The best way to fight gangs is to keep illegal aliens out and to arrest and deport those already here.
What do liberals not understand about the word "illegal?"
Liberals should also cease trying to disarm law abiding American citizens leaving them helpless in the face of gang violence.
Finally, liberals should cease trying to undermine the police who are our first line of defense against the gangs.
These proposals are the best kind of education you can give a potential gang member.
3
A more effective policy may be to work and spend significant funds with Honduras and other countries to correct these major problems in their countries.
As one you cares for the well being of all people in all countries, keep in mind that for any given sum of funds far more people can be helped and have their lives advanced spending that money outside the US than inside.
The solution to the problem is for these countries to be reformed so they become countries where people don't need to flee to live safe lives.
3
I suspect that gangs of youths have existed since societies began to congregate in cities. A few years ago a movie was made about gangs in NYC. in the 19th century. It doesn't surprise me that the problem is as bad or worse today. We have more young people who are rootless with no families to support and nurture them and they still have the same drive to survive that we all share as a species. My hat is off to those people in Oakland who want to change the life of a young person from a potential thug to an upstanding citizen,
4
I'm sure your heart and instincts are in the right place. However, as someone who is but an 18-minute ride from the gang-ridden neighborhood mentioned by Trump here on Long Island, you are mistaken.
The countries of origin in Central America have an unlimited current capacity to produce victims of a criminal and dysfunctional society ready for export. That is simply the unvarnished fact. It is not the obligation of any country to open its borders to anyone and everyone, as Germany ruefully realized (and they, to Ms. Merkel's credit, were mostly taking victims of a horrific war).
Be honest enough to admit Ms. Markham that you are in all but name an advocate of open borders. Your article is filled with all the argot and buzzwords ("disenfranchised"; "traumatized") of activists who ignore facts outside the prescribed narrative. There is a middle ground between the carnival barker Trump with his ethnic and racial dog whistles and your open borders ("no walls will stop them"). It is there, with laws enforced with proper regard for humanity and charity where we will find a solution.
14
Do you want her to be honest, or do you want to put words in her mouth? What kind of wall is going to prevent someone from swimming across the the Rio Grande and running into the arms of the border patrol?
I don't see a call for open borders. I see a call for rational, humane treatment of people while they're here. We have a system for sorting out who's a refugee who isn't. Why can't that system seek to prevent crime and provide support for those people?
13
The author being an advocate for open borders is not what I heard.
What I heard is once they are here, we have two options, community and education or MS-13.
The borders are a separate topic.
12
"Laws enforced with proper regard for humanity..." This is pretty much exactly what the column is recommending - laws written and enforced with humanity and intelligence. Programs described here undermine gangs in this country - and if they could be transferred to other countries, they would undermine gangs there, also. Our profoundly malignant "war on drugs" has facilitated the rule of violent gangs to an extent that will be difficult to ever root out - even if we start seriously trying, which apparently won't happen in this administration. But in the meantime. programs such as the author describes can do some good, until they are defunded - which is all too likely.
3
1) We need to end the "war on drugs" (as the panel formed under Reagan, chaired by George Schultz, told us in 1991), and as Paul Volcker and Schultz told us again 10 and 20 years later.
2) By reasonably regulating all recreational drugs, we end the profits (and violence) of the illegal drug trade the way terminating alcohol prohibition ended the violence (and dangerous alcohol) of the alcohol prohibition era.
3) Next, school needs to be self-paced with mastery fully achieved before students go on to the next level -- this makes sure that all students who will work will progress, and assures that none have excessive frustration.
4) Those students who won't do school work, and who won't behave, need to be moved to more military-type settings in which the work ethic is restored, and they alternate time in work and in study. Study precedes learning.
In short, currently, we create crime with drug-prohibition. Currently, our schools fail to teach knowledge and self-control to students who then turn to the drug trade for work and prestige. Ending drug-prohibition terminates the illegal industry, leaving no alternative to conforming success.
Then we need to keep kids on track with love, support, and resources, and, ultimately, if necessary, with as much segregation and regimentation as is necessary to prepare them for a life that is productive, and as is needed to protect the rest of us in the interim, while they learn to behave.
