Shikha Dalmia on Foreign Kids and America’s Huckleberry Finn Problem

Hardline immigration
opponents are marching in the streets demanding that the
unaccompanied foreign kids arriving at our doorstep be “returned to
sender.” This, they say, is necessary to protect our borders. But
these kids are refugees of America’s drug war that respects no
nation’s borders or sovereignty.

America is experiencing arguably its worst spasm of nativism
since the early 20^th Century. But calls to enforce a
cruel borderline, notes Reason Foundation Senior Analyst Shikha
Dalmia, will run into the Huckleberry Finn problem. Just as the
argument that blacks be kept in chains because slavery was the law
of the land lost, so will nativism.

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