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The Truth about Separating Kids
Topic Started: Jun 18 2018, 11:11 AM (153 Views)
Brewster
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The Guardian
 
Nazis separated me from my parents as a child. The trauma lasts a lifetime
by Yoka Verdoner

I know from experience that the Trump-sanctioned brutality at the US border with Mexico will scar its child victims for life

The events occurring now on our border with Mexico, where children are being removed from the arms of their mothers and fathers and sent to foster families or “shelters”, make me weep and gnash my teeth with sadness and rage. I know what they are going through. When we were children, my two siblings and I were also taken from our parents. And the problems we’ve experienced since then portend the terrible things that many of these children are bound to suffer.

My family was Jewish, living in 1942 in the Netherlands when the country was occupied by the Nazis. The lasting damage inflicted by that separation reverberates to this day, decades hence.

Have you heard the screams and seen the panic of a three-year-old when it has lost sight of its mother in a supermarket? That scream subsides when mother reappears around the end of the aisle.

This is my brother writing in recent years. He tries to deal with his lasting pain through memoir. It’s been 76 years, yet he revisits the separation obsessively. He still writes about it in the present tense:

In the first home I scream for six weeks. Then I am moved to another family, and I stop screaming. I give up. Nothing around me is known to me. All those around me are strangers. I have no past. I have no future. I have no identity. I am nowhere. I am frozen in fear. It is the only emotion I possess now. As a three-year-old child, I believe that I must have made some terrible mistake to have caused my known world to disappear. I spend the rest of my life trying desperately not to make another mistake.

My brother’s second foster family cared deeply about him and has kept in touch with him all these years. Even so, he is almost 80 years old now and is still trying to understand what made him the anxious and dysfunctional person he turned into as a child and has remained for the rest of his life: a man with charm and intelligence, yet who could never keep a job because of his inability to complete tasks. After all, if he persisted he might make a mistake again, and that would bring his world to another end.

My younger sister was separated from our parents at five. She had no understanding of what was going on and why she suddenly had to live with a strange set of adults. She suffered thereafter from lifelong, profound depression.

I was older: seven. I was more able than my siblings to understand what was happening and why. I spent most of the war with and Ella Rijnders. was mayor of a small, rural village, and he and Ella lived in a beautiful house next to a wide waterway. Ella had a warm smile and referred to me as his “oldest daughter”. I was able to go to school normally, make friends, and became part of village life. I was extraordinarily lucky, but I was not with my own parents, sister, and brother. And, eventually, I also had to leave the Rijnders, my loving second “family”. I was returning to my own family, but this meant another separation.

How can America sleep at night when families are being torn apart?

In later life, I was never able to really settle down. I lived in different countries and was successful in work, but never able to form lasting relationships with partners. I never married. I almost forgot to mention my own anxiety and depression, and my many years in psychotherapy.

My grief and anger about today’s southern border come not just from my personal life. As a retired psychotherapist who has worked extensively with victims of childhood trauma, I know all too well what awaits many of the thousands of children, taken by our government at the border, who are now in “processing centers” and foster homes – no matter how decent and caring those places might be. We can expect thousands of lives to be damaged, for many years or for ever, by “zero tolerance”. We can expect old men and women, decades from now, still suffering, still remembering, still writing in the present tense.

What is happening in our own backyard today is as evil and criminal as what happened to me and my siblings as children in Nazi Europe. It needs to be stopped immediately.
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Berton
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So the very stupid Brewster insults the entire USA again.
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Berton
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You are wrong if the families went to an entry point the adults would not be arrested. It is indeed the fault of the people who are crossing the border illegally.

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Jim Miller
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I have yet to see a single Canadian say that those kids would be welcome in Canada.
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Brewster
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That's because we don't separate kids from their parents.

Strange concept for you Right Wingers to accept I know, but that's just the way it is up here - I guess we're a little old fashioned...
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Pat
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Jun 18 2018, 12:52 PM
This administration instituted a “zero-tolerance policy” re. illegal immigration in early April of this year. Previous to that such cases were treated as civil matters but since that time they are now treated as criminal cases which require parents and children to be separated.

