The Meme…

It is cruel to send home children that are here “through no fault of their own”

The Bard would like the line and The Meme appears to be an unbeatable meme, but is it? If parents, except what I’d call the Permissives or parents that stopped actually raising their own children and letting the children control them, have been making decisions for their children throughout the history of mankind, why can’t we beat this argument?

In the battle of memes or sound-bites the Democrats mostly win, the why of that doesn’t matter at this point, but if conservatives are going to have a chance to win on secure borders and the rule of law, countering this meme with something other than ham-handed facts is necessary.

The Trump administration has, rightly, thrown the question of what the law says we must do with them back to Congress so they can, if Congress is capable of it, modify the law and decide what to do with them.  But, without changing the power that the ‘cruel’ meme has on the discussion, I’m not sure they can.

Meet the US Citizens’ DACA Cohort:  I think this country is missing a tremendous opportunity to help the countries where these children came from. Like the children that the DACA program targets, this country has some of these “they were raised in this country ‘through no fault of their own‘” people.  The US has been a globe-spanning power for 70 years and, as a consequence, this country has tens, if not 100’s of thousands of US citizens that have spent an appreciable portion of their lives as children in foreign countries.

They have been there as, we seem to be fond of repeating the meme, “through no fault of their own.” These children; children of soldiers, diplomats, and business people were not considered ‘deprived’ when their families came home because their time overseas was at an end.  In fact, many of these children have brought part of the cultures and knowledge they’ve gained back home and put it to good use in their own way.

The 800,000 strong DACA cohort have had an invaluable experience by living in this country and this country’s lawmakers are now being asked to decide if it’s time for them to go home or to stay here.  Instead, let’s send them home but turn around the narrative and help them do some good for their country of birth and the regions the US seeks to help with foreign aid or assistance.

When Exigent Conditions Creates an Opportunity: I say we turn the 15 million illegals in this country, if we can handle the opportunity properly, into ambassadors for our way of life. Fifteen million people represents a tremendous resource if we can turn this opportunity into reality.

We should send the DACA cohort and their families home but, assuming they have absorbed anything of our culture, with a large enough concentration of repatriated families including these children and their families so that they can represent a tremendous opportunity to help far more than the 800,000 that Congress will now debate the fate of.

It’s unlikely that the law that says they should go home will be changed and, it shouldn’t be changed, but instead of allowing the perception of their return to be a negative for this country and the politicians, we should use Jujutsu’s techniques and use an attacker’s energy against them.  So, rather than directly opposing the people that want to grant another DACA-like program we should use the energy they created against them.

Democrats, and quite a few Republicans, only see a negative but… the impetus they’ve created to do something about these ‘children’ can provide the energy to actually address the problem and bring about a solution more in line with the rule of law.

The US’ Repatriated Citizen Ambassador Program (or whatever it’s called)

This program will return the parents and children to their countries of birth but with: training, resources, and organizational support so that they can help their countries gradually adopt policies, governing structures, and linkages back to the broader regional infrastructures.  Over time, maybe in 10 or 20 years we will see what the seeds we’ve cast back into these countries have grown and matured into; societies that not just these children but the whole country will be the better for.

I say, let them go home and sell them on the idea of returning to their homelands and let them use their appreciation for the values that this country has given them as an opportunity to observe working first hand to change their native land’s culture to match the best of what they’ve learned here.  Support them however we need to support them, possibly even diverting some of our foreign aid to their countries to support their efforts, but give them some of the same training and support that we give our Peace Corp.

Some ideas:

1. Offer Peace Corp-like training to all returning emigres focused on the country-specific challenges each will face;
2. Help each returnee group formulate plans of actions when they get home and provide them with assistance in developing a structure integrating other groups in each country;
3. Identify point-people for the groups of Citizen Ambassadors and find US groups or citizens that will liaise with them and help to find the resources needed by each group;
4. Divert some of our foreign aid to their countries to support the Repatriated Citizen Ambassador’s efforts;
5. Co-ordinate the remaining foreign aid that was not diverted to the Repatriated Citizen Ambassador Groups to support other key activities like drug interdiction and anti-corruption programs;
6. Brag about the program!  Brag about it before, during, and after its inception; and
7. Use the Repatriated Citizen Ambassador Program as counter to the narrative or meme that ending DACA and sending people home is cruel.

We have a tremendous opportunity to export our way of life by sending 12-15 million people, or an appreciable number of them, back to their countries of birth and, in the process, we help those countries.  Since visa overstays are not economic refugees, this program will, if implemented, have less of an affect the US has a unique opportunity to help scores of countries lift themselves out of poverty by returning our illegal immigrants, including the DACA cohort, back to their countries of birth with something like the Repatriated Citizen Ambassador Program.

As Churchill said:

Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never–in nothing, great or small, large or petty–never give in, except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.

We have a choice in front of us — let the Democrats and other immigration amnesty proponents continue hammering the country with the current meme or create one with an equal power to evoke the aspirations those that came to our country illegally.

(*) I know, I made the name up!