6
I agree the war on drugs has never fixed the problem.
We helped the Colombians kill Pablo Escobar in 1993.
The cocaine keeps coming.
To which the Mexicans are now also supplying Meth, marijuana, and heroin.
1
And a lot of our current problem drugs are prescription drugs, sold in pharmacies or smuggled from China... it's not all Latin America...
4
These children are so far behind educationally that there is little hope they can acquire a traditional degree. They need a different path. They need Language literacy and job skills. They need a way to support themselves- sooner the better
4
And you know that how? What makes you think that a child who arrives here at 13 illiterate in Spanish, say, can't recover, graduate from high school and then go on to college? After all, he had to wits to get here by riding on top of trains over 1000 miles.
It's very difficult to distinguish your assertion from sheer prejudice.
6
I teach these kids in middle school. Those who arrive at 12 or 13, and even later, absolutely have a chance to catch up, graduate and go to college. It's not easy, but it can be done.
I've seen many do it.
7
If life is a dead end in your country, change the country don't run somewhere that does not need you.
12
Of course! Why don't those 13-year-old children without parents run for president?
11
If you were born in those circumstances and you had initiative, you would do the same.
5
If Trump continues to characterize young unaccompanied or accompanied minors as animals they will become animals, join gangs, and do exactly what he's saying they do. These people come here because their home country isn't safe. The children are forced to join gangs or be killed. The parents don't want to see their children in gangs or killed. They want their children to have a better life. I can't think of a better reason to welcome these families here. That's what our immigrant forbears wanted for us when they left their countries. Why not welcome them, educate them, and let them become citizens? They will appreciate it far more than most native born Americans.
17
I also teach these children -- newcomers from Central America -- although not at the same school as Lauren Markham. Also, I’m a classroom teacher, not in an after-school program like she is.
My experience tells me that Ms. Markham has this exactly right.
These young people do not arrive here as gang members. They arrive here seeking asylum from homelands torn by violence, and have often endured significant trauma to get here.
They are kids just like your kids, or any kids you might know: they work hard, they play, they make mistakes, they learn and grow, they want to belong and to be loved. They dream about who they want to be and what they might become.
Children who feel that a positive future is truly possible for them are not attracted to gangs.
32
I agree, but we have way too many people in our country already, and they are illegal. Now if we could trade that would be fine, otherwise they need to return and fix their county.
7
It is easy to say (fix your country), but after a foreign and powerful country such as the US, under Carter and Reagan, sponsors 20 years of civil wars in El Salvador and central america arming death squads and supporting over 40,000 political murders, followed with exporting gangs from LA back to central america, it is not so easy to do.
8
What number of people is the right number? When my father was born in this country had 100 million people in it. Do we cross the threshold sometime during his lifetime? Because I see there were changes in this country over that time, but it's not clear to me when the number of people, exactly, caused those changes to be the wrong ones.
I'd also like to know how illegal immigration is affecting you personally. I see these people are here, and I know they got here illegally, but I don't really see much of a problem, except that they have no way to retain legal status and we have no way to evict such a large number of people.
Net immigration from Mexico has been zero for many years. It's been like that because of NAFTA, because NAFTA created economic opportunity there. What steps would you take to improve the political situation in countries like El Salvador, so that people aren't tempted to send their children unaccompanied to the United States?
4
Bravo, Lauren. When will humanity (and politicians in particular if they may be so classified) realize that education is the answer to countless societal problems? I am a native of Oakland and spent many years teaching in Catholic inner-city schools. Why? It was and still is my belief that an education is the only means the students have to better their situation and compete in a world that requires it.
17
Another way to fight neighborhood crime is use the models of 'Cure Violence' promoted by Dr. Gary Slutkin. It has been tried and it works, but police don't like to use it. It's different but completely makes sense and is successful.
1
This reminds me of First Lady Nancy Regan's "war on drugs". Her solution, "Just say no." Ridiculous and it "Just didn't work".
I remember back in the '50s, a big topic in high schools was: Should prisons punish, or rehabilitate? Those in favor of rehabilitation were adamant and the prison system tried it. Take the prisoners and show them the errors of their ways, coddle them, cajole them . . . It didn't work.
