![image.png](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/arbitration/23y8qwJaJKYsDPYErrbLYDgajJxZQ654R3VVCqfVKd9onV9QdbknhDFahrp4QX3fpyQ1z.png)

The immediate compassionate response to seeing images of children approaching our southern border is to say, “Let them in! Let them all in! We’re a big, rich country. We’re a nation of immigrants. Surely we can accommodate another few thousand poor little kids. Besides, most of them already have family in the States. Just locate their States-side relatives and send them along. And those without family in the U.S. can be adopted. What’s the problem?”

What would happen if little American kids, unaccompanied by parents or any adults, showed up at someone’s house, saying that their parents had sent them on their own and they were asking to be taken in? Child welfare would take the kids into custody, and then their parents would be located and probably arrested for child abandonment. 

I always thought it was the primary responsibility of parents to take care of their own kids, even if the family is poor. 
 
One of the problems with advocating compassion-based policy is that it is easy to overlook the unintended consequences of one’s own decent, compassionate impulses and actions. If a thousand unaccompanied minors can cross our southern border and wind up being placed in comfy homes with relatives or adoptive parents, then ten thousand or a hundred thousand or a million more kids will likely follow – like a children’s crusade on a mission to the promised land.