Solutions offered for child refugees

The way forward for the 50,000 child refugees from Central America:

l Reunite all unaccompanied children with any of their parents already in the United States.

l Change the 2008 law requiring all children from Central America to receive a hearing on their request for asylum before being sent back to their home of origin, so these children can be immediately deported.

l Guarantee that these children will be given a fair hearing in their home country of their request for asylum within 45 days of being returned.

l Double the quotas for Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador refugees to receive asylum in the United States.

The U.S. judges holding these asylum hearings in their home countries will have available much more information on how perilous their lives are in their home countries in making their decision on granting asylum.

Our embassies in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador need to work closely with local governments to protect the kids from harm while they wait for their asylum hearings.

In the 1980s, the United States agreed to give asylum to more than 200,000 unaccompanied minors from Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia.

I have a 42-year-old Vietnamese son from this program, and I know from some of the stories shared by kids from Honduras that they faced much greater danger than my son faced in Vietnam from the communists.

Our country is much richer because of these 200,000 Asian kids.

William Peterson

North Liberty