The United States is in somewhat of a dilemma. Since it is not easy to admit the hundreds of children from Central America via asylum statutes, as it turns out doctors have been utilized. According to the Standard Examiner, one child from Honduras had a bullet lodged in his spine resulting from his country’s gang warfare. He ended up in Brooklyn where a New York lawyer took up his case. Thanks to a letter from the doctor, the attorney was quickly able to obtain a visa so the child could remain.

As you all may recall, nearly 70,000 children from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador ended up at the US-Mexico border in nearly a years time. The event resulted in lots of controversy to the point where there were protesters preventing buses carrying the kids into US facilities to house them. There were concerns about the potential of them carrying infectious diseases, but according to Dr. Alan Shapiro it hasn’t been an issue at his New York clinic. The children are given vaccinations since they have to in order to attend school.

The issue isn’t so much the diseases as much as it is about the trauma many of them have experienced resulting from violence in their home countries. The children Dr. Shapiro treats have been have been traumatized by rape, seeing their family members murdered, beaten and sexually abused. The author contacted someone he knows who used to work in ICE processing visas. Unfortunately, there is no way presently to objectively identify who among the Border Children who is escaping violence short of physical evidence such as the Honduran child’s bullet in the spine. When this controversy first broke out, there were reports of kids known as permisoswho were coached to come to the US.

It does not take a Center for Immigration Studies to know that a process should be put in place or implemented to screen the children in question in order to identify who among them have legitimate reasons to be here and those who have not. However, groups like Center for Immigration Studies and NumbersUSA view people as pollution and their environmentalist credentials are abundantly clear. It makes sense to allow foreign kids escaping violence to remain in the United States. In many ways it is understandable to want to help those less fortunate than ourselves. However, aiding the less fortunate may not be the case in this instance since there are those among the children who are looking for a free pass. The US cannot give something for nothing and cannot and should not be the country that bails out other nations who experience problems. The violence in Central America is unfortunate, but the US cannot be the problem solver of the world.