloom called it, has become a weapon of politics, one that damages our security and interests.

In this case, the disconnect between fact and spin is more glaring than usual. No matter that ICE and Homeland Security are working within the constraints of court rulings and the law that Congress passed and can change any time.  No matter that often it’s impossible to certify that the detained adults are the actual parents, or that human traffickers aren’t using this dodge to enter the country with their prey. No matter that the alternative is to turn these poorly vetted illegal aliens loose (as Obama did, as a form of de facto amnesty), merely on their word that they will show up for a hearing. No matter that across the country, Child Protective Services are “ripping children from their parents’ arms,” as are the children of those arrested on suspicion of a crime. Do we set a criminal suspect free on his own recognizance just because he’s accompanied by his kid? 

No matter. Fact, common sense, and law must cede to politics, which these days comprises a deep, pathological hatred of Donald Trump, the Emmanuel Goldstein of the Democrats’ 24/7 “Two Minutes Hate.” “Compassion” is just another weapon of that hate.

Compassion, however, has a long history of being trivialized in Western culture. It followed the idealizing of “sensitivity” that began in the late 18^th century. Novels like Laurence Sterne’s A Sentimental Journey and Henry Mackenzie’s The Man of Feeling, whose hero bursts into tears every ten pages, marked the point when showy displays of “feelings” like compassion, often called “luxurious” at the time, became a virtue-signaling status symbol. This is the fad that Jane Austen satirized in her 1811 novel Sense and Sensibility. As many other critics at the time pointed out, compassion was the justifying virtue that masked what often was nothing more than emotional solipsism for those whose concern for others seldom led to action that improved their lot.

By the mid-19^th century even a master of sentimentalism like Charles Dickens could recognize that such public displays of compassion for the poor or native peoples abroad were a self-indulgence. In Bleak House, he created Mrs. Jellyby, the archetype of today’s purveyors of virtue-signaling compassion, who bleed for distant suffering but neglect that in their own backyard. As Mrs. Jellyby strives to settle impoverished Londoners among heathen Africans they will convert to Christianity, her shabby household and neglected children continue to fall into ruin. 

Dickens called this “telescopic philanthropy,” a phenomenon we’re seeing today with the ostentatious compassion for illegal alien children on the part of those who shrug off the daily excesses in their own country, such as those of the Child Protective Services, which often violate the Fourth Amendment. 

Popularized more widely in the 19^th century by the mass circulation of illustrated magazines and serialized novels, conspicuous compassion permeated American culture, as did “telescopic philanthropy.” In Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain satirized the “committee of sappy women” who are petitioning the governor to pardon the murderous Injun Joe: “If he had been Satan himself there would have been plenty of weaklings ready to scribble their names to a pardon petition, and drip a tear on it from their permanent leaky water-works.” 

So too today, with those beating their breasts over sloppily vetted illegal aliens who endanger their children by bringing them across the border or sending them off with “coyotes.” They can’t seem to summon similar compassion for the victims of the criminals allowed into the country and kept here despite serial felonies. And remember the weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth over the terrorist murderers held in Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib? And how about the “Palestinians” who use their own children as shields behind which to launch lethal attacks on Israelis? When do we hear the same lamentations over innocent Israeli children and families murdered by homicide-bombers, scud missiles, and knife-wielding terrorists?

Then there is today’s favorite venue for politicized conspicuous compassion––the postcolonial Third World. Our morbid fascination with the misery and suffering there serves both our need to signal our superior virtue, and the leftist melodrama of the Western colonial and imperialist oppression allegedly responsible for that suffering. 

 

This combination of conspicuous compassion and ostentatious self-loathing is the essence of Third-Worldism, that idealization of the non-Western “other” combined with self-flagellation over the original sins of imperialism and colonialism. French philosopher Pascal Bruckner wrote a brilliant analysis of this cultural neurosis in Tears of the White Man. Bruckner describes how Third-World suffering has become a lucrative commodity for the modern media, who provide the images that we consume in order to enjoy cost-free pathos and smug superiority about our righteous compassion. In this way, we compensate for our “certain essential evil,” as Bruckner calls the West’s original sin, “that must be atoned for.” 

Which is to say, conspicuous compassion is about political power, since this neurosis empowers the foreign policy favored by globalists and leftists alike –– foreign aid and “development” even if they’re not in our national interest and don’t help to protect our security. Domestically, for decades, including during George W. Bush’s bout of “compassionate conservatism,” the progressives have slandered conservatives as heartless and ruthless racists, bigots, and xenophobes who fear the dark-skinned “other” and seek to “roll back the clock” to the time when their “white male hetero-normative privilege” was unchallenged. 