I remember back in the '50s, another hot topic was: Are people essentially good or essentially bad. That topic was discussed ad nauseum and nobody won that argument. Now, 60 years later, I believe that argument has proven that people are basically bad, but you optimists out there will disagree. The only thing that separates man from beast is conscience and conscience must be learned. Ergo, the argument that education can change people. Nonsense.
Th social, economic and psychological issues that affect young people joining gangs is complex. My opinion is that while education may save one in ten, what are you gonna do with the other nine? . . . . Take 'em out behind the wood shed and whoop 'em . . . . Just like Donald Trump suggests.
3
So in your opinion only 1 in 10 can be rehabilitated. Fine, that's your opinion. But what if you opinion is wrong? After all it's not based on anything.
The evidence, as opposed to self-serving prejudice, is that rehabilitation in prisons does work. It does not only work in this country, it works in other countries too. Similarly, educating people does in fact let them understand new things and give them new opportunities. If that weren't so, the prisons would be half-filled with college graduates.
5
After a career teaching in Los Angeles, I can tell you that education is not working. And, sadly, Law Enforcement out here is all after the fact. Actually, gangs are what many students aspire to, because they clearly are not interested, or curious, or involved with education or a peaceful membership in humanity.
22
It may be they needed teachers who actually believed in their goodness and potential.
3
I teach newly arrived immigrant youth in a high-poverty urban school in California, and this is not my experience. I'm saddened to see a a teacher saying this.
I know my students to be curious and hungry for education. They value strong families and community ties. They are usually very religious, and think deeply about moral questions. That they have sacrificed so much to come here is testament to their resilience, grit, and aspirations.
4
I stopped reading after the third sentence. "And they face an administration that insists that they are gangsters bringing bloodshed and gang warfare to American cities."
False statements ruin your credibility my friend.
17
As well written and challenging as this article may be, it addresses a symptom rather than the actual disease, which is the cultural ethos that glorifies wealth and acquisition as the most admirable result one can attain. Entertainment, politics, and even education espouses wealth as the target we should aim at. With few exceptions, the people who exemplify this celebration of Mammon can be shown to have acquired their estates largely at the expense of the very people who envy them. A perusal of the comments here shows me that the writers are largely concerned with the costs – how much, and who pays. We all pay in the end for an under-educated and resentful population. Other commenters feel that parents can somehow develop the skills to turn their children away from gangs. How can that be if the parents are also steeped in the same zeitgeist? Until we change our core values, there is no solution. I sometimes think that the bumper sticker I used to see, that said: "If you're so smart, why aint you rich?" was the seed that blossomed into our post-Reagan voracity. It ends with Donald Trump, whom we are justified in asking: "If you're so rich, why aint you smart?"
2
Having a quality meaningful education makes a difference.
I was a pre-teen and young teen in the Bronx during the start of the gang era, 1951 to 1954, which spawned the musical West Side Story.
I was, (with others) delivering objects for weapons and messages to the gang members the boys in my neighborhood "worked for." I was stealing with another fellow, who was selling-off what we stole. I was a member of an affiliate gang, The Cobras, connected to the Fordham Baldies.
I was due to go to the local high school where I would continue to a thug of some sort.
My mother was able to get me into Music and Art High School.
I was spellbound and taken aback to be with fellow students, males and females of all ethnic backgrounds and orientations, classes, - - many students who were good musicians and good artists.
I was not good student, nor musician. I struggled academically.
But, I did not look back to my scary life in the neighborhood. I would pack a bag for the weekend , and stay at different kids' houses; and I became a member of a valued sub-group, a group which did many interesting meaningful things.
I struggled academically. The school officials worked with me.
I did not get into the City University. I went to 2 years of night school. I finally matriculated.
This special school experience saved my life.
I got a master's degree and then a doctorate.
I was a professional social worker and also a social work professor.
I owe my life to the experiences I had in M&A.
40
Lenny, your story moved me deeply. As a professor at CUNY, I had many student's who, like you, overcame incredible obstacles to get an education. I hope that the people who pontificate about the immigrants and etc. learn from you.
