I read an article in the Minneapolis Star Tribune recently regarding the care that the U.S. government has taken in putting the unaccompanied children pouring over the U.S. and Mexican border in safe homes while relatives or sponsors are found for the children. The U.S. Health and Human Services Department has been so overwhelmed that they discontinued some of their own rules of checking out people wanting to bring these children into their homes. They discontinued taking their fingerprints, doing background checks, the residences were never checked for compliance and then after these children were placed in these homes, they were never visited by a social worker. Now, if our government can’t handle the problem of these children flowing over the border, then what in the world would make us think the U.S. government can check the backgrounds of the refugees they want to bring into this country? They couldn’t even check the citizens in our own country because they didn’t have the time or people to do that, and because of that, many of these children ended up in deplorable conditions being used as extortion to the children’s families to pay to keep their child safe, being used as free child labor, used in the sex trade.

What will we say to these children, when and if, they’re all found alive and hopefully well, as there are many that the government has totally lost track of. We have enough problems keeping track of the people visiting this country under visitor visas and those going to school who just go off the radar and stay. We have our own citizens turning to ISIS for unknown reasons. We don’t need to import extremists into this country who will be fed, clothed, housed, provided medical care and given money by us.

If they want to bring these people in, have a plan to do 100 percent checks on the backgrounds and be prepared to watch them while they’re here. Have a plan to get them off of public assistance as soon as possible because we don’t need more people on our public assistance rolls. We have enough of them who should be out looking for jobs right now. Make sure these people understand this country is not a Muslim country, and the way they grew up is not the way they will live here, regarding the treatment of women and children.

We may be a country that opens its arms when needed, but we cannot become a country that becomes complaisant and allows some group to infiltrate and take over and make it impossible to live our lives in relative peace. Don’t do to the rest of this country what the Health and Human Services Department did to these children they passed out like loaves of bread to anyone who would take them. Do better for your own citizens and stop worrying about what the rest of the world will say.

 

Kathy Diaz

Albert Lea