Earlier this week, I addressed the national hissy fit over separating children from adults who claim to be their parents at U.S. borders. I noted what happened before the U.S. started doing that. Under Obama, we unwittingly handed thousands of children to slave labor operators or sex traffickers. Because they claimed to be their parents. Even Obama felt constrained to stop doing that. He put in place the policy which Trump is now enforcing.

Bush-era laws and crackpot court decisions won’t let the government hold children with their parents while we evaluate their asylum claims. That leaves the Trump administration two ugly choices:

Enforce the current policy, and temporarily separate children in safe facilities, apart from adults who claim them. (Both parents and human traffickers.) Keep the kids safe till the parents’ mostly groundless asylum applications can be processed. Then everyone goes home, together.

Give everyone who shows up at the border a live-in-America-free card. Turn them all lose, lest Laura Bush, Catholic bishops, and Planned Parenthood throw another public tantrum about how the U.S. is Nazi Germany or something.

Ted Cruz has offered a sensible legislative solution. It defuses the manufactured “crisis” without erasing U.S. borders. Count on Democrats to try to kill it. Since they’re a little too old for Planned Parenthood to dismember and sell in Styrofoam coolers, those little brown kids serve as ideal human shields for open borders policies.

So let me offer another idea. I’m not sure of the legal or legislative steps it would require. I leave that to the policy wonks. But I think my proposal, while modest, would offer more long-term solutions than anything else on offer. Therefore I’ll lay it out here, in broad but descriptive strokes.

Finding Middle Ground

Since the law won’t let us hold children more than 10 days, and the squealing elites won’t let us separate them from the adults who claim to be their parents, we need a sane compromise. One that:

Respects our national sovereignty and the rule of law.

Keeps families together.

Lets our bishops go back to attending George Soros’ conferences. And

Most important of all, heals Laura Bush’s broken heart. Hasn’t that woman suffered enough?

My plan shifts the cost of this complex policy where it really belongs. It offers the people who clamor the loudest for illegal immigration (and profit from it more than most) the chance to also absorb its costs. In the words of Nicholas Nassim Taleb, we offer them the privilege of having some “skin in the game.”

Employ Eminent Domain to Seize the Dormitories of America’s Elite Colleges to House Immigrant Families

Yes, Harvard and Yale of course. In fact, all the Ivies. (Yes, Cornell counts.) Also Brandeis, Stanford, Duke and even those state universities that flirt with “elite” status, such as UNC and UVA. Out of respect for Catholic bishops’ firm stance on these issues, major Catholic schools should also take part, such as Georgetown and DePaul University.

At each of these schools the comfortable, often lavish dormitories currently inhabited by students should be filled with migrant families. Students, for their part, will reside in tent cities constructed by the Army Corps of Engineers.

What’s the point of this plan? It’s simple. We can’t hold the immigrants against their will and together with children at the same time. So we’ll have to pick places where they will want to stay. Where they are likely to want to stick around for the weeks or months it takes for us to hear their asylum claims. What better lure to stay than the exquisite living conditions I once enjoyed? (See main photo.)

Fill the Lavish Dorms with Migrant Families, and House Students in Tent Cities

I think I know these immigrants will feel upon arrival. I grew up in a roach-infested tenement, without air conditioning, elevators, or reliable heat and hot water. Five of us crammed in to a two-bedroom apartment. (In other words, our conditions were worse than migrant families face in temporary detention.)

As the students sweat, then freeze, in the Army tents, they will learn some valuable lessons. Toughness, for one, akin to that once shown by the past generations of students whose names are carved on the walls, since they died in our nations’ wars.

When I showed up at Yale’s Branford College, to see the oak-paneled rooms with stained glass windows and functional fireplaces, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. Or at least married into some royal family. You couldn’t have chased me out of there with a pack of wild dogs. Migrant families