14
We do not realize how poorly educated are people from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. A report issued last month by the U.N. titled “Food Insecurity and Emigration” said that a third of returned migrants have up to 6 years of formal education, suggesting that the rest had NO formal education.
In the 1980’s, Central Americans fled here to escape war in their home countries. Many had trouble assimilating. They were too poorly educated in their own language to learn English or to find work that paid enough to support their families. Their children were way behind in school, and felt left out socially. Some of them formed a gang that so terrorized everyone else that they were deported. So, the fact that we allowed the Central Americans to remain here is what led to the gang that now threatens violence in El Salvador and other countries.
The Central Americans who have continued to migrate here are in no better position to assimilate than those who came in the 1980’s. As the U.N. report suggests, they are coming with little, if any education. How can they possibly earn enough to live on without turning to crime? Many of their fellow Central American migrants are working for the Salvadoran gang. It offers a sense of family as well as money to live on, but it terrorizes American cities.
Helping people from a 3rd world country to assimilate would require an endless amount of money that we should be spending to help our own poor citizens. We can't accept everyone.
20
Instead of endless money for everybody, which I agree is a lot, could we provide some money for some people? Could we alleviate some suffering and provide some education?
The super in my building came to this country because gangs destroyed his store and threatened his family's lives. I don't know how much formal education he had, but he certainly was able to do that job effectively, and his children got the same education as any other New York kid gets. So I'm not so sure that a lack of education precludes productive employment or assimilation into our society.
As a sponsor of Latin American youth through both Unbound and Children International, I find this absolutely heartbreaking and an outrage.
I lost one of my sponsored children in Honduras in 2016 just after her quinceanera, her 15th birthday. I was informed by Children International that her entire family fled the country.
Trump and his administration are the epitome of the "ugly American."
7
We need evidence based approaches. But it is certainly true that quality public education is a vital tool for socializing and enabling young people to function as constructive adults.
2
If you believe that this can overcome their home and associates there are several bridges in NYC to sell you. Cheap as well!!!
2
Before common sense was abandoned, reasonable people understood the most effective deterrence to crime is to punish the criminal. They also realized hard labor imposed upon the criminal had the effect of taming the wild destructive energy of the criminal. When someone is physically exhausted from hard labor or exercise, the animal spirit is tamed. And forget about dithering about the right or wrong way to fight gangs. There is no wrong or right way.
9
Actually, you need more than law enforcement and education. You need parenting. I have always lived in neighborhoods with gangs and the one consistent thing with all gang members is that the kids are raising themselves. Either because they came to the country unaccompanied, because their parents are working long hours or because the parents take a passive approach to parenting. Either way, the lack of parental involvement in shaping the kids' future is what makes the difference between a kid who responds to education, opportunity and law enforcement and one who doesn't.
20
Actually the solution is to put emphasis back on two-parent families and strongly encouraging the parents (a mom and a dad) to raise kids to be good. "Education" is a really poor second options as it is usually "too late" if kids emerge from a dysfunctional family environment.
9
I'm scratching my head wondering if you read the same article as me. The poor kid's mother and grandmother died.
I do not dispute that two (involved) parent families are the best start a kid can have, but if the parents are dead society must step in, else we just kick the problems down the road.
We can choose to intervene to try to create self sufficient, involved citizens, or we can write off the life of the child and create another gang banger (who will cost us tens or hundreds of thousands to incarcerate). I choose early intervention.
17
I agree their country's society not mine.
1
I think we’re talking about different types of gang members. Some would blossom under your approach, and some will only yield to law enforcement. Both education and intervention are needed. The decisive factor may be age. There is more hope and potential for younger members, who may also be only loosely affiliated.
6
I think the correct answer is law enforcemenr and education. I liked the idea laid out in a previous article. Give gang members one shot to accept services, education, and help. If they dont accept, come down on them like a hammer. It seems fair to me, but Im also not an apologist for people who tattoo their eyelids and murder people with machetes.
21
This is draconian. It depends on how the "services" are presented, and whether they are worthy. Peeling off one gang member is also difficult, and could lead to violence. Community organization is necessary. Getting gang members interested in soccer, mentoring, offering services, opportunity, mentors, computer learning, mental health care, seeing to adequate housing for families and adequate food; co-opting gang leaders as role models for higher aspirations and inclusion. Showing up with a choice, join us and be nobody, or go to prison is cruel and unlikely to succeed.
