Classification and Personality

“There are two types of people in this world…” goes a famous line from Bill Murray’s What About Bob  “Those who like Neil Diamond, and those who don’t. My ex-wife loves him.” 

Even though he is neurotic to a crippling degree, Bob does what most of us do when trying to understand others and himself, sort and segregate. 

It’s easier to understand others when we boil it down to A or B choices. The desire to classify along personality lines is more about figuring out “us” than learning about “them”.  

Buzzfeed and Facebook are awash in ‘this or that’ type quizzes that sort users based on personality. From “What Lord of the Rings character are you?” to “Which 80’s sitcom describes your life?” All suggest an interest in self-discovery. What is at the heart of it though? Why the need, mostly for fun, to separate and label? It has more to do with seeing ourselves a certain way than putting others in a box. By solving key components of self, we can map out life easier and find our tribe. A touch of laziness is to blame for an obsession with finding the perfect track. Who doesn’t want to find the path of least resistance? Who hasn’t thought “Give me the relationships and careers where I’m destined for awesomeness”? 

 Questionnaires give us the confidence of figuring out some missing piece of our own little puzzle.

The popular psych profile Myers-Briggs separates people into 16 groups but starts with 4 broad characteristics. I don’t think I’ve ever read through and thought about how to classify others though. I’m only interested in where I fall along the scale (ISFJ in case you wondered). Maybe it is just old fashioned selfishness to figure out ‘me’ first and consider others later. But if selfishness is the culprit it proves my point. We want to figure out ‘us’ in a larger ‘we’ picture.

The individuality I'm describing is closer to self-interest than vanity. There is some corner of the brain that lights up when we solve a tough math problem or find answers to a baffling question. It’s a confidence builder. Finding some hidden gem of information through diligent effort is its own reward, much more when we do it ourselves. Tests on personality force us to be honest by presenting scenarios and demanding responses. A full picture of our makeup is only possible when we tell the truth. Also, valid profiles aren’t based on right or wrong answers, the incentive to cheat is removed.

A lot of this depends on how serious you take personality profiles. At best, they are trait markers and at worst, silly time wasting fun.

 Discovering our type can be limiting. Tying personality strictly to trait prevents us from taking chances in areas of life we don’t feel qualified to engage in. This allows a that’s-not-my-job attitude to seep in keeping us from accepting challenges we might really need.  We play to type instead of working through a default mindset. 

My job requires me to help a lot of coaches and athletic directors. Most are highly organized and competitive. Occasionally they’re demanding and used to getting their own way. This is challenging when their deadlines aren’t met, which happens sometimes. Past success lays the groundwork for future disputes, so naturally they insist on being assertive. It’s worked before. Playing to type for them means holding ground and pushing demands. Losing an argument can be catastrophic and they’re likely to hold a grudge. By not moving on from a no-win situation they hurt themselves by personalizing the affair.

Most of the studies on personality show that people can change their type over the years. If there is one benefit to discovering how you interpret the world, information and personal relationships, it shows us where improvement is possible. Improvement is possible when we have all the information. People with naturally aggressive tendencies can learn to control anger and move on without hard feelings. The same goes for those with agreeable personalities. By sticking to their beliefs they can break out of the passive mold that allows others to push them around. Personality tests like Myers-Briggs can illuminate some of “whys” and “what fors” we drift toward instinctively. Change requires rigorous attention to improvement though. 

Wanting to improve areas of personality is universal, although there is probably a type that doesn’t believe they need to. I did some quick searching to find out what self-improvement actually means to people. Most agree on the basic “what’s”, happiness, health and relationships.  The “how’s” diverge a little. Trying new things and breaking type is good advice because it forces us to use skills that aren’t yet developed. Like trying out a new workout routine, it makes us uncomfortable at first but strengthens muscles we didn’t know we had. Teaching a class, joining a club and learning a language are some popular recommendations (from Quora at least).

These are self-focused ideas but it’s tough to help others without first challenging yourself. There is room for improvement everywhere, whether you like Neil Diamond, associate Family Ties with your upbringing or prefer reading books to watching movies. 

Shortcuts don’t exist for change; that includes personality tests.  

Community or Attendance

I attended a Wednesday night church service this week.