That caricature reinforces as well progressives’ self-image as more enlightened and tolerant, more caring about the suffering victims of conservatism’s crimes. Both caricatures serve political theater by giving us a melodrama in which good and evil, white hats and black hats, are easily recognizable without having to think too much about, say, the long track-record of progressivism’s failures, both at home and abroad, to improve the lives of those they have so much compassion for.

But politics based on sentimental emotions and cheap compassion obscures the tragic realities of the choices a nation has to make. Modern Mrs. Jellybys like Samantha Power, Obama’s U.N. ambassador and architect of the “responsibility to protect” doctrine, have nothing practical to say about how to achieve their utopian projects without a massive intervention of lethal force. U.N. resolutions, heart-rending photographs, celebrity global pan-handling, disappearing red lines, and lofty speeches didn’t bring the boon of education to girls in Afghanistan. The U.S. military did by killing and driving away the bad guys. They liberated more girls in Afghanistan than all the feminist books and seminars and protests combined. 

But the role of our government is not to be the world’s social worker going about searching for monsters to destroy. The 800,000 murdered in Rwanda comprised families and children too, but we did nothing to stop the slaughter. Instead, we pretended that the feckless U.N.’s Orwellian “peace-keepers,” who watched the disaster happen in real time, absolved us of our “responsibility to protect.” Rather than indulge such hypocrisy, we should be honest and let the world know that we act in the service of our own citizen’s security and interests. If humanitarian assistance or policies are compatible with those purposes, then we should do what we can.

Moreover, we do not have a moral obligation to be the world’s refuge and take in everybody if doing so harms our security and interests. And since we can’t take in every refugee whether political or economic, any decision to admit people will necessarily be political, which again means that our country’s interests are the paramount criterion. In the end, we are not obligated to correct the misery and suffering of nations who bear the responsibility for their own people’s problems. We can’t let the whole world use us as Mexico does, as a safety valve for lessening their citizens’ discontent caused by their country’s political and economic corruption and dysfunctions; and as a source of foreign currency––$26 billion in just nine months last year–– in the form of remittances sent home by their citizens.

Finally, it is the fundamental right of every sovereign nation to protect its borders and to decide by what criteria they will admit immigrants. Whatever we decide is a political issue to be settled by the people through their representatives in Congress. Calls for amnesty or de facto open borders––which is what the recent outcry over separating illegal aliens from their children is really about––should be adjudicated by political debate on the facts, consequences, and costs, not by emotional appeals, sentimental rhetoric, and conspicuous compassion.

Unfortunately, the hypocritical telescopic philanthropy of the Dems, few of whom live with the wages of our broken immigration system, has been seconded by too many Republicans intimidated by their rhetoric. The Bush clan, which spent Obama’s two terms in silence as The One “fundamentally transformed” America, have squandered much of the good will they once enjoyed by piling on Donald Trump with ridiculous comparisons to the internment of Japanese citizens during the World War II, and with bathetic exaggerations of the conditions in which the children are kept. So too a lot of Republicans who should know better, but with an eye on the November midterms, are scrambling to defuse the bad publicity caused by the dishonest media coverage, rather than championing facts and principles and refuting the Dems’ duplicitous narrative. 

But ceding the argument to the Dems, rather than putting their feet to the fire by forcing them to vote in Congress, is handing them a win. That’s why Trump’s executive order on Wednesday ending the practice instead of forcing Congress to do its job, is disappointing. And even if that’s what polls tell us the people want, laws or policy based on specious emotion and lurid optics, rather than on Constitutional principles and national interest, usually turn out to be disastrous. Our national interests are more important than people’s need to display their conspicuous compassion."

 

 

 

People with the most common form of color blindness cant see red. If you want to make sure everyone sees it, use a different color. Or a darker form of it. (They see shades of grey instead of red-green.)

There is no color you can use to get those afflicted with liberal blindness to see it.

[ayin jade]

1 hour ago, Badjao33 said:

The current situation is not a liberal or conservative political issue, but a moral issue. Most people in America are appalled at what is taking place at our border including many conservative Evangelicals. Below are a few examples. 

"It's disgraceful. It's terrible to see families ripped apart and I don't support that one bit," Franklin Graham

“These children and their parents need our prayers, This is a frightening time for them, because they have been separated in a strange land. Children and families hold special places in our hearts because of the teachings of Scripture.

