News that the Home Office is to ‘forcibly’ repatriate up to 500 children back to Vietnam has certainly animated EarthPal, over at Scorched Earth, here
Sphere: Related ContentIf children are involved then all circumstances should be assessed in detail and with sensitivity. Of course it’s far better to repatriate these children to their own countries - their own families. But only if and when circumstances are fully suitable to do so. And certainly not just to appease the scare-mongers or to improve the figures.
Knee-jerk reactions and quick fixes are never a solution and are simply going to let down these vulnerable kids who have endured too much already. They need protecting. We should not let our politicians exploit them further just to save their own sorry faces. The problems are within the system. The system-managers have failed. Genuinely vulnerable children may now have to pay for the mistakes made within a system that has consequently allowed failed asylum seekers to “disappearâ€. And why have they (the children that is) been given a “failed†status anyway? What sort of system is it anyway that refuses asylum to a child who is alone and in need of refuge? What sort of system would return a child, who has been trafficked into the country for prostitution, to that very same danger?
It would be convenient to define what a child is, up to what age they must be considered children, because when they mention the noun children we always evoke helpless toddlers, and there is a “real” difference between a toddler and someone not yet 18 years old.
The education of a toddler in a foreign country is far much easier than educating someone being 12 years old and more.