The Biden administration says it will crack down on the use of migrant child labor at U.S. plants and factories serving some of the nation’s biggest brand names. Think well-known consumer brands like Frito-Lay, Nature Valley granola bars, Lucky Charms, J. Crew and Cheetos. Now think of exhausted children working under conditions that have led to severed fingers, head wounds or even lost lives, including a dozen young migrant workers since 2017, according to The New York Times.
The workplace crackdown is long overdue, but it solves only half the problem. Many if not most of the youths who have crossed into the United States illegally have done so without their parents. Some reunited with their parents on this side. But in nearly all cases, they were fleeing dire conditions at home and are working in the United States out of desperate economic necessity. That necessity won’t end with the crackdown. In fact, it’ll only get worse if the kids aren’t bringing home a paycheck.
Some might argue that it serves them right, and that they should go back where they came from. If it were that easy, the immigration problem would’ve been solved decades ago. Many of these children are fleeing intolerable situations at home: forced gang recruitment, kidnapping for ransom or sale to sex traffickers. They are granted temporary U.S. entry while their asylum cases are processed — as is their legal right regardless of whether a Republican or Democratic administration is in power. The Department of Health and Human Services then takes over monitoring the youths to ensure they’re properly cared for, but the agency has lost track of an estimated 85,000 of them in the past two years, the Times reported.