Scripture instructs us to respect the laws of nations, but the Bible also indicates Christ followers are to honor a higher authority, We obey the laws of governments unless they call on us to violate the instructions of God, then we seek to change the laws. God is sovereign over nations, and in a democracy Christians have a special responsibility to bring godly influence to government policies.

Living in a democracy, Christians have a responsibility to seek to influence government in the direction of care and justice for all people, especially the ‘least of these,’ as noted by Jesus in Matthew 25.”  Gus Reyes, director of the Texas Baptist Christian Life Commission

A coalition of Evangelicals endorsed the following letter:

 

Which shows that Christians in leadership can be wrong. Just because they claim its not scriptural doesnt mean its not scriptural. Some Christians claim homosexuality is ok too. 

 

[ayin jade]

1 hour ago, Badjao33 said:

Frontpagemag is a site know for bearing false witness and is not a good source for Christians to get information. They once claimed on their site that 60,000 Christians were ethnically cleansed from a community I serve in here in the Philippines which was a lie. I can say with certainty that this site can't be trusted for true reporting.  

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/frontpage-magazine/

And you used questionable sites or links as well. One link you posted didnt show at all what you claimed it did. I didnt bother addressing it in your earlier post. 

[Guest shiloh357]

3 hours ago, Badjao33 said:

Frontpagemag is a site know for bearing false witness and is not a good source for Christians to get information. 

Neither are so-called "missionaries" who claim that Islamic terrorism against innocent Israelis is reasonable and understandable.

[Debp]

7 hours ago, Badjao33 said:

Yes, I am talking about asylum seekers which make up about 1/3 of those crossing the southwest border. Not 10%.  You say "less than 10% of illegals are asylum seekers", which implies that they are breaking the law. Asylum seekers are not breaking the law. 

As can be seen in the chart below, the number of asylum seekers has increased dramatically in recent years. 

The increase at the southwest border is a direct result of what is taking place in central America.

Those showing up at our borders today from these countries need our help. They are not criminals and are instead desperate people seeking refuge. Turning them away at our border and deporting these people equals a death sentence for many. That's not hype, that's the truth based on facts on the ground. 

Then they are criminals. 

Families and asylum seekers who come with children have an almost 100% rate of showing up for their hearings and of all people apprehended at the border, since 2012, between 75 and 89 percent show up for their hearings.

https://www.dhs.gov/immigration-statistics/yearbook/2016 

On average, 80% of those 1 million have lived there for over 5 years, with 66% living there 10 or more years. Also, many of those are illegal because they overstayed their visas which they legally obtained at some point in time. Every Filipino illegal would probably fall into that category. Not all of those who are illegal in LA came across the southwest border. 

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/04/27/5-facts-about-illegal-immigration-in-the-u-s/

Border crossings are at historic lows, so it's not like we are facing the same crisis we were in the past. 

 

There is no need to separate a child for more than a few hours to one day at most. It doesn't take long for professionals to determine if that child belongs to the adult they are in the company of. Separating children from their parents and shipping them across the country alone is child abuse and causes irreversible psychological trauma. It also puts them at a higher risk of being trafficked. 

In order to find out that 99% of the families were legitimate, then the 1%  that weren't had to also be screened which means they were probably didn't get away with anything. No child is expendable. 

Since there is a problem with gun violence in the US, if the government started a policy that all gun owners must surrender their guns until they can sort it all out, would you support such a move?  

Not one of these links proved that most illegals crossing the border do not show up for their hearings. DHS and the US Department of Justice puts the percentage of no shows at less than 25% on average since 2012. I'm going to go with that number.

I'm not spewing a liberal narrative. I am producing facts many of which come directly from the US government. 

It does matter and I don't want it happening at all either. 

In 2017 there were 46 cases of fraudulent family claims of those crossing the border, and in the first five months of the 2018 fiscal year, there were 191 cases. Since the government had to process these fraudulent cases, that would mean they were caught if they were found to be traffickers. 

 

 

Again, we are not talking about legitimate asylum seekers.  We are talking about people who simply enter our country by illegal means and disappear into our country.

Also, it doesn't matter how many years an illegal alien has lived here.   I don't understand you bringing that up.   I've lived here since 1967 and illegal aliens that sneak across the border  and disappear into the USA were a problem back then as well.    Only now the floods of people sneaking across our border and simply disappearing into our country are much more in number.  How many more people can a country support as the illegal aliens will sign up for social services?!!

