Who should take care of the children?

I came across this at Ace of Spades the other night:

…doesn’t the responsibility of caring for the illegal immigrant children fall on the federal government? The very federal government which helped cause this crisis in the first place.

This comment was made about Glenn Beck’s efforts to raise money for the unaccompanied children streaming across the border.  Glenn has gotten a lot of criticism for his stance, mostly along the lines of “if you help them, it’s just going to encourage more of them.”

Here’s my take on it.  Asking the federal government of the United States to take care of children is the same as asking the thief to guard the bank, or the pederast to babysit (that last analogy may be closer to the truth than is comfortable).

Imagine this: thousands of children come to America, and before they are deported, only experience the bureaucratic nightmare of our government.  They are assigned a number and a folder, and are shuffled from place to place, with people yelling at them, abusing them, and treating them like animals or garbage.  Then they get sent back home, and they tell of the horror that used to be the Land of the Free.  They want nothing to do with anything American, and reject the philosophy and ideals of America out of hand.

Or this: thousands of children come to America, and before they are deported, they see ordinary citizens, with no government connection, trying to find out who they are and why they came, taking care of them one by one, as individuals who have inherent worth.  They still get sent back home, but now they have experienced what it means to be American, and they want it for their own people, and if that proves impossible, then they want to return to America and take their place as a new citizen.

Don’t let the government, especially at the federal level, care for anything that you don’t want broken, especially people.