Dems: Enforcing Immigration Law is Harmful to American Children

You have to give Democrats credit. When they decide they want to pursue policy change, they will go to extraordinary lengths to find reasons to justify that change. When they run out of facts – which happens almost instantly – they just start making things up. They are a creative bunch, we’ll give them that. Maybe that’s why so many of them eventually find their way out to Hollywood.

You’d think that they would have already exhausted all the possible arguments for illegal immigration/open borders, but three Democrats in the House are here to prove that thought wrong. Reps. Lucille Roybal-Allard, Grace Napolitano, and Pramila Jayapal wrote an op-ed last week warning us that by enforcing U.S. immigration law, the Republican Party was harming the mental health of American children.

By “American children,” they of course mean the kids of illegal immigrants.

“Roughly one in four American children younger than 18 live in immigrant families, and over four million U.S.-citizen children have at least one undocumented parent,” they wrote, already introducing deception into their argument. Because, after all, it doesn’t really matter if “one in four American children” live in immigrant households. No one is suggesting that we deport lawful immigrants. But this is one of the left’s favorite tricks – to conflate “immigrant” and “illegal immigrant” until there’s no longer any difference.

“A sense of safety and belonging is key to their psychological development,” they continued. “Feeling secure is critical to them thriving emotionally, academically and socially. Conversely, evidence has shown that adverse childhood experiences, like intense uncertainty and fear, are detrimental to their health. Currently, too many children live in daily fear that their parents could be arrested, detained or deported at any moment.”

We agree that “too many children” have to live with that fear, but we probably don’t agree on their proposed solution to the problem. After all, many children live in fear that their American parents will be arrested. That’s the situation the parents put them in by engaging in criminal activity. Are we to stop prosecuting parents? Just do whatever you want and we’ll let you off scot-free. After all, we can’t be burdening your children with stress. Only a liberal could come up with this nonsense.

“Researchers and clinicians have found that stress related to immigration can cause serious physical effects on smaller kids, including tantrums and bedwetting,” they claim. “Older children can become withdrawn, distracted, and even have stomachaches or insomnia.”

Yes, we’re sure these researchers – citation needed, by the way – can find similar effects in households where the parents are drug dealers, burglars, and prostitutes. So once again, are we supposed to stop enforcing the law so we can ensure that no child ever has a stomachache? Is this real life??

“Rather than rip apart hardworking parents from their children,” they concluded, “our society should provide meaningful immigration reforms, and invest in these children.

In other words, let’s just kick the can down the road and let the next generation of politicians worry about getting illegal immigration under control. Or, you know, just stop having legally-enforced borders altogether.

But we’ll give these Democrats their due: If they wanted to bring awareness to America’s mental health epidemic, they did a fine job of it.