Quote:
 
Friday, April 6, 2018

Attorney General Announces Zero-Tolerance Policy for Criminal Illegal Entry

Attorney General Jeff Sessions today notified all U.S. Attorney’s Offices along the Southwest Border of a new “zero-tolerance policy” for offenses under 8 U.S.C. § 1325(a), which prohibits both attempted illegal entry and illegal entry into the United States by an alien. The implementation of the Attorney General’s zero-tolerance policy comes as the Department of Homeland Security reported a 203 percent increase in illegal border crossings from March 2017 to March 2018, and a 37 percent increase from February 2018 to March 2018—the largest month-to-month increase since 2011.
U.S. Deparment of Justice

The president's
Quote:
 
administration, however, announced a “zero tolerance” policy in early May under which the Justice Department has tried to prosecute every person who crosses the southwestern border illegally, even if some of them could or should be treated as asylum seekers, as the American Civil Liberties Union has argued.
‘Mothers could not stop crying’: Lawmaker blasts Trump policy after visiting detained immigrants

Yes, under the Obama administration the cases were treated as civil matters, yet the offense is criminal. Trump's administration is prosecuting under the law and this has upset pro immigration forces. I read somewhere that the kids are treated better than millions of of American kids. Trump is not going to back down so in my opinion, the governments of the countries where immigrants flee from should warn their citizens of this fact, go to America illegally and you will be prosecuted when caught. And your kids could end up in foster case.
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Berton
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Keep in mind that they are separated from their parents for a max of I think 20 days and if they came through an entry point they would not be separated at all.

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Sea Dog
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Laura Bush feels sorry for separated kids.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/laura-bush-separating-children-from-their-parents-at-the-border-breaks-my-heart/2018/06/17/f2df517a-7287-11e8-9780-b1dd6a09b549_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.effa10f2fd5b

Does this mean that she is forgoing the Republican party?
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Banandangees
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Perhaps we should keep the families intact and do what Mexico does and escort the "caravans" north to friendly, open arms Canada for asylum. Once Central America knows that Canada has an open arms policy, with FREE everything - one that overrides their "merit only policy," refugees will flock through the US like they are now flocking through Mexico like "crap through a goose," where they could ask for asylum there, and Canada will be happy to take them in on a regular basis.... like Merkel has allowed for 53% of all middle east refugees coming to the EU to come to Germany.

-- "The arrival of some 1.4 million people over three years has scrambled politics in what had been among
Europe’s most stable states, boosting support for anti-immigration populists, weakening mainstream parties,
and digging a deep rift in Ms. Merkel’s conservative bloc."


Of the above WSJ (today's) article there were well over 200 responses by 3:00AM Eastern time. Most, by far, were native German responses and were negative toward Merkel's "open door policy."


Perhaps if the western world (would have been a good job for NATO) would have done something about Assad, instead of just drawing a line, all these refugees would have happily stayed in the middle east. I mean, why didn't Iran (Syria's ally) "bring them home?" How many rushed to Russia? China? The "friendly" middle east counties could have set up "sanctuary cities" and taken care of their own.

Here is one European's response: "At times, we should all consider the possibility that; had Obama enforced his "red line" and held Assad in account, that the current war would have been avoided? The world is being played by our stupidity to believe that this reckless policy is good for humanity. Radical Islam will turn Europe into a "S show" as former President so eloquently stated."

Blame the U.S.. If that's the case.... looking for blame.... blame NATO. It's the EU that has been invaded by those of foreign countries. Isn't that what NATO is for. It could have stopped Assad's murder rampage... if it had any balls... so they blame Obama. The red line, I suppose, gave Europeans the idea that the U.S. alone should have done something.... not themselves.

Similarly, if the U.S. goes with an open door policy for refugees, and with our wish to develop a FREE everything society, refugees from Central America and beyond will invade our nation.

As a Christian nation we should be willing to give a helping hand. But, that doesn't mean at the total expense of the host nation. What the hell is wrong with governments of those middle east and Central American countries..... Mexico included..... that allows it's citizens to be treated in a way that gives them the impetus to FLEE to FREE?

Our Canadian "friends" criticize Trump and America's immigration policy enforcement, when it requires "merit" for legal immigration. How would those citizens of Canada react to what Germany's and other EU nation's citizens had to accept? Another European response to Merkel's policies:

" Because the European Union can't figure out exactly what it is. Is it a country? Is it not a country? Do the European Union's "laws" override a countries real laws? Until the union of European countries figures this all out it will forever have angst about doing something on its own. The two world wars made them afraid to do anything which might make a single country look "aggressive". Especially Germany.

Edited by Banandangees, Jun 19 2018, 03:30 PM.
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Berton
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Sea Dog would have us keep children and MS-13 Gang members together. :bang:

Edited by Berton, Jun 19 2018, 07:25 PM.
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