2
Unfortunately, Jacqueline, the U.S. has created these monsters with its continuing addiction to street drugs.
We all need to look in the mirror, as we must with endemic and institutionalized racism, because white America collectively is the root cause of much of this odious Latin American violence (as well as the segregation and discrimination of African Americans).
3
Wasn't MS-13 born in California prisons? How would "locking up" such
at-risk youth save our society? Gangs thrive in prison.
12
Not buying it.
All downside. Let's take care of our American children first and stop importing the very same problem we're trying to solve.
With debt and no skills what can we reasonably expect from them?
~ software engineer or petty thug?
I have an MBA and a good job and it's still tough to live here in the states.
Time for us to put a bandage on our bleeding hearts and get realistic.
27
Like What?
Bleeding hearts? Do you know how much money YOU are spending to incarcerate more (black) young men than any other industrial country? Wouldn't that money be better spent to grow poor kids into citizens who contribute to our society? Shame on us! Petty thug or or software engineer? You're so blessed! Why don't you give a kid a chance to aspire to being a software engineer instead of a life in jail -- at YOUR expense! Strange that you are willing to spend your dollars on prisons, but not on education, alleviating poverty, offering poor kids opportunity to aspire to be productive American citizens. Silly you!
11
Don - "Like what?"
Deportation for all those gang members who are not US citizens would be a very good start.
9
Drug gangs are a choice that Americans made when decided to go with Nixonian drug policy. We act all horrified but that's baloney. We chose to hand over the economy of illegal drugs to gangs when we chose to back criminal law enforcement as our main public strategy for dealing with certain forms of addiction.
Americans who banned the sale of Alcohol in 1919 could not have known that their poor choice would result in the rise of powerful and ruthless criminal gangs organized along ethnic lines to control the sale and profit distribution from beer and gin and whisky. They could not have known that their choice empowered criminal psychopaths and heartless operators like Al Capone, Meyer Lansky, Lucky Luciano and Bugsy Siegal and would eventually give birth to the Mafia hitman as an American criminal institution.
But we know all that happened and here we are still making that bad choice and acting like it's the only choice available.
Education might get a few people out of gangs. They could have tried that back during Alcohol Prohibtion too. But the only thing that really brought down the power of criminal alcohol gangs was the end of Alcohol Prohibition.
8
Thanks for reminding us that the real criminal cartel is Trump and his enablers.
And thanks for all of the good work you do on behalf of those in need. This is a cause we should all embrace.
9
Yes, let us educate people who are otherwise unable to understand the difference between right and wrong... who choose hated and violence over love and compassion.
Yeah... I'm not sure education is the answer. They will just become corrupt members of the upper class (or president!) who loot, pillage, and murder legally. Lovely. I think we are better off having them be poor and powerless. We all want to think people join gangs and commit these violent acts because they have no choice. Maybe that's true, but they also have a serious character flaw no amount of education can fix.
2
I am tempted to agree with you in part--psychopathy and criminality go hand in hand. However, some of the members of gangs, as the author noted, joined not out of sadism but due to lack of options to survive. Those are the ones we want to reach.
3
"It costs far more to lock someone up than to educate him." But it costs almost nothing to put someone on a bus and take them back to their country. Even with no gangs and the right education programs, these immigrant kids are going to be a huge burden. For the cost of educating one student in Oakland (about $15,000) you could educate dozens back in Guatemala.
27
If they stay alive long enough in Guatemala.
Evidence, please. You say they're going to be a huge burden. Every child needs an education, if they're going to be productive in society. Productive members of society, by definition, pay taxes and are net contributors.
What makes you think that educating immigrant children is somehow more expensive, or that once educated they'll somehow be less productive?
Just need to check out the amazing success of education and infrastructure in crime and drug gang reduction in Medellin, Colombia, to know that money spent on education and better access to services goes much further than money spent on incarceration of offenders And with much more human results-
8
Yes! I sponsored a youth in Cartagena, Colombia for 14 years and during that sponsorship Colombia turned itself around, thanks to the wisdom of President Uribe. I was able to visit my sponsored youth twice and did see the amazing transformation of Medellin.
