Border crisis expands

Linda Chavez asks in a New York Post column why the Obama administration doesn’t “do more” to stem the flow of children from Central America into southern border states such as Texas, New Mexico and Arizona.

http://nypost.com/2014/06/20/behind-the-horrible-border-crisis/

I kind of expect that from Chavez, a noted conservative thinker and pundit.

I’ve been wracking my brain the past few days with this question: Why doesn’t Mexico do more to stop the flow of these unaccompanied children all the way through that country and into the United States of America?

Chavez and others have noted that the kids have to travel about 1,300 miles through Mexico to reach the southern border of the United States. How is it that those children are given free passage through a fairly large country to end up in the Land of Opportunity?

If President Obama has a bone to pick, it ought to be with the Mexican government.

Chavez lays out a grim scenario: “According to recent reports, these kids walk right up to border agents as soon as they see them and turn themselves in. They’ve been instructed to do so, sometimes by the criminal ‘coyotes’ who extort hundreds, even thousands, of dollars from the kids’ parents to get them across the border.

“These human traffickers are telling parents their children will be granted a legal right to stay in the U.S. once on our soil. This is absolutely false — but that word is slow in getting to gullible would-be border crossers.”

She wants the U.S. government to blanket Guatemala and Honduras TV airwaves to public service announcements urging parents to stop selling their children to traffickers. That’s fine.

However, geopolitical neighborliness compels one country to do all it can do to protect its orders with another nation.

Critics keep harping on the openness of the U.S. side of our border with Mexico. They forget — or ignore — the fact that we’ve deported record numbers of illegal immigrants in recent years. The problem just has been compounded many times by the flood of these children from beyond Mexico’s southern border.

Whose fault is that? Ours? I don’t think so.