 My church only does one Wednesday service per week now. Somewhere along the way, a lot of churches put in multiple Sunday morning sessions and even one for Saturday night. Evangelicals who’ve grown up with the midweek option might find it strange to see it go. I can’t say how common it is around the country though.  I stopped going to the Wednesday service on consecutive weeks when I was in high school.  For some this is an awful break from tradition, an inexcusable move that proves America doesn’t care about God anymore.

 But is the lack of services really a trend toward laziness or a strategic move designed to reach the lost on their own turf?

The stated reason, for fewer church times, is to encourage small groups to take the place of large gatherings and invest in each other on a personal level. Small groups are an extension of a larger community within the church. With big churches it’s easy to ignore and be ignored by the people we see in service. The anonymity of big gatherings often leads to isolation, as contradictory as it seems. Small groups promote participation for those without strong support from friends and relatives. It also forces ‘lone wolf’ types to make connections. Lone wolfs would hardly get that type of community from just attending church once per week. They might not even get it attending 3 services weekly. 

If the shift to smaller groups works, than we can expect churches to grow across the country as people without a formal group structure become new regulars.   

The argument against killing the midweek service is that it promotes less Christian teaching overall. Cynical types think pastors just want time off. “Tell the people it’s about ‘community’ and we get to stay home.” First, most changes from religious officials get the conspiracy treatment, why should ‘community’ notions be different? Second, the church should reflect, in some ways, the culture around it. Without it, Christianity can seem foreign, something unreachable and unrelatable. Clothing is one example. It went from ties with slacks to flip flops and baseball caps in less than 20 years. The music too is faster paced, much louder and sounds closer to a concert than a choir led chorus. It’s probably a reflection changing music tastes within the church instead of some outreach effort. But it reflects the culture and isn’t contradictory to any core biblical beliefs.   

A culture that doesn’t attend church (largely) won’t hear the message of the gospel except on a one to one basis. Those interactions can happen anywhere and often do. This is the shift Christians need, from attendance to outreach. It could be that the national Church is trying to revive some of sense of community that is going away in large portions of the country. Civic groups and service clubs (Rotary, Kiwanis) so important 50 years ago are dying. Some of these groups lost over 50% of their members between 1975 and 2000. Americans don’t join like they used to. The ties of local organizations (religious and non) that once existed are barely effective anymore at building group dynamics. Some blame the digital space, internet groups that offer community without the pesky human interaction. Maybe so, but it could also be that we don’t have the same obligation to tradition anymore. Maybe there is a feeling of “What’s the big deal?” or “Why do I need that?” If it leads to searching for groups in different ways, that’s great. But it can also lead to isolation. Isolation is easier to achieve than ever and it’s having negative effects on human interaction across the country.

Community promotes individual growth, isolation retards it.

Churches are figuring this out in a time of slipping attendance across the country. What difference would an additional night of service make in a society that doesn’t bother going on the regular days? Isn’t that person more likely to attend a small gathering with friends than a church? It’s also forcing church officials to imagine a more disparate organization in the future, one central hub with dozens of small affiliates. A lot of megachurches use this model already by broadcasting services to a number of smaller gatherings. Other forms of gathering will develop too as communication of media increases. 

       

The willingness to provide support and build reliable communities reflects a two part goal for the national Church. Without changing with the times we lose alienating a generation that didn’t grow up in America attending services. The goal is the same, preach the gospel, make disciples and support the community through outreach. The shift in attitude is what's important, if you won't come to us, we'll com to you.

 I don’t think the traditional brick and mortar church buildings are going away. But they are seizing on an opportunity to reach those far removed from a tradition of church attendance. For those used to slipping in and out of services without obligations to outreach, this is a welcome change.

Fictional Reading, Non-Fictional Writing

When it comes to writing I prefer non-fiction and easy to compile stuff, like this blog. In reading I go the other way, towards fiction. I find writing stories very challenging, unlike personal stuff and observational content. Current events and opinion always feel like a natural fit for me. I seem to gravitate toward news and politics. This weird FOMO instinct kicks in every time someone says “Hey did you hear about…?” and of course I didn’t. I really hate that. 

