WHAT OTHERS SAY

IMMIGRATION WOES

For weeks, the fierce national focus on immigration has been dominated by tales of children, and childish political manipulations. As Congress nears its summer recess and members position themselves for primaries and the November general election, attempts to pass legislation have become frantic. But the bills in the House of Representatives push in opposite directions to satisfy drastically different constituencies. Meanwhile, the Senate is poised to do nothing, and both parties and President Donald Trump are muddying the waters with intra-party squabbles and cynical lies. The administration recently has been assailed with two terrible accusations about how it has handled minors coming into the country. The claim that the government “lost” 1,475 children last year is false. The claim that the Department of Health and Human Services is separating children as young as 4 from their parents is true. But the amount of misrepresentation surrounding both is creating tremendous confusion that must be cleared up before the policy can be addressed with any clarity. The federal government admits it lost track of 1,475 children last year, but that’s neither ominous nor a cause for blame, as critics have claimed. In testimony before a Senate subcommittee last month, the Department of Health and Human Services explained the dificulty in checking up on the more than 7,000 unaccompanied minors it had placed with sponsors between last October and the end of last year. The agency made one call in each case to the contact phone number supplied and left a message when no one answered. Of those attempts, 1,475 elicited no response. This is not out of the ordinary. Newsday