With Texas Governor Rick Perry doubling-down on the “security option” in the wake of an ongoing children’s refugee crisis on the southwestern U.S. border, it might be a decent time to review just how we got to a point of “calling out the National Guard.” Gov. Perry is announcing that he’s sending 1,000 national guard soldiers to the border, says the New York Times, which adds that “… Democrats, including Texas lawmakers in the border region, immediately lined up in opposition to the deployment plan, calling it an attempt to score political points and to militarize the border.”

 

Of course, for Gov. Perry and others the current crisis around unaccompanied children immigrating from Central America is the latest among ongoing border security issues. But that crisis has focused attention on immigration, and especially immigration of unaccompanied children. National Public Radio, which helped break the story and has been an informational leader, said the situation is “… turning into the largest influx of asylum seekers on U.S. soil since the 1980 Mariel boatlift out of Cuba. Since October, more than 52,000 children — most from Central America and many of them unaccompanied by adults — have been taken into custody. That’s nearly double last year’s total and 10 times the number from 2009.”

 

“Because of a backlog, which is growing greatly with the recent influx, in essence a kid releasedtomorrow could stay in the U.S. for up to three years waiting for that date,” explains NPR’s Carrie Kahn. “And for most of these kids, that’s three years with a long-lost relative or three years away from extreme poverty and violence.” A child migration advocacy group says that “… as many as 90 percent of the children stay with relatives or family friends already living in the U.S., with the rest placed in foster care…”