When it comes to books though I like novels, mostly. Not sure why. It probably has to do with the adventure or mystery. No one reads a chapter in James Patterson book and goes “Well, that’s enough for today”  With non-fiction I always feel like I need to take notes. I guess it’s a lingering effect of hours spent in the classroom. Like I’m afraid someone might ask me to summarize what I just read. But learning happens in stories as well as with fiction. I make distinctions between non-fiction in story form and the traditional biography or self-help variety. 

 There is a misconception among those who read non-fiction, that it’s the choice of 'learners'. One of my favorite lines from the movie Sideways is from Thomas Haden Church’s father in law, “I think you read something, someone just invented it--waste of time.” It sums up the feeling people have about stories.

The lines get blurred in memoirs, since most of the details are accurate but include a lot of filler to round out the best remembered parts. I read a book called Back to Moscow from a European student getting his Master’s in Russian Literature. He lived in Moscow for a few years while reading the classics (Tolstoy, Pushkin, Dostoyevsky). He mostly just went to night clubs and hooked up with women while ‘trying’ to get work done. His project probably needed a year or less but he lived there for three, partying and boozing hard. He details the city and summarizes the literature throughout, sprinkling the story with digressions on famous characters like “Ana Karenina” and “Natasha Rostova”.

He also covers events in Moscow during the early 2000s, including the Theater hostage crisis which he was there for. I won’t ruin the ending but it ties in perfectly with the tragic lives’ of the heroines he studies. It isn’t traditional fiction where the story is completely whole cloth, he probably embellishes a bit but it reads like a fiction. It isn’t a textbook or a classic (hardly) but I learned enough.

John Grisham novels are pure fiction. He does courtroom and legal dramas better than anyone. He creates rich characters and his stories reflect time and place better than most; he doesn’t overwhelm readers with countless people and unbelievable plot twists. We probably don’t realize we’re learning about the people and culture while also guessing where the story will lead. It’s the best kind of learning too, heavy on personal story and light on facts. In this way his books are fun and engaging. There’s probably a bit of truth in most of his stories despite being technically a fictional account. Scenes from his childhood, nasty behavior from strangers and courtroom experiences all round out his novels.

The most common distinction between fiction and non-fiction is whether something really happened. But this isn’t a great distinction either. Ernest Hemingway supposedly wrote fictional accounts of American expats in France, Italy, and Spain but as a reporter living abroad he must have taken some of it from his own experience. Nearly all of his characters drink excessively, something he was known for. In The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway shows Parisian friends attending the annual bullfighting celebration in Pamplona. His interest in the tradition is obvious by the way he describes the fiesta in the pages. Bullfighting as art is the theme, a pure craft set apart from drunk, partying foreigners. The story is set in the 1920’s and even though the Paris group is hedonistic and out for fun, bullfighting is described technically. There is some criticism that Ernest Hemingway didn’t get it just right, but this is probably where the fictional aspects kick in.

Everyone who loves to read has asked themselves “What’s the point? What do you hope to get from this?” If the answer is enjoyment, entertainment, adventure, than read fictional stories. If the answer is to get better at X, or learn about Abe Lincoln, than read non-fiction. Better yet, surprise yourself, pick up something completely random and see what you think. Same goes for writing. I try to do short stories on occasion for the practice. The dialogue is painful, the tale meanders and the characters are a little wooden, but I try.

So many books are perfect combinations of both genres that distinctions aren’t helpful anymore. Authors or subjects are better ways to break down particulars. A lot of us prefer films to books. Shows based on characters might be a way to explore books for those allergic to reading. Amazon Prime has a series called “Bosch” based on Michael Connelly’s famous Harry Bosch detective crime books. Amazon’s Bosch is a little too clean and fit for what I imagined the middle aged cop to be. That’s a risk we all take when going from film to page though. Images don’t always meet expectations. 

In any case we could all probably read more.

  

NATO: Worth the Fuss

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is an alliance of nations built on the idea the Soviet Union needed to be contained militarily. There was genuine concern among Western European countries (Germany, France, England) that the Soviets posed a threat to a weekend Europe after World War II. NATO tied together these concerns, along with the United States and Canada, in a defensive pact to deter Russian aggression.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 a lot of people question the overall goal of the pact. Is it still essential now that the Soviet Union is gone? What is the strategic objective for the alliance? NATO is just as important today because Russian is just as determined to gobble up weak nation states. It has some problems though and lack of European commitment to spending is chief among them. President Trump was right to point it out, but he is wrong to disparage the idea of a unified front.

