Summertime for Hitler?

 I have no children, but like many others, I was moved by the pictures, and especially the sounds, of kids separated from their parents as part of the current administration’s zero-tolerance policy on illegal immigration. We often miss the impact of these stories until we are hit over the head with dramatic 2-by-4s. Remember the little Syrian boy with the red shirt found dead on a Turkish beach after he fled his country?

The comparisons to Nazi Germany have been made: children separated from parents; detention facilities in scattered and usually undisclosed locations; controlled tours of facilities designed to show that things weren’t so bad, and the head of state using the word “infest” to characterize the influx of immigrants. Of course, there is no real comparison to the Holocaust, just echoes, though rather loud ones.

All that said, I’m also interested in getting beyond emotions and symbols to find out what happens now. The President has rescinded the separation policy, and a federal judge has ordered that families be swiftly reunited. But how much has this ill-thought-out program cost so far, and what will it cost in the future? The question of damages and/or reparations will likely come up. Will we taxpayers have to pay that bill?

Then, will the current Congress, or the new one, finally get down to crafting a comprehensive, workable immigration law that imposes reasonable controls on who gets into our country, but is flexible enough to accommodate legitimate asylum-seekers, the Dreamers, needed seasonal workers, and the professionals we seek to fill shortages in certain sectors?

We did relatively little over the years as we watched Syria devolve, but that was an ocean away. Now we have our own little ISIS-type enclave, or violent groups of them, in Central America to deal with, motivated not by twisted religion but by power, greed, and more than a little misogyny, which women and their children understandably want to escape from. What are we, and other countries in our hemisphere, going to do about this? Can’t we see beyond putting up walls?

Too many questions and not enough answers. But I think we have to remember that most of us, as descendants of immigrants, were born here by sheer luck. We didn’t have to lift a finger to be American. If less-fortunate people born in other places want to come here, and we deem them worthy of staying here, we have to help them become the Americans we want them to be, and to make sure we have a government worthy of not only their respect, but our own.