On Fox News Sunday, Republican writer George Will said that America should let all of the illegal immigrant juveniles from Central America remain and ensure they are allowed to “go to school and get a job.”
“My view is that we have to say to these children, ‘Welcome to America. You’re going to go to school and get a job and become Americans,'” Will declared. “We have 3,141 counties in this country. That would be 20 per county. The idea that we can’t assimilate these 8-year-old criminals with their teddy bears is preposterous.”
Will was asked to respond to Republicans who, like a majority of Americans in multiple national polls, want to deport the illegal immigrant juveniles, 90% of whom are teenagers and not “8-year-old criminals with their teddy bears.”
There have been nearly 60,000 illegal immigrant juveniles who have been apprehended since October of last year. Federal officials expect 150,000 more will be caught in the next fiscal year. Texas state Senator Dan Patrick recently said that law enforcement officials have told him that somewhere between one in five and one in ten illegal immigrants are actually apprehended. Patrick also noted that there are 100,000 illegal immigrant gang members in Texas and many of the illegal immigrants are not even literate in their own languages.
The Obama administration has released 30,340 illegal immigrant juveniles to “sponsors” across the country, and many officials have protested that they do not have the public resources in their municipalities to take care of the illegal immigrant children.