 NATO countries agreed to 2% of GDP spending requirement from each of its 29 member countries. So far only Greece and Estonia have ponied up. President Trump was in Brussels last week for a summit on the future of the organization. Most of what is getting attention is his dressing down of Angela Merkel for her country’s lack of spending and indebtedness to Russian energy companies. Trump criticizes NATO members as often as he can, either in Tweet form or in speeches. His complaint reflects commonly held views that alliance members are shirking their payments at the expense of domestic goals. NATO acts as a type of military welfare for European members that don’t want to pay for a standing army. It’s easy to avoid payments when the bulk of the money is being spent by the U.S. But by focusing on the spending only, we miss the secondary benefits of having so many sovereign nations on our side. 

After 911 the coalition supported the invasion of Afghanistan and later the invasion of Iraq. It might seem like a small offering but considering NATO members support others who’ve been attacked, it was a big ask. Iraq in particular cost Tony Blair a lot of support at home. It wasn’t a traditional war either in which country A needs help from an invading country B. It was more preemptive, remove Saddam before he attacks. Also, when the US needs votes at the United Nations it’s often the NATO countries that vote with us. If the United States insists on taking votes at the U.N. and NATO for military incursions (Iraq, Libya) it will need partners along the way.

How many military bases could we keep in Italy without an agreement? Germany? Spain? Chances are, not too many. There may be a time when we aren’t able to house bases inside other countries. When that happens cooperation between nations is even more important for any conflict or peacekeeping mission, not to mention more expensive. Even the reluctant Turks have a U.S. Air Force base.

   

Despite the problems among members, the threat posed by Russian incursion into Eastern Europe is more real now than it was in the 1990’s. President Putin annexed (a nice way of saying “stole”) Crimea from Ukraine and went to war in Georgia a few years before that. It’s dangerous to oppose Putin if you live in the former Soviet bloc. Since the Soviet Union fell apart under Gorbachev in the late 80’s, a lot of diplomats assumed Russian was finished. Communism proved unable to hold together the disparate countries that fell under their control. It wasn’t in a position to expand; it lost former territories like the Baltic states and Georgia and Armenia. But Putin regained a lot of power that was lost in the chaotic 90’s. Mostly through energy contacts, he is exerting control over much of the former soviet bloc countries.

The roots of cooperation between Western Europe and the United States started after the war. A battle weary continent might have fallen under Stalin if not for that cooperation. After World War II the allies essentially made a bet, rebuild Western Europe and hold off Soviet expansion. By shoring up businesses in West Germany and reinforcing democratic norms, the influence of Communism would be restricted to Eastern Europe and the West under Capitalism. In this way, they kept a potential problem (Soviet aggression) contained and prevented another massive European war. This is like two fighting brothers drawing a line down the center of their shared bedroom and labeling their stuff. Over there is your side, here is my side. It helps to prevent major conflicts but practically guarantees the minor ones that characterized the Cold War.

 Communism feeds on desperate people who have neither rule of law nor freedom of movement. It’s an absolutist form of government that rewards brutality, crushes opposition and restricts religion. And it’s much easier to install in poor countries than wealthy ones. In other words the allied gamble was for prosperity. It worked. People know it the Marshall Plan because that was the where the big spending on infrastructure and aid happened. But NATO was an outgrowth of the same spirit of cooperation among democratic allies after the war. The U.S. was in the best position to offer aid as a bulwark against the chaos of Communism.

The best option today is to scale back the mission of NATO resembling something closer to the founding principle, by laying down markers to prevent too much Russian meddling. The Trump administration approved the sale of some weapons to the Ukrainian government at the end of last year. Sending weapons (although a small amount) is a signal to Putin that NATO opposes his incursion into that country. It's a good start at least.

President Trump should make sure U.S. ambassadors hold the line on spending. It is part of the original agreement after all. I’m sure the European leaders hate Trump’s brutally honest assessment. He needs to direct some of that bluntness toward the Kremlin. This Atlantic treaty should survive despite the problems we have with the lack of commitment from some of the members. The alternative is a strong Russia and a diminished role for the U.S. It may come to that, but it doesn’t have to.   