We have huge multitudes of homeless in Los Angeles including veterans.... tent encampments in practically each neighborhood, including at the end of my street and other parts of my neighborhood.   People can't afford these extremely high rents in Los Angeles so some become homeless...there is a shortage of apartments here.   Other homeless are on drugs or alcohol, or have mental illness, so they become homeless.   We need to help all of these people first!!

 

 

 

[Debp]

7 hours ago, Badjao33 said:

How can the numbers be increasing when the the number of undocumented residents from Mexico entering the country has fallen by almost one million and the number of illegals entering is at historic lows? Percentage wise the number of apprehensions are at the highest, deportations are higher percentage wise, and most are attending their hearings? 

 

The numbers have increased since 1967 when I came to California.

2 hours ago, Badjao33 said:

Undocumented immigrants are not eligible for federal public benefit programs.

 

Then why aren't we (The Church) helping them? This doesn't sound like a problem the government should be fixing, but rather us. Have you ever stopped to think what the Church could actually do in the world if members would stop "going" to church and actually started being the CHURCH that Jesus intended it to be.

Being part of the Church is walking with Jesus and setting an example for the rest of the world where so many are not fulfilled because they do not know or love Him. We as believers do not need a building or "professional" preachers to worship God. Imagine what the true Church could do with all the money that is currently being spent on un-biblical buildings and salaries if it went directly to the needy both spiritually and physically as Jesus commanded.

I originally wrote about this in 2014, so a few of the figures may be a little off, but not enough to change the point.

The average church member gives an average of $800 to their church each year. All in all, Americans give more than $50 billion annually directly to churches. (I found one source that said 93 Billion, but I will go with the more conservative number)

So what could 50 Billion dollars do if we stopped spending a majority of our money on religious institutions and the "Church" instead started to follow the teachings of Jesus?

The American church alone could fully fund every single humanitarian crisis in the world today! (Requirements: $25.39 billion) http://fts.unocha.org/

The overall national average cost of a meal in the US is $2.52. At that rate 19,841,269,841 meals could be purchased each year by the church! That would end the hunger problem in the US without any problem, so just imagine what it could do in the developing world where a meal can be had for less than a dollar in in most cases.

With approximately 600,000 homeless people in the US it would only take $657,000,000 to feed every homeless person in America three meals a day for an entire year!

In 2012, 6 percent of households in the US (7.0 million households) experienced very low food security. The Church could buy each one of these households $137 in groceries every week and that problem would be eliminated.

$25 billion could relieve hunger, starvation and deaths from preventable diseases worldwide in just five years.

The Church could build an $83,000 house for every homeless person in the country!

The Church could send 3.3 million kids to college at a tuition of $15k per year.

$12 billion could eliminate illiteracy worldwide in five years.

$1 billion could fully fund all overseas mission work.

So in any given year the Church could feed every homeless person in America, respond to every humanitarian problem in the world, build a 100,000 houses, send 500,000 kids to college, fund every missionary currently in the field, and have change left over!

Unfortunately today's churches have become nothing more than institutions, businesses, and sideshows designed to attract "members" while totally disregarding the needs of its neighbors. We are called out from the world as members of the Church, and we need to address the needs of our neighbors based on the teachings of Jesus. Too many people in the US and around the world are suffering today because too many Christians are waiting and relying on worldly governments to address their problems.  

 

Maybe illegal aliens aren't eligible for Federal programs but they do get benefits/help/protection in California due to our governor and some legislation.  Also, there is a black market here dealing with false documents which they readily can buy.

First you criticize our President and continually debate Christians that want our laws respected and obeyed.   Now you are criticizing the churches.  In your pms to me recently, you criticized some mission organizations with very long posts.   Sorry but I just feel these discussions with you are taking up too much time, and not really accomplishing anything.  Perhaps some of the others are feeling the same way?

Edited June 24, 2018 by Debp

[Guest shiloh357]

16 hours ago, Badjao33 said:

The current situation is not a liberal or conservative political issue, but a moral issue.

What is immoral is parents who send their children out among a crowd of drug cartels and human traffickers, across burning deserts with no water and no support simply because they don't have the money to take of them any longer.   They have found a socially acceptable way to commit  child neglect and abandonment:  Send them to the US so that they are someone else's financial burden.

[ayin jade]

3 hours ago, Badjao33 said:

Undocumented immigrants are not eligible for federal public benefit programs.

 

They do get benefits though. Through stolen identities, stolen social security  numbers etc. And they use hospital ers for their health care and cant be turned away. That cost is paid for by tax payer money.

Identity theft. Which also makes them criminals. Not that they get prosecuted for that.