Stories of the Border Crisis: A Narrative Analysis

While I really appreciate articles like this that take a more rational view of the nuance of either side of a debate, there are a couple points I felt were left completely untouched:

1) there is an interest in low-cost labor provided by illegal immigration that American businesses (regardless of party) depend on, and this illegal labor market cares not about minimum wage laws, SUI, etc. So the interests in the debate go beyond the "protection" dimensions outlined in the article. There are cold, hard financial interests that use any convenient rhetoric to get the outcome they want.

2) The children approaching the border on their own are not all originating from Mexico, and these aren't toddlers, but many are 16, 17 years old. I'm instinctively skeptical when I hear the world "children" used in politics. Characterizing the "remain in Mexico" policy as sending children back to the horrors they're trying to escape may not be the best characterization of what's happening. Ignoring entirely the agency of the parents in sending children unaccompanied (or worse) to the border, keeping a kid from Honduras in Mexico rather than the US is not sending the kid back to the horrors he's trying to escape.

I have no idea what percentage of influence the illegal labor market has on the debate, and no idea how many "children" are originating from the same Mexican state that they'd remain in under the old policy. But these are some dimensions the article glosses over - effectively purporting that there is not monetary dimension to the immigration debate, and the consequence of the "remain in Mexico" policy results in more child-victimization than putting them in overcrowding holding cells.