"Artemis" Book Review

 Weir wrote the book “Martian” which most people know as the blockbuster movie with Matt Damon. I never read it but imagined how difficult it would be to create a story on an environment which we know so little about. Weir is not “us” though; he is more engineer than novelist and sometimes gets lost in the science.

What I found interesting about “Artemis” is the economy that develops on the moon around the citizens. It’s similar to any small country or homogeneous society where one or two big companies dominate and everyone else works to support them. I’m a bit deficient in science so I had to take most of his descriptions at face value. Especially details related to oxygen in the atmosphere, what is required for welding in space and how to deal with fires on the moon.

At its core this is a story about protecting a colony from invaders. Not aliens invaders from another planet, just the usual corporate interests hoping to expand their holdings and crush the competition.

Imagine a small town with a steel mill in pre-World War II America and Artemis as an economy starts to make more sense. The mill employs most of the people in the town, they’re able to buy on credit and they exist as a community, with their own standards and laws. Artemis is the name of the moon city with around 20,000 people who call it home. Any self-sustaining group needs hospitals, banks, schools and anything required for living. Artemis has tradesman like welders and iron workers, retail employees to sell trinkets to tourists, and bartenders to help folks forget where they live.

One way it isn’t like a mill town is the tourism that keeps the place going. Tourists pay for once in a lifetime visit to see the city and see the famous 1969 landing spot where Neil Armstrong stuck a flag. The earth tourists stay in hotels and eat in restaurants like any other other vacation trap. The city itself is largely underground. The obvious lack of oxygen on the moon makes venturing out in EVA suits the purview of professionals, in this case a guild of trained astronauts.

The hero of the story is a Saudi girl (by birth) who has lived on the moon with her dad since she was six years old. Jasmine (Jazz) is a porter, skimming small amounts for herself and smuggling in contraband for wealthy residents. One day she gets a request from one of the city’s rich entrepreneurs to destroy some equipment owned by the only functioning aluminum plant. Apparently the moon is rich in bauxite which can be broken down to make aluminum. As a trained welder Jasmine is perfect for the sabotage; she can move around easily and access the pressure locks unsuspectingly and walk on the surface of the moon in her EVA suit. I won’t give too much else away but the basic plot involves locals (Atemisians?) fighting off the encroachment of crooked interests.

Andy Weir is a geek, so he is best when describing how to spot weld in a vacuum or how to rig a copper safety in an aluminum smelter so it malfunctions and boils the container (sorry, spoiler). He isn’t great at dialogue though and his heroine (Jazz) is a bit too selfish for someone concerned with the general welfare of the city she lives in. She holds grudges and is on bad terms with nearly everyone including her dad. Readers need to relate to the protagonist, sadly she wasn’t likable.

   

I could tell right when I started reading this would soon be a movie. Not because the characters are rich and entertaining but because of possibilities presented by a moon city. Think all the cool tech Hollywood will create for this. It’s exactly what made the “Martian” such a readily adaptable story for the screen. Take all the problems of a regular heist movie and put it on the moon. Add airlocks and pressure chambers, some cool rovers that can climb hills and tell a great “against all odds” tale.

Weir is the perfect writer to walk us through the technical glitches of working on the moon and explain the why’s of structural design.  I am betting this film is better than the book however. It’s a rare thing when anyone can say that but in this case the movie should at least be fun. The last few chapters of the book are perfect for action sequences.

Travel Shows

I’ve been watching this show called “I’ll Have What Phil’s Having” on Netflix. It got picked up by PBS at some point, I’ve watched it there too. I think of it as my replacement for Bourdain’s "Parts Unknown." It’s centered on the same kinds of experiences, food, culture and history. This one’s heavy on the food more so than the history though. Phil Rosenthal is a former comedy writer for “Everybody Loves Raymond”; he’s funny in an observational way. He feigns goofy looks when tasting unusual cuisine and awkward faces when tasting ingredients he doesn’t like. The best segment is a video conference call to his parents where he updates them on his travel. The pair is at least as funny as him, spouting one liners and griping about past vacations. Where Bourdain was irreverent and prickly, Rosenthal is respectful and avuncular.

