😵TIRED OF LISTENING TO POLITICOS & THE MEDIA TOSSING KIDS’ LIVES AROUND LIKE POLITICAL FOOTBALLS? 🏈 — Here’s The Antidote! — Spend Some “Quality Time” With The Experts, 👩🏻‍🎓Wendy Young Of KIND & Professor Stephen Yale-Loehr @ Cornell Law — Get The Facts & Informed Analysis, Not Myths & Fear-Mongering!😎👍🏼🗽

Wendy Young
Wendy Young
President, Kids In Need of Defense (“KIND”)
Professor Stephen Yale-Loehr
Professor Stephen Yale-Loehr
Cornell Law

 

Protecting unaccompanied children at the US-Mexico border

Cornell Law School and the Cornell Migrations Initiative invite you to an upcoming virtual talk with Wendy Young, president of Kids in Need of Defense, on Tuesday April 13.Details and registration info below.

Tuesday April 13, 12:15-1:15 pm ET

Wendy Young, President of KIND (Kids In Need of Defense)

A Fresh Focus on the US-Mexico Border: Protection of Unaccompanied Children Grounded in Systemic Reforms

Wendy will discuss recent developments on the U.S.-Mexico border and the need to reform our broken asylum system, especially for unaccompanied children.

Wendy’s talk is free and open to the public. Register at https://cornell.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_dpOtKElOQsCh6KBQPYTcLw

Stephen Yale-Loehr

Professor of Immigration Law Practice, Cornell Law School

Faculty Director, Immigration Law and Policy Program

Faculty Fellow, Migrations Initiative

Co-director, Asylum Appeals Clinic

Co-Author, Immigration Law & Procedure Treatise

Of Counsel, Miller Mayer

Phone: 607-379-9707

e-mail: SWY1@cornell.edu

Twitter: @syaleloehr

Check out my Green Card Stories book:

http://www.greencardstories.com.

See more of my books at amazon.com/author/stephenyaleloehr

You can access my papers on SSRN at: http://ssrn.com/author=109503

**************

I’m going to ask the obvious question: Why is Wendy Young, probably America’s leading expert on the rights and treatment of migrant children, giving speeches rather than helping Vice President Harris lead the Biden Administration’s response from the “inside” and being the face of the Administration’s public profile? 

Sports fans, it’s very simple: You can’t win the game with your superstars 🌟 on the bench, or not even on your team! The stunning failure of the Biden Administration to tap the available, recognized experts from the NDPA to re-establish due process, the rule of law, common sense, and humanity in our human rights, immigration, and civil rights policies is both mind-boggling and infuriating!

It’s “designed for failure,” an all too familiar scenario when Dems take on immigration, human rights, and children’s rights. And, not surprisingly, that’s what’s happening so far, particularly in the dysfunctional Immigration Courts, which could be leading the way toward a functional asylum system, and real due process for migrant women and children, but instead continue their “due process death spiral” ☠️⚰️ under Judge Garland!

Let’s hope that Wendy & Steve can find some “light at the end of the (seemingly endless) tunnel” for us! 

One thing even I know: We won’t be able to mindlessly enforce, imprison, deny, abuse, prosecute, kill, lie, deter, or deport our way to an equilibrium! But, as in the past, that doesn’t mean we won’t spend time, money, and human lives recycling all of these past “enforcement only” failures!

More forced migrants will enter the United States! That’s what forced migrants do, until we deal rationally and constructively with the conditions that force them to migrate! The fact that we haven’t been able to do so for the past half-century suggests to me the some different thinking and approaches from some “new faces,” not previously seen in government, is required.

That’s not to say that solving the problem doesn’t involve the private sector. I suspect it does, at least in some significant way. Why not ask folks like Bill & Melinda Gates, McKenzie Scott (formerly Bezos), Warren Buffett, Charles Koch, Diane Hendrickson, Michael Jordan, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and Jose Andres — a philosophically and politically diverse group of highly successful individuals and thinkers to be sure — how they might go about investing in and releasing the positive power of human migration, educating the world’s younger generation for success, addressing racism, and creating viable, mutually beneficial economic opportunities outside our borders while protecting the environment? A tall order to be sure! But, these are all folks with records of thinking and acting creatively to solve problems, overcome challenges, create jobs and opportunities, and succeed at the highest levels.

Our choice as a nation is whether to comply with our Constitution, the Refugee Act of 1980, and our international obligations by setting up a fair, generous, and efficient legal system to screen forced migrants and decide who is entitled to legal protection and admission; or do we continue to ignore the laws and human decency by turning the system over to smugglers and cartels to run as part of a profitable and exploitative extralegal migration apparatus feeding into an exploitable underground population. The latter was the Trump Administration’s approach and the one touted by White Nationalist restrictionists, mostly in the GOP. However, even a few Dems seem pretty happy with it.

GOP politicos and the nativist media are apoplectic that the Biden Administration is spending $60 million per week ($ 3 billion annualized) on fulfilling our legal duties to migrant children. (I guess their preferred alternative would be to let them die in Mexico or their native countries — out of sight, out of mind).Yet, that pales in comparison with the $11 billion in taxpayer funds Trump wasted on his bogus “wall,” some of it misappropriated and many millions doled out in legally questionable contracts. https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwiN09LI5PPvAhXIKVkFHfjcAycQFjAAegQIAhAD&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.npr.org%2F2020%2F01%2F19%2F797319968%2F-11-billion-and-counting-trumps-border-wall-would-be-the-world-s-most-costly&usg=AOvVaw1WBkwkyRq-FwNma0CUt3pm

The GOP is heartless, lawless, and morally degraded. The Dems are clueless and leaderless on immigration and human rights. Neither side pays attention to experts with the skills necessary to rebuild immigration and honor human rights obligations. That’s a dangerous combination. And, it’s the reason why children are needlessly suffering, and will continue to do so, “on our watch” — until we harness the knowledge and skills of those actually capable of making things better!

And, for sure, thousands of desperate, often terrified, tired, hungry kids are no threat whatsoever to our “national security.” Those threats, entirely from home-grown right wing thugs, materialized on January 6 and are now embodied and fanned by the “insurrectionist wing” of the GOP. No wonder hacks like Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, and Tom Cotton want to focus attention elsewhere and pick on defenseless brown-skinned children!

Death On The Rio Grande
“Who needs a fair, functioning, asylum system at legal ports of entry? The GOP has the ‘final solution’ for families fleeing for their lives.” PHOTO: Julia Le Duc/Associated Press

🇺🇸⚖️🗽Due Process Forever!

PWS

04-10-21