2
Thank you for this article. The ugly truth is that millions fell for dog whistling in the 2016 election, blinding them to common sense facts like that presented here. The only hope I see for moving past this tired American race script is a growing cadre of, yes, white people, able to see, name and reject racism. Otherwise it will just keep replaying, tearing this nation asunder with pure stupidity.
11
Trump has no right to call out young immigrants, most around the same age as me, as gang affiliates and felons without seeing the hardships they were put through to get to America. I believe that Trumps plans to prevent immigration will only lead to stronger gangs taking bigger risks and turning off the potential of thousands of teenagers. The Bill of Rights even states that everyone within our country deserves a basic education and equal treatment, green card or no green card. Just picture being in the shoes of a young 13 year-old boy, having no parents and no money, having to travel halfway across Mexico in hope for a better life, but then having that dream shut down. This boy has had his choice stripped away from him to where he can't go to his school and must convert to drug dealing to make money to survive. It was by a miracle that he could get back into a fair society along with "Soccer Without Borders" program, but if funds are cut away from that, then it is back to square one for hundreds of students. I try my best this day and age to see everyone as equal and a good person, but the denial of choice, basic rights and freedom for all who find themselves in our borders is something I won't stand for.
6
1. Tucker, the Bill of Rights does not state that everyone within our country deserves a basic education.
2. If a person was trying to escape violence, why didn't he apply at the U.S. embassy in his own country so he wouldn't have had to travel across Mexico? That way, the embassy could have investigated to see if his claim had merit, and then brought him here of it did. Perhaps he did not apply at our embassy because his fear of violence was exaggerated or bogus.
3. Why didn't this youth ask for asylum in Mexico? It turns out that many of those Central Americans who have received asylum status, in Mexico, have continued on to the U.S. Why? It may be because we offer them all kinds of government assistance.
Mexico's current president has been trying to improve his country's educational system. If the Central American youth is fleeing violence and looking for an education, he could ask for asylum in Mexico and go to school there.
20
It's true that education does not appear in the Bill of Rights. It is, however, included many state constitutions. New Jersey is one of them.
Perhaps the violence they flee is not bogus, but imminent. Maybe the embassy does not provide enough protection.
Perhaps the reason they continue on from Mexico isn't the lush government assistance they get here, but the economic opportunity that the United States represents to people around the world.
A recent U.N. report on Food Insecurity and Emigration in the dry corridor of Central America found that the main reason that Hondurans, Guatemalans, and Salvadorans left their countries for the U.S. was for economic opportunity. Some Salvadorans also said that avoiding violence was a reason.
Once a family member had left for the U.S., violence became an issue, in every country, for the remaining family members. It was assumed that the person who had left was sending money home. Other members of their community demanded a share of the remittances (even when none had been received).
Instead of letting most of the populations of these 3 countries slowly move here, why don’t we see how their governments have been using our government and private donations? These countries have the reputation for corruption. Have we been letting their elite use our donations on themselves instead of trying to provide economic opportunities for their general population?
14
The economics of this issue are not simple to calculate, but the bottom line is. It costs hundreds of thousands a year, per child, for a kid involved in the justice system ($210,000 in New York), not to mention the costs to crime victims, and other costs to society. The costs for immigration enforcement, detention, and prosecution--enormous. A decent education, plus a good after school program, cost far far less. I work with the El Sistema-inspired programs across the U.S.--intensive after-school orchestra programs. They work with these kids, provide highly engaging environments, and have high rates of "success" (better grades, high school graduation, college matriculation), and near zero rates of criminal activity. The average cost is less than $1,800 per child per year. The data isn't gathered yet to make this common sense argument compelling to government agencies, but the conclusion is clear Read the emerging case in Playing for Their Lives, and start saving hundreds of millions of dollars, and thousands of lives, soon--please, America.
