I don't think they count as "runaways" when their parents are the ones sending them over.

I got one word for you: Elián González.

He was seized from family members at gun point and repatriated back to Cuba.

Because their parents sent them here so they wouldn't be kidnapped and slaughtered. 50,000 kids haven't decided to join a circus in America.

Sweet merciful Buddha, I have run into some ignorance on this whole central american illegal immigrants/ refugees topic but this takes the cake, pie, cookie, and all the rest of the dessert tray!

Actually, they DON'T necessarily send runaways back to their parents, as often they are running from abusive situations. There was a piece on NPR a couple years back about a woman desperately trying to find her runaway minor daughters, and the shelters she called refused to tell her if the girls were there. She didn't even know if they were dead or alive. (Everything turned out fine, the kids are now grown-ups settled into respectable lives)

Darth, I'm surprised at you. You should know that there are "good" Hispanics and "bad" Hispanics.

If you get here from Cuba and can be found within sight of any water, you get pushed back in it, you filthy Communist!

If you cross from Mexico, you get a driver's license, college money and registered to vote for the people who let you in.

Actually... I think it would be kind of cool if there was some way they could be raised in America, as Americans, isolated from the dysfunctional cultures they came from. But these days, I guess that makes me a racist.

I had a similar thought, Cousin Dave. I mean, aren't adoption wait lists like several years long? You could do expediated adoptions for waiting parents.

The catch would be the birth families would lose all parental rights and it would be a closed adoption. This would provide a disincentive for parents to just send their kids.

As Nicole said, the kids are not always returned especially if the kid doesn't want to go. And in this case the parents are not even asking for the kids back. I suspect the officials in a lot of cases don't even know who the parents are.

I distinctly remember seeing on TV a news report where the police couldn't tell the parents anything about the kid other than that she had been located and was OK -- which basically meant she was in a situation were if she wanted to she could contact the parents. She wasn't in a comma some where or something.

If the kids were raised here they would be raised in American dysfunctional culture instead.

That's a good point NicoleK. We are a long ways from Officer Friendly just walking the Beave home. And for the kids that have come over the border the policy has been for a a long time to not send them back without a day in court to prevent trafficking.

A lot of these "kids" are over 18. Some claiming to be a kid have gray hair. Also a lot of them have gang tattoos including a lot with MS13 which is an especially bad gang.

We should be figuring out the country of origin and putting them on a plane back to that country. Then let the original country figure out who their parents are. A hell of a lot cheaper.

Wait till you see the violence this whole mushrooming mess unleashes here. Where will they go to escape that? Where will anyone go, for that matter?

And for the kids that have come over the border the policy has been for a a long time to not send them back without a day in court to prevent trafficking.

So, in order to prevent children from being trafficked int america, we allow children trafficked into america to stay in america

"I had a similar thought, Cousin Dave. I mean, aren't adoption wait lists like several years long? You could do expediated adoptions for waiting parents."

You're joking, right? No one wants "older" kids. They're all fighting over the babies. You might want to take a look at how many older children are currently in foster care with no one wanting to adopt them.

Here are a few of those kids:

http://m.adoptpakids.org/WaitingKids/NewlyAdded

There's little interest in adopting a child old enough to talk back.

....and there's a difference between being sent off by your family to be smuggled to safer lands, and being trafficked into sex slavery.

....and there's a difference between being sent off by your family to be smuggled to safer lands, and being trafficked into sex slavery.

In the real world yes. According to the human rights organizations dedicated to stopping trafficking, with hundreds of millions of dollars of tax payers money, not really

So let me get this straight: if we send them back, we're cruel and heartless racists, but if we don't, we're enabling sex trafficking, which also makes us cruel and heartless racists. Got it.

Whenever I've browsed the adoption lists, the older kids had lots of physical and mental disabilities. Maybe healthy kids would have a better chance. How old are these kids anyways? There's a difference between an 8 year old and a 17 year old...

Radwaste,

I'm not entirely sure what your point is because Cubans get automatic rights granted to them upon their arrival to the U.S. It's the reason Cubans (which is changing) tend to be historically Republican. They get automatic residency after 1 year among other rights.

"Two other immigration rules are also waived. Unlike other immigrants, Cubans are not required to enter the United States at a port-of-entry. Second, being a public charge doesn't make a Cuban ineligible to become a permanent resident."

Healthy older children have little chance of getting adopted because there is a bias they are damaged goods psychologically. It is not an unfounded assumption.

The only real group that has waiting lists is white babies. There are several reasons for it, but mainly whites make up the majority of adoptive parents and generally want a child that looks like them. There is also a bias by social workers in not giving non-white child to a white couple.

Anyone who wants a healthy non-white baby is better suited to foreign adoptions, it's cheaper, faster, and less chance the mother was actively using drugs.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I thought the original idea was trying to make a point based on an argument often used by pro-illegals when talking about deporting adults... that it would be so "cruel" to "break up the family" because of an anchor baby being involved. When, of course, there's no reason they couldn't just take said child with them and the parents would actually be the ones deciding to break up said family.

Basically taking one of the talking points often used in existing deportation cases (as few as those seem to be) and turning it back around on them.

And, there's the already mentioned Elian Gonzalez case too, of course.