O'Malley on Immigrants: Not in MY Backyard

As you may be aware, the Governor of Maryland, term limited here at home, is looking a lot like a Presidential or Vice Presidential candidate.  Yesterday, however, the ongoing immigration debacle got him caught up between the two wing of his own party:

After criticizing White House over unaccompanied minors, Martin O'Malley said don't send them to Maryland site

After his strong criticism of the Obama administration's plans to return thousands of young undocumented migrants back to Central America, Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley asked a top White House official that the children not be sent to a site that was under consideration in his home state, sources familiar with the conversation said.

"He privately said 'please don't send these kids to Western Maryland,'" a Democratic source told CNN. The heated discussion between O'Malley and White House domestic policy adviser Cecilia Munoz occurred during a phone call late Friday evening, sources familiar with the conversation added.

A potential Democratic presidential candidate in 2016, O'Malley surprised some in his party when he sharply criticized a White House proposal to give new legal authorities to the Department of Homeland Security to expedite the deportation of the unaccompanied minors and their families.

“We are not a country that should turn children away and send them back to certain death,” O’Malley said last week at a National Governors Association meeting in Nashville.

I have no problem with bringing them to Maryland, as long as they're packed into Baltimore, Prince George's, Montgomery or Ann Arundel counties, the bases of the liberal democrats in Maryland. Of course, some of the minorities in Baltimore are already beginning to complain that the immigrants are being given more good shit than the native down and outs...

"I'm living a nightmare. My whole neighborhood is so violent. There's so much crime," she said. "I have gangs everywhere here in Baltimore! I can't let my daughter ride her bicycle outside – I can't do anything, Laura! I'm trapped here."

Elaine told Ingraham that she listens to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Obama and feels that "nobody is saying a word" while spending billions of dollars taking care of foreigners who are unlawfully in the country.

"Well, what about my neighborhood? You don't have to do it in Beverly Hills, but in the inner cities where we are suffering," she said. "My children cannot play outside. I cannot take my trash out without locking the door – it's awful. Who is going to give us anything? Where can I get asylum? Where can I get refugee status? I don't know what I can do. Nobody cares what happens to my children."

Try Honduras. . .

Illegal immigration crisis poses quandary for Democrats

Potential 2016 Democratic presidential candidates are showing divisions over how to handle the surge of illegal immigrant children, underscoring how quickly the immigration issue has gone from what they thought was a guaranteed political winner to an electoral headache.

Some Democratic governors considering presidential bids also are having to grapple personally with the surge as they decide whether to fight or accept the Obama administration’s requests to house the children in facilities within their borders.

Those within Congress, meanwhile, will have to take tough votes on boosting spending and changing the law to allow for faster deportations — all under the close scrutiny of Hispanic groups that are prepared to punish those they deem to be working against immigrant rights.
. . .
Mrs. Clinton, Mr. O'Malley and other potential Democratic presidential candidates such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo likely will get other chances to revise and expand on their positions before the primaries and caucuses begin.

“This issue is not so much about their initial reaction or instinct, but how do they address this issue over time. If there were significant differences there, it could become an issue,” said Marshall Fitz, director of immigration policy at the left-leaning Center for American Progress. “It’s going to change 50 times between now and then. I think their thinking will evolve over time. Right now, we’re right in the midst of it.”

And then, whatever position they evolve to will be held as something that people will always have to have held, or else be censured; like gay marriage.

Casting doubts on the entire "unaccompanied minor immigrant theme: Just how “unaccompanied” are the children coming across the border?

The border crisis has been depicted as a wave of children and teens overwhelming US Border Patrol resources, traveling mainly alone through hostile territory controlled by drug cartels and gangs. The Washington Post’s Joshua Partlow calls this “somewhat misleading,” as least as pertaining to the definition of “unaccompanied.” Many are not traveling with their parents, but most of those are traveling with another adult of their acquaintance:

The “unaccompanied minors” who walked out of the brush on the banks of the Rio Grande and turned themselves into Border Patrol officers last month were not, technically, unaccompanied. In the group of 15 people that we watched that night, about half of them appeared to be adults, including men and a woman carrying a baby, in addition to several children.
It’s the most potent image in the current immigration crisis: Tens of thousands of Central American children on a dangerous solo exodus out of their countries. But from what I’ve seen reporting on this issue from the U.S. border and in Honduras, it is also somewhat misleading.
The term “Unaccompanied Alien Children,” or UACs, as used by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, refers to people up to age 17 who are traveling without a parent or legal guardian. It does not mean they are traveling alone.
In migrant shelters in Mexico and Honduras, talking to both children and adults who are making these journeys, or have been deported after failing to reach the United States, the most common scenario seems to be children who are traveling in groups that include adult relatives, neighbors, smugglers or others. Often the children migrating already have one or more parents living in the United States, and they are considered “unaccompanied,” even if traveling with other adult relatives.

Children truly traveling alone “seem[] to be the exception,” Partlow concludes. If so, that provides a different context to the recent flood of immigrants crossing illegally into the US, and that has an impact on how the US can approach it. The narrative thus far is of children left to themselves with no adults to watch out for their interests, and demands for an open-arms policy have risen at least in part because of that perception.