19
Education does work, even if there are setbacks. Incarcerating everyone is not the answer as the "war on drugs" has demonstrated. Inclusion and information are the foundation for success for this nation's youth regardless of where these kids come from or how they got here. A child's potential for success can't be measured by anyone so the better educated our children are, even if they fled violence from their native nation to get here should be a governmental priority. Defunding educational programs and those that support that backward policy need to educate themselves on the matter before passing judgment and supporting that position which is completely absent of empathy or common sense.
This is a well written article and should be required reading for Jeff Sessions and the entire Trump administration. But it will never see the light of day in this White House. You see, funding education may interfere with the anticipated tax cuts for those who need it the least at the expense of those who need the funding the most.
It's the Republican way.
13
Ms. Markham, your article actually backfired on me. Ordinarily I would not only sympathize with these young people but applaud their initiative and guts. But I got to wondering. Even assuming a best case scenario -- that one of these "unaccompanied minors" goes to school and doesn't join a gang -- how much does it cost to keep him in school, provide "home visits," provide a "free lawyer," and provide "a therapist," as compared with preventing him from coming to the U.S.? And what if we taxpayers provided these services to our own native poor? Not that Trump will -- but just wondering.
41
Much less than it costs to incarcerate them, or hold them in pens for deportation, or go through the process of deportation, or the loss to our economy of potential workers, professionals, entrepreneurs, who enlarge our economy and create jobs as well as increase our tax base. Among these kids are the scientists and teachers of the future. The American economy is not a zeros game -- there's a limited amount to go around and if someone gets a piece, then someone else loses. Apparently, you prefer to spend your money on prisons, and deportation procedures, rather than on habilitating kids so that they will be productive citizens, add to our tax base, and provide YOU with more opportunity and a more robust economy. Oh yes, it would be helpful if they had a couple of children -- our birthrate is so low that we are not replacing ourselves!
3
Too many of our "own native poor" seem also to be prone to gangster life, so it might be better to leave immigration status out of the main question of education-vs.-law-enforcement as a way of dealing with the problem.
The article says "it costs far more to lock someone up for a year than it does to educate him". We need some links to the data behind that assertion to answer your reasonable "how much does it cost" question.
1
My question was, more specifically, what is the cost of keeping such youngsters as opposed to regulating their entry. Contrary to the alt-right notion that we liberals want open boarders, I don't anyone who doesn't believe that we must protect our boarders and regulate (not bar, not prevent, not build a wall) entry. What is the cost of such regulation compared with the benefit we are likely to gain from their entry?
One sympathizes with the plight of the poor from Central America but there is no persusive argument that the responsibility is that of the United States taxpayer to do anything other than to protect the borders to ensure that as few as possible intruders make it into this country without the proper permissions.
25
Are you aware that we are not replacing ourselves. We are only having 1.8 children/couple. If we don't welcome immigrants (which we all were, at some point), and make sure they become productive citizens, our economy stagnates, all our services shrink, and your children, or grandchildren, will have a bleak future, indeed.
12
Saques: the fact that we're "not replacing ourselves" is a good thing. The earth is overpopulated. Back in 1975 the writer Gary Snyder said that the single most important thing we could do to prevent climate change, poverty, and pollution would be to make a conscious choice to limit our procreation. The most important contribution we could make to the health of the planet and all of its inhabitants would be to encourage birth control and voluntarily decrease the world's population by getting our rate of reproduction below 1.5 children per couple.
7
Todd Fox,
While I accept that there is overpopulation on a worldwide basis saques is quite right that below replacement birth rates and extended life spans in developed countries including the US are rapidly creating a situation where the ratio of elders who do not directly contribute to GNP and receive rather than contribute to social welfare benefits (Social Security,, Medicare, etc. ) to working age folks is rising rapidly. These young people who come here from Central America are already here on the planet. Why not look at them as a potential resource to augment what will be our dwindling productive aged population?
What a heartwarming story of compassion!
All children from Central America should be brought to our shores so we can provide for them the better life they so richly deserve!
2
Some ways to fight gangs:
1) provide real economic opportunities
2) have mentors speak with vulnerable youth
3) empower communities to take back their neighborhoods etch are riddled with crime, drugs, violence, etc.
