the biden administration has facilitated a system of human trafficking that has upended 100 years of progress on child labor. stopping 16-year-olds in iowa from serving beer won’t change that
Growing up in California, I learned that there is an off switch in most left-leaning folks' brains that can be pressed by bringing up race in a discussion.
Otherwise intelligent, reasonable people lose all semblance of rationality if you are able to successfully label something as racist. You could get them to vote that 2 + 2 = 5 by telling them 4 was a racist Republican plot. (This more or less literally happened in San Francisco schools).
I worry the fact these children have brown skin is going to make it impossible to have an actual discussion about the issue. It will probably take Democrats, preferably those of color, to take a stand on this issue, because a white Republican talking about it will be exorciated as literally Hitler.
The fuck do you lose track of even one kid and just shrug your shoulders?
Imagine you were the most irresponsible jackass in the world volunteering to help on a field trip and you came back to the bus missing a third of the kids. How would that in any universe not result in the nearest responsible adult not shutting down the entire region you’re at h til they are found?
I’m genuinely pissed and trying to hide it while feeding eggs to my son.
That said I loved reading about your family history. I’ve got an odd one, too, and it’s good to see someone else out there doing well.
Fantastic analysis. The chattering class will have moved onto the next outrage before any of them could possibly spend the time to read this but this is a perfect example of the myopia that's so pervasive with right-thinking lefties.
The illegitimate Biden trash bag Nieman-Marxist government knows that their programs are failures by any legal or humanitarian metric , that the illegal immigrant kids are getting exploited in multiple ways (many of these kids are raped and sex trafficked), and that in spite of that it suits their donors objectives and their own party’s political objectives to exploit impoverished, uneducated little brown and black kids and lie about it all day long. That’s not racist? Handing little Guatemalan and Mexican and Honduran kids over to criminals to work as indentured servants and prostitutes? To work hand in glove with murderous narco-terrorist cartels to do it? While douchebag “religious” nonprofit” NGOs get paid millions of siphoned off taxpayer dollars to facilitate and staff the process . What kind of religion is that?
And nobody does a thing about it because they’re all bought off. What kind of country have we become? Pathetic and criminal. That’s what kind. And what do the people who work for INS and border patrol do about it? Nothing.
Walk off the fucking job. Raise hell. You have a union. They can’t replace you. There’s nobody to do your job. You’ll get in gun fights with drug smugglers, but you won’t protest this disgusting abuse of little kids? There are very few heroes in the federal bureaucracy. Most of the good people are leaving or have already left.
Well, I am from a Western European state and when I was a kid working age started at 14. If a kid doesn’t want to go to school anymore or has spare time why wouldn’t she be allowed to work at 14, 15, 16. At 16 they can drive, many progressive politicians would like to give them the right to vote so they should be able to work as well. Serving alcohol doesn’t mean drinking it and stop this hypocrisy. If they want alcohol they will find it at home.
Side comment - Tweetdeck is still hiding tweets that link to Substack. I tweeted this article and found that, even though it isn't a Substack domain, Tweetdeck hid the tweet that linked to this piece also. Still recognized as Substack even with the independent domain.
You are suggesting immigration sanity from a political party and its cadre of sycophants regarding the border? Labor issues are not what a porous border and a "hey, come hither" unspoken message to impoverished denizens of Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua are about. This is an effort to stuff the voter roles with more folks who will - they think - become reliable party voters in the years to come as they will be dependent on the welfare state for sustenance. It is the long con.
As a northeastern liberal, I can confirm that the NYT article was heartbreaking, the failures that let it happen inexcusable, and I am not aware of anyone on the left that wouldn’t agree it’s an enormous problem. I don’t know enough to say that indefinite incarceration of unaccompanied minors is the best or only solution -- and I certainly hope that is not the case, and that a more humane solution can be devised that protects these children while adequately disincentivizing human trafficking -- but something must be done, and urgently. Separately, most of the recent roll-backs of child labor laws are also moving our society in the wrong direction.
I would hope state legislatures would look for solutions to the problems created by the democrats immigration policies vs. exploiting the failures to the financial benefit of corporations.
Kind of an open secret that many illegal immigrant "children" in high schools now are in their early 20's as well. Kind of a sick inversion if a substantial amount of the ones stuck working really are underage.
Great article. Child labor in the US is different than child labor in the Congo but even there it is a net positive. Very poor people, very poor families often have a choice. Either the kid works or they starve or get sold to someone. The choice there is never either the child works or goes to a nice school with free lunches. We're lucky we live in a rich country where teens working is a wholesome thing.
Wait, what's "human trafficking" mean in this article? I always kind of thought it was just a propaganda term that people use to conflate various outlawed voluntary activities with slavery out of bad conscience at how illiberal it is to outlaw voluntary activities for no highly compelling reason.
If you assume that Guatemalan parents care about their children as much as American parents do, they must have reasoned sending their kids north is a better option than keeping them at home. If a 15-year-old working in American industry is worse off than he was home in poverty, it's not the immigration system I would blame.
There is a third alternative to kids in meat packing plants or cages: allow their parents to come here to work, so the kids can go to school.
