Babies in the river - a problem not even tacos can solve

If you've been at all involved in social justice teaching or activism, you've undoubtedly heard the story about the babies in the river.  I've heard a few variations of the story, but more or less it goes like this:

As townspeople gathered near the river for recreation, a baby was heard crying and floating in a basket in the water.  Someone jumped in, caught the child, and brought it to shore.  The people gathered dry clothes and food for the infant and began to care for it, when they heard another cry.  The story repeated itself with this child and the many more that came.  The townspeople organized and each took on specific roles with the baby-saving operation.  Some rescued directly, others checked for medical issues, and others clothed and fed and the children.  There was even a corps of crib-makers that developed.

One afternoon, a frustrated citizen dropped everything and began running along the riverbank, upstream.  "Where are you going?" The townspeople asked.

"I'm going to see who's putting the babies in the river so I can stop them."

In all the years I've been using this analogy as a teaching tool, I've never seen a more appropriate situation for its comparison.  To date, approximately 57,000 immigrant children have made arduous journeys to cross the Rio Grande River and into the United States.  Many of them have crossed near my hometown of McAllen, Texas and it seems everyone has an opinion as to what should become of them.  The issue is complicated by a previous congressional act that elongates the deportation process for Central American children and congress's current inability to act at all on the subject of immigration.  Further, conservative groups have gathered to block access to detention centers and voice their hateful rhetoric.

This country has a difficult history with immigration; this certainly isn't the first time that foreigners are seen as disease-carrying leaches on our economic prosperity, so one would think that maybe we've learned something form our past. We haven't.  Replace any of the ethnicities of the protesters with "Central American" and we might see that the arguments of exclusion are no different from those of decades before.

So what's the solution?  I won't claim to be smart enough to know that one. However, whatever solution is presented must have two prongs in order to be successful.

The Babies in the River story provides us with a basic guideline for helping those in need.  We need to do the humanitarian work of saving children from imminent danger, attending to their basic needs, and caring for them until it's time to let go.  That's what is right.  It's saddening to see that many of those person that claim we are a Christian nation are turning their backs on a Christian responsibility.  Scripture tells us that society is to be judged on how it treats the most marginalized - the widow, the orphan, and the alien.  The immigrant children are definitely alien, but also orphans of circumstance, and in a few extreme situations, some of the girls are widows, as well.  We have a moral obligation to treat the children as human beings.

The final part of the story sets in motion a more difficult task.  It's about root causes.  Seeing who is putting the babies in the river and seeking the answer as to why they are doing so, involves our taking a hard look in the mirror.  It means acknowledging that much of the instability in that region was caused by our own selfish volition.  We toppled governments and financed coups.  In Guatemala our interests in inciting war were based on the political connections of an international fruit company.  To make matters worse, the gangs that cause parents to send their children away from El Salvador and Honduras were first imported there when we deported criminals after having them serve sentences in our country.  They learned how to organize while in our prisons and took their tactics with them to places where they were admired for their attitude and markings.  Unemployed youth facing economic strife caused in-part by our influence on their political instability found protection and identity in the gangs.

Getting to the root causes of this issue and arriving at effective solutions means building up those economies, instead of exploiting their resources.  Their prosperity will not only help our continent's collective prosperity, but will lead to less future immigration - the coveted goal of the right.

It seems that many have gotten frustrated from pulling too many babies out of the water, but we can't let them drown.  Our frustration should lead us to the headwaters of the river, where we can make effective change to stop those who are so desperate that they feel they have no choice but do drop them into the water.