Musings on Immigration

In the days after the Haitian earthquake, Laura Silsby made a series of calls around the country to mobilize a trip to rescue orphaned children from the disaster. She enlisted members of her Baptist church and told them she had all the necessary paperwork. A few days later she was arrested along with nine other Americans while trying to bus 33 children into the Dominican Republic. She now claims to be a misguided good Samaritan but what the do-gooders allegedly did was not just misguided. It could be criminal, and Haitian authorities are right to hold them accountable. It doesn’t help matters that we are learning that Ms. Silsby is in a significant amount of debt- trafficked children are a hot commodity, each one could fetch thousands and thousands of dollars in the illegal adoption market and goodness knows how much in more sordid markets. Clearly, complying with the law was not first and foremost on Ms. Silsby’s list of priorities. These children could never have been adopted by US c...