Trudeau Won't Condemn Trump On Child Detention? No Surprise

From Global News: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says he will not “play politics” over immigration policies when it comes to the controversial U.S. practice of charging and separating illegal migrants from their children when they cross the border into the United States.

I'll bet he won't. At least not yet. We'll see how long that lasts.

People enjoyed Trudeau's butch talk on tariffs this month - "We won't be pushed around" - but are finding his language on migrant families wanting.

The reason he's playing coy is simple: Canada has a similar practice with regards to illegal immigrant family crossings. Not identical, but similar, to the point where 150 or so kids per year are put in immigration detention. Often they are with their mother, but sometimes not, and the father is often only allowed to visit for a little while each day, as he is held separately:

The study examined the experiences of 20 families who were detained in the Toronto and Laval holding centres and found that, in nearly half the cases, children ended up being separated from their parents at some point in the asylum-seeking process.

In detention, mothers are normally permitted to stay with their children. Fathers, on the other hand, are kept separate and only allowed to visit their spouse and children twice a day for about 15 to 30 minutes, according to the study.

This is why when a reporter asks about kids in Canadian detention, officials say things like, "We only do that as a last resort." Which is not a synonym for, "Never."

Anyway, the point is that a picture of a child in Canadian detention is there for the taking, so there are similar practices at work, which Trudeau doesn't want to shoot the breeze about. So far.

Trudeau has a growing migration problem of his own. Thousands of migrants are coming over the border in Quebec and Manitoba, and there's been a huge spike in refugee claims from Mexicans, Bulgarians, and Romanians, who are taking advantage of Canada cancelling their visa requirements in the past two years. The upshot is that Trudeau might have to make some hard choices in the near future, and he doesn't want to kick the US in the shins lest he invite some kicks from his own citizens down the road. In any case, I have no doubt that he's been talking to his cabinet about a way that any similarity between Canada and the US on the kids/detention issue can be eradicated, before the headlines really get rolling.

The above are the similarities. The real differences between the Canadian situation and the US boil down to 1) population, 2) it's America and 3) Trump.

First, The United States has such a massive border migrant problem that it's a cinch for anyone to raise hell about any aspect of it. Canada speaks in single digits, the US speaks in thousands. Ten or twenty kids in a detention centre is an interesting Dateline episode. 2,000 is boffo headline stuff for at least a week or two.

2) It's America. No one really cares about the French clearing out their migrant camps, the Italians last week refusing to let a refugee ship dock in Sicily, or the jolly Aussies sticking people in internment camps on a remote island in the Pacific (well, someone cares about that; ironically, the US took 1,200 of those refugees last year, in a deal brokered by Obama but authorized by Trump). As anyone with an internet connection can tell you, bad news ain't big news unless it's happening in the US. Who wants to pick on Japan for only taking 20 (!) refugees last year? Nobody. But America? Mouths are foaming already.

3) Trump. His election, née candidacy, was a spark for an endless Roman candle of outrage. Now re: Kids in the detention centres, sure, it happened under Bush and Obama, and yeah, it goes on in other places, but none of those places have the Orange Man. Riffing on Children of the Corn for a moment, the internet of the past two years - maybe three; feels like forever - is like that scene from the movie, where the cult repeats "The blue man, the blue man, the blue man!" whenever the freaky leader kid asks whom they hate and fear most.

In this director's cut-length movie of ours, the man is orange, and my is he feared and loathed. So much so that when a Republican senator proposes a bill to keep migrant families together, it's dismissed out of a hand by the opposition because, hey, the current Two Minutes Hate isn't over yet; we dislike the idea of kids being separated from their mothers, but they can hang tough until this new outrage has run its course, right?

Update: As for Trudeau, his commitment to not playing politics on this issue lasted 24 hours, enough time to make sure he wouldn't totally screw himself:

“What’s going on in the United States is wrong,” Trudeau said.

“I can’t imagine what the families living through this are enduring. Obviously this is not the way we do things in Canada.”

You'd better be sure about that.