We Don’t Have a Child Labor Problem, We Have an Immigration Problem
Growing up in California, I learned that there is an off switch in most left-leaning folks' brains that can be pressed by bringing up race in a discussion.
Otherwise intelligent, reasonable people lose all semblance of rationality if you are able to successfully label something as racist. You could get them to vote that 2 + 2 = 5 by telling them 4 was a racist Republican plot. (This more or less literally happened in San Francisco schools).
I worry the fact these children have brown skin is going to make it impossible to have an actual discussion about the issue. It will probably take Democrats, preferably those of color, to take a stand on this issue, because a white Republican talking about it will be exorciated as literally Hitler.
The fuck do you lose track of even one kid and just shrug your shoulders?
Imagine you were the most irresponsible jackass in the world volunteering to help on a field trip and you came back to the bus missing a third of the kids. How would that in any universe not result in the nearest responsible adult not shutting down the entire region you’re at h til they are found?
I’m genuinely pissed and trying to hide it while feeding eggs to my son.
That said I loved reading about your family history. I’ve got an odd one, too, and it’s good to see someone else out there doing well.
Fantastic analysis. The chattering class will have moved onto the next outrage before any of them could possibly spend the time to read this but this is a perfect example of the myopia that's so pervasive with right-thinking lefties.
The illegitimate Biden trash bag Nieman-Marxist government knows that their programs are failures by any legal or humanitarian metric , that the illegal immigrant kids are getting exploited in multiple ways (many of these kids are raped and sex trafficked), and that in spite of that it suits their donors objectives and their own party’s political objectives to exploit impoverished, uneducated little brown and black kids and lie about it all day long. That’s not racist? Handing little Guatemalan and Mexican and Honduran kids over to criminals to work as indentured servants and prostitutes? To work hand in glove with murderous narco-terrorist cartels to do it? While douchebag “religious” nonprofit” NGOs get paid millions of siphoned off taxpayer dollars to facilitate and staff the process . What kind of religion is that?
And nobody does a thing about it because they’re all bought off. What kind of country have we become? Pathetic and criminal. That’s what kind. And what do the people who work for INS and border patrol do about it? Nothing.
Walk off the fucking job. Raise hell. You have a union. They can’t replace you. There’s nobody to do your job. You’ll get in gun fights with drug smugglers, but you won’t protest this disgusting abuse of little kids? There are very few heroes in the federal bureaucracy. Most of the good people are leaving or have already left.
Well, I am from a Western European state and when I was a kid working age started at 14. If a kid doesn’t want to go to school anymore or has spare time why wouldn’t she be allowed to work at 14, 15, 16. At 16 they can drive, many progressive politicians would like to give them the right to vote so they should be able to work as well. Serving alcohol doesn’t mean drinking it and stop this hypocrisy. If they want alcohol they will find it at home.
Side comment - Tweetdeck is still hiding tweets that link to Substack. I tweeted this article and found that, even though it isn't a Substack domain, Tweetdeck hid the tweet that linked to this piece also. Still recognized as Substack even with the independent domain.
You are suggesting immigration sanity from a political party and its cadre of sycophants regarding the border? Labor issues are not what a porous border and a "hey, come hither" unspoken message to impoverished denizens of Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua are about. This is an effort to stuff the voter roles with more folks who will - they think - become reliable party voters in the years to come as they will be dependent on the welfare state for sustenance. It is the long con.
As a northeastern liberal, I can confirm that the NYT article was heartbreaking, the failures that let it happen inexcusable, and I am not aware of anyone on the left that wouldn’t agree it’s an enormous problem. I don’t know enough to say that indefinite incarceration of unaccompanied minors is the best or only solution -- and I certainly hope that is not the case, and that a more humane solution can be devised that protects these children while adequately disincentivizing human trafficking -- but something must be done, and urgently. Separately, most of the recent roll-backs of child labor laws are also moving our society in the wrong direction.
Great work, River.
I would hope state legislatures would look for solutions to the problems created by the democrats immigration policies vs. exploiting the failures to the financial benefit of corporations.
Kind of an open secret that many illegal immigrant "children" in high schools now are in their early 20's as well. Kind of a sick inversion if a substantial amount of the ones stuck working really are underage.
Great article. Child labor in the US is different than child labor in the Congo but even there it is a net positive. Very poor people, very poor families often have a choice. Either the kid works or they starve or get sold to someone. The choice there is never either the child works or goes to a nice school with free lunches. We're lucky we live in a rich country where teens working is a wholesome thing.
An 8 year old unaccompanied minor was found to have 67 different "sperm donors". I don't believe she was paid. But there is no "crisis".
A beautiful beautiful description of the problem with the root cause analysis.
River, huge thank you for your writings.
Wait, what's "human trafficking" mean in this article? I always kind of thought it was just a propaganda term that people use to conflate various outlawed voluntary activities with slavery out of bad conscience at how illiberal it is to outlaw voluntary activities for no highly compelling reason.
If you assume that Guatemalan parents care about their children as much as American parents do, they must have reasoned sending their kids north is a better option than keeping them at home. If a 15-year-old working in American industry is worse off than he was home in poverty, it's not the immigration system I would blame.
There is a third alternative to kids in meat packing plants or cages: allow their parents to come here to work, so the kids can go to school.