4) get police forces to do actual community policing
5) make it "uncool" to join a gang (requires ad and education campaigns)
5
What a great piece. We need more stories like this to humanize young people who would otherwise be demonized by Trump and his ilk. I tutored at a GED lab in Detroit for 18 months. Students hadn't dropped out because they couldn't do the work but because school didn't seem meaningful, because their high schools closed and they didn't have the parental resources to enroll elsewhere or, in general, there wasn't support for them to continue offered by the culture at large.
41
There is no reason to question whether any child -- swaddled with therapists, tutors, mentors, helpers, advisors and financial support -- can show signs of improvement. Our entire debate about inequality presupposes as much, to the extent that we focus on the "unfair" advantages so-called "privileged" middle and upper class children receive from their parents.
The question we face as a society is whether we can afford to provide this help through government when families and parents cannot or will not do so for their own children. And, in the context of the immigration debate, we must ask whether we should be importing even more children in need massive social service intervention. Finally, there is a question as to whether government is even capable of successfully and efficiently providing the necessary services when it is authorized and funded to do so. Decades of Great Society social spending has burdened our economy with only limited progress to show for the effort.
Ultimately, will our society become stronger when increasing numbers rely on government to do what parents and families are supposed to do?
17
As the article points out, the services that are being cut are much cheaper than the cost of locking someone up for a year. And I haven't seen the evidence that social spending has only limited results--can you tell me where to find it?
Many people profit from the condition of the world as it is. Can we not spend a little of that profit to make the world a little better?
5
And when the parents and families don't do their jobs, what would you recommend? Abandon the kids to the gangs? Shoot them in the streets, the way some authoritarian countries are doing?
A civilization's wealth is its people. Natural resources are quickly exploited and drained (witness the diminishing oil fields in Saudi Arabia). Geographic convenience becomes a nightmare for an area's residents when world powers become involved (Afghanistan, anyone?). An educated population is the only true resource our species has, and it's easily renewable.
But those who gained power through false promises and huckster campaigns often fear educated people who can see through their grandiose claims and empty words. Does the image of a well-educated population haunt those who would deny schooling to all but those with proper citizenship credentials?
7
There are two key concepts in economics that make me question the wisdom of government intervention. The first is that the best way to get more of something is to subsidize it. That applies, with equal force, to things like poverty, joblessness and illegal immigration. The second is that people do not make sound economic decisions when the costs of their bad decisions are foisted upon others.
My question is how do we get better as a society when our empathy toward failed families here or failed governments abroad absolves them of the responsibility to do better? Progressivism seems to me to be what psychologists call "co-dependency" on a societal scale. It is like the parents of drug-addicted children, who support the kid's drug habit, because they fear what would happen if the kids were required to finance their own addiction. In that circumstance everyone's life gets ruined.
I'm just saying' . . . .
2
Excellent article! I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Guatemala many years ago. I've often thought when I hear Trump's rhetoric about Latin American immigrants that he needs to spend 24 hours immersed in what I saw and lived and then he might understand why people flee their circumstances for what they dream will be a better life. Would he and his minions open their minds enough to do that? Yes, education and understanding are what are needed most.
25
Millions for defense, but no one cent for tribute. This is the American way, and we do pay the millions.
7
This essay is right on target. It is a relief to find a thoughtful analysis rather than the one we hear from the White House. It is exciting to learn of programs that teachers, schools, and nonprofits persist in, even without the support they deserve. They are the hope of our country, for all our students.
56
It is so nice that we spend so much of our tax-payers dollars saving young, Latino gang members from Central America from themselves. As if we don't already have enough of them already here within our country. Let's just keep importing ever more.
Not buying it. No mas.
44
It ia so nice that we spend so much of our tax-payers dollars saving young American drug addicts from themselves. We should lock up the ones we catch and let the others kill themselves with overdoses, instead of coddling them with treatments that rarely work, especially not the first time.
The law is clear. Those who break it deserve no sympathy.
13
Oh, you're buying it alright. The question is whether you spend one dollar on helping people or ten fighting them. You can leave your moral judgement out of the equation.
3
You missed the points. The author isn't encouraging immigration. He's encouraging educating the ones who are here because it costs more to incarcerate them than to educate them. Well, it's also a good thing to do, the right thing to do, but I won't argue that point with you because, well, you know.
7