I’m sure most fans of travel shows have the same thought as me when watching, “I could do that”. Of course I don’t know if I actually could, but it seems like the type of career I would love. I am sure the travel would get stressful, as well as organizing the crews, schedules and finding local help. How many events don’t go as planned, we will never know. It’s fair to say a lot of the preparation for these shoots get tossed out by cooks that don’t show up or restaurants that won’t accommodate the host. Just getting everyone through the airports with all their equipment is a small miracle in some of these countries. Airports can be very stressful; flights get delayed, bags go missing, reservations are lost. Whoever is responsible for lining up all the disparate pieces of a film crew has a massive responsibility. To say nothing of the video editors and the local guests like chefs and guides responsible for the bulk of content. How many hours of footage are cut to make up a 50 minute segment? Maybe 20 hours? It’s just a guess but you have to figure it is quite a bit.

If I could do a travel show what type of niche travel would it be? The food and culture stuff is overrun with copycats. Whichever channel you prefer, chances are they have a version all their own. PBS has 3 that I can think of, “Rick Steves’ Europe”, “Globe Trekker” and “I’ll Have What Phil’s Having.” Steves’ show is probably the longest running but with the newer additions his version seems positively boring. It’s certainly the most PBSy of all of them, paintings and frescoes in slow pan, historical narration, silly 'need to knows'. He covers all the big ticket stuff, The Louvre in Paris and the Acropolis in Athens. Nothing against history but it could be more accessible by having a local tell some of it in interview form. TV is tricky though because it has to be visual above all else. Too many long shots and commentary and the audience tunes out.  Even Ken Burns changed his format a little with his latest Vietnam documentary. He used a lot of video and interviewed former soldiers, families of those killed and historians.

So we’ve established that the pattern of food and culture shows is full. What isn’t full though? Is this just an excuse to travel? Yes, definitely. Global travel has gotten significantly cheaper, as has the technology for the equipment. As long as the on camera hosts aren’t making outrageous sums of money, the project shouldn’t cost that much. Remember this is basically reality TV. Some of the best shows are those whose hosts were not well known to the public before it started. Most of them got famous because of their show. This means it’s relatively cheap to start. It also means a packed field where competition is fierce. I do worry that the mystique of foreign travel will cease a little with the glut of cameras and show ideas exploring every corner of the earth. Still, there is room for more creativity if the content is original. Content is king and great ideas have a way of rising to the top of any format. A low budget show with a clever hook will get picked up by larger services like Netflix or Amazon Prime if the audience numbers are there. When that happens the budgets increase, as does the crew and equipment.

I liked the Ricky Gervais model in “An Idiot Abroad."  Take a pessimistic Brit who doesn’t care about culture, complains incessantly about the weather, the foreigners, the food, the sites and the conditions of the hotel. He has a nervous breakdown near the end of nearly every episode. Gervais created the show but the man they send around the globe wasn’t known for anything except being friends with Ricky. It was a funny twist on a well-trodden formula. Unfortunately even I got tired of the ‘whinging’ and gave up after the first season. 

There are other ideas for doing travel stuff and it doesn’t have to be international. Mike Rowe is very successful with his “Dirty Jobs” show about American blue collar work. I’m not sure is he was popular in television circles before his breakout hit, but I doubt it. Dirty Jobs couldn’t work, on the same level, without Rowe’s charisma. It hangs completely on the likability of its host. Not a bad thing, but it does suggest he could do similar documentaries with the same runaway success.

For the upstart, any potential creator has to answer the question “What would I like to do?” In other words let the content develop around an interest or philosophy. Don’t try to figure out what people want to see. The work is too exhausting to try to gauge audience interest all the time. Do what you love and figure out the nuts and bolts later. It might fall flat. It might be a disaster. But if it’s even a little bit popular and interest grows as the show expands, the love for the idea will push the team through rough patches. I guess that’s true of anything creative.     

Separation Anxiety

Here is my advice on “full court press” stories from the media.  Do a little research before forming an opinion. By “full court” I mean, all out emotional hand wringing and calls for immediate responses from government. The sensational stuff is frequently wrong or skewed to elicit emotion instead of information.

   

Case in point is this latest immigration dust up over kids being separated from families. My internal radar started going off as soon I saw heard of crying kids and ‘mean-spirited’ border policies. We all know Trump is a hawk on border security so making the case that he gleefully detains kids is an easy one to make. But my instinct told me there was more to this story than brutal crack downs and forced separations, because isn’t there always more to the story?

