Monday 4 August 2014

The Ward Situation

In the epic fictional series of Batman....Bruce Wayne (secretly Batman) had a young ward assigned to him (Dick Grayson).  Dick would eventually become Robin.  By the general rule of state laws (not federal)....you as a kid under eighteen years old and without parents will undergo a legal process with a county or state court, and be assigned to some adult.  It might traditionally a relative or close friend of your parents.  It's a local or state process.....NOT federal.

Throughout the history of the United States....episodes involving wards stayed at the local or state level because the federal government had no jurisdiction in this type of business.

For me to look at the current and charged-up episode of Latino teenagers coming into the US, and a bunch of federal government individuals getting all peppy over how they need to handle the episode.....I'm perplexed.

There's never been a federal method of detaining a illegal-entry teen for federal law violation.  I can't recall any law that really fits or applies.  Normally, you'd have to treat them as you'd treat an adult.  Yet we have people talking of camps just for teens, or just blank residency to fix the problem.

The US government acting as the master over 250,000 wards?  It's an odd scenario.  If you'd laid this out ten years ago.....people would have laughed over the scenario and just said it'd never happen in America.

Getting the federal authority to turn the illegal teens over to a county or state apparatus, which is geared toward the ward-mentality?  It's hard to imagine where this would start and how people would make it work.  The federal system would have to agree into a partnership, which traditionally is something you avoid as a federal representative. Typically, it's a one-way street and the federal authority prefers to dictate things.

These youth camps that are suggested?  Basically, it's a fenced-off area....where the wards stay in and outsiders don't enter.  Part of this is to protect the wards of the federal government, and part of this is to limit the appearance of illegals in some county or state.  The guys or gals hired to monitor the wards?  All on some federal contract, and their "companies" are making a fair amount of profit.  They tend to use the word "Christian" somewhere in their company title.....yet there are questions on their ethics and nature tied to Christian morality.

How long would the camps be around?  Well.....no one has said we are at a peak, and I'd suggest that some teens in Africa and Asia are looking at this funnel.  How would a twelve-year-old kid cross the Atlantic.....getting to Honduras....then onto the train-network.....finally arriving across the border in America and get "ward-status"?  I would imagine some kids are going to find ways to make this work.

So....five years from now?  We might actually have three or four million teens who've made the system work and now wards of the federal government.  We might not even hit the peak of this episode until 2025.

Somehow, in the epic story of Batman, this ward business always turned out positive.....Dick Grayson had a pretty nifty house....decent clothing.....good education....developed good character while around Bruce Wayne.....learned some manners from Alfred the butler.....and saved a few people here and there as Robin.

For some reason.....I don't see too much good coming out of a bunch of federal guys handling wards of the federal government.   It just doesn't have the ring of Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson.

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