Gov. LePage learned on a conference call with the White House that eight unaccompanied immigrant children have been placed in Maine.

These are some of the 57,000 unaccompanied children from Central American countries who have streamed across our border into Texas since last October.

It is understandable why thousands of unaccompanied children have been streaming across our Texas border.

I have seen the worst of poverty, from the shantytowns of Buenos Aires to Appalachia and the Zuni Pueblo of New Mexico here in our country. What I have not seen is the combination of poverty and violence that these unaccompanied immigrant children are escaping from in those Central American countries.

However sympathetic their stories may be, though, we cannot take on all the problems of the world.

Gov. LePage should not have been blindsided by this; he had ample warning this would happen.

In June, the Department of Homeland Security sent a group of illegal immigrants to Phoenix without informing Gov. Jan Brewer (“Single parents, children surge across southern border,” June 7). Brewer, in a letter to President Obama, has demanded answers for the “unwarranted policy of dumping.”

And what about Maine’s congressional delegation?

Between running for re-election and preening for the cameras, our dear leaders have not done what is in our best interest, and that is to emphatically state that we do not want unaccompanied immigrant children and the problems they bring with them.

And Gov. LePage can do better than stating, “We cannot become a state that encourages illegal immigration.”

However bruised and battered, there is still a 10th Amendment, so the governor should root around in his executive authority toolbox and be proactive.

Bob Casimiro

former executive director, Massachusetts Citizens for Immigration Reform

Bridgton

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