 The best thing I read was Rich Lowry’s article on the situation at the border. I’ll retell as much of it here as I can but the best thing to do is read it. For starters most immigration at the southern border has been from Mexican men up until about 10 years ago. That’s important because a lot of the men arrested were alone, and got sent back to Mexico after being scooped up at the border. It doesn’t account for all the cases but does explain the majority of arrests and detentions. Many were caught and released into the US.  Unaccompanied minors would often get picked up as well. But holding kids in detention was bad policy so the court put restrictions in place.

The Flores Consent Decree (the current law governing hold times) puts limits on how long the government can hold onto unaccompanied minors, set at 20 days. This includes those traveling with families. The last 10 years saw an increase in families coming together. The problem is they don’t have the space to accommodate all family units that arrive together. ICE also needs to check the validity of the claims that the kids are actually traveling with parents and not random guys using them to get in. If the families picked up together want to go home, they are released together fairly quickly. If they don't want to go home, they can apply for asylum. Asylum applications gum up the works and delay the status of migrants. This is where most of the separation happens.

Families get ‘separated’ when adults apply for asylum after being arrested in border sweeps. Anyone arrested can apply and they have 10 days to get an attorney and plead their case. It isn’t easy to get though. The standards for political asylum fall along pretty neat lines. Either the state (of the migrant’s home country) has oppressed their religion or they face a genuine threat of death upon arriving back home. Think of dissidents, activists and Christians who’ve been beaten, impression and tortured. That could apply to some people in Central America crossing the border, but probably not thousands.

While awaiting asylum the adults (kids don’t get asylum) are separated from children because otherwise the government would have to hold them until the legal process completed. The government isn’t about to hold onto to kids for a legal process that may take over a year. So they either release the kids into the United States to stay with relatives or ‘responsible’ parties while the case for their parent is pending. The only other option is releasing both parents and children together into the United States and hoping they show up for the asylum trial. The problem is they aren’t likely to show up. Also, this is a big country with a lot of places to hide.

Ideally we would have enough space to accommodate whole families at the border while their application filters its way through the courts. But if it takes a year to process that means the family is essentially behind bars (even in good conditions) the entire time. Imagine how much worse this could be? Tens of thousands of families waiting in camps for long stretches over an unlikely outcome. If Congress dumped the Flores Consent Decree and allowed children to stay with their parents, we would expect to see it. As of right now, ICE only has room for a handful of families they can accommodate. 

Building Thousands of camps will play very badly with the American public.

 That’s exactly what’s going to happen though. President Trump signed an executive order the other day to do just that. If the public doesn’t like the sight of children being removed from their parents they will really hate the next phase. But without a new law from Congress, it's the only option. 

Congress is responsible to come up with a solution not the president. The executive branch enforces the law and the legislative branch (Congress) writes new ones. Ted Cruz proposed doubling the number of judges reviewing asylum cases as well as building additional facilities to house families. All with the exception that they weren’t already wanted in their home countries for crimes. It’s clear to me the only solution the Democrats want is to release the migrants into the country or turn asylum cases into a rubber stamp approval process. In other words, Amnesty. 

 Most people agree that keeping children and parents together is best, but the solution so far is large tent communities. If the asylum process becomes a quick backdoor for admittance into the country than a border wall would be pointless. Why build a massive wall when showing up a point of entry and demanding asylum practically guarantees a free pass? This is a tough problem to solve because we live in a prosperous country where others want to emigrate. It’s difficult to maintain borders when so many want in.

Putting pressure on Mexico to tighten their own borders could do some good. Mexico has no incentive to stop their own population from leaving. Remittances from the US to our Southern neighbor topped 24 billion dollars last year. That’s money send home from migrant workers in the US. It’s a major source of revenue for a country without a lot of investment. Either by heavily taxing the remittances (never popular) or finding some type of direct investment to offset the transfers, it must be in their interest. It wouldn’t stop the migration altogether but it could certainly stem the tide.

I don’t know the exact breakdown of people coming into the country from the Southern border, their nationalities, their ages, how many are escaping poverty, or how many are gang members selling drugs. A lot are probably interested in giving their children a better future than what they can expect at home. But without a rigid process for enforcement, this problem only gets worse.