Child Workers. In America. Today.

Where is the outrage, President Biden?

What are you doing -- today -- about this issue, Congress?

These children aren't being sheltered in locked and fenced holding pens at the border waiting to be processed.  They're here -- in country -- and being exploited by some of our biggest American brands.

Is this acceptable because we need workers in today's labor force?  

If not, where is the outcry to protect the child workers, to protect those working alongside them, and to protect the products they are helping to produce?

We're not communist China.

We're the good guys -- the U.S.A.

We struggled with child labor issues at the beginning of the century -- LAST century.  We have rules in place, and organizations -- OSHA -- with people staffed to protect our laborers and our children.  Where are they, and has the president made this a priority?  (He's back from his European vacation/war trip, right?)

Where is the outrage in the national media, as well as the local media where these factories and plants are located?  This is way more abusive than the photo-ops of newcomers being sleeping on concrete slabs in enclosed shelters as their refugee bids were processed.

It was one thing when America "looked the other way" as adult men came in to work and support themselves.  Even when women arrived, looking for work.   But the children...

That always bothered me, as the child of a legal immigrant myself.  I was born here, but I know how immigrant families struggle to compete against "legacies" -- those with generational capital who can afford the going rates of automobiles, homes, luxuries and everyday expenses, the costs of which have only soared in recent years.

How can you come in with nothing, and expect to feed, shelter, and take care of children?  That's why adult males, like my father, came in, worked, saved and waited to get a foothold here before marrying and conceiving children they could support and educate.

When we saw pictures of poor women, and multiple children -- some unaccompanied -- crossing the border... how do you think those people will support themselves living here, especially if they do not  qualify for government aid?  My immediate thoughts were:  sex work.

It's just not fair to the children.

The liberals who tell us:  we NEED immigrants because of our low work-force participation rate;  we need children because of our low domestic birthrate...  think they are "helping" by letting them in to our country, unseen and as non-citizens.  They IGNORE how people live because they simply have so much, and insurance to cover what they have, that they are clueless as to what it takes to get a foothold.

If America continues to look the other way as children cross our borders and assimilate into our work force, doing the dirty jobs that American workers are asking for more money and better benefits to perform, you know what?

We're no better than the Chinese, where so many of our corporations have moved their factories in order to take advantage of the low-cost workers, and yes -- child laborers.

Where is the legal academy protesting this?  The unions?  The American parents of children?  Is this okay, morally, with you, to "offer up" other people's little bodies to serve our consumer needs and keep prices low as inflation rises?

Not with me.  What happens "over there" is one thing.  But this is my country.  This is my homeland, where I was born and educated.  We're better than this, America is.

We NEED to close the door NOW and make it clear that child-labor laws -- hard fought in American court systems -- WILL be enforced even as our immigration polices are not.  We NEED to protect the children, as so many pundits of late are piously proclaiming.

Where are you?  Will we need to see bodies of dead children, little workers with darkened faces like the child coal miners of a century ago -- to awake America to what we have become?

Missing fingers, dark circles under their eyes, pure ignorance of basic remedial schoolchild skills -- like reading and writing English, performing basic sums, or taking care of their own hygiene?

Children -- and women -- can be easily manipulated in the workforce.  We know that.  Why in the world America believes we need to admit more underage workers, and poor desperados who will do anything to survive, is beyond me.

We have billions to send making war on Russia, and threatening to kill Putin.  We have the money to enforce our labor laws and ensure that no child today -- American citizen or non -- is being unlawfully exploited because we need their little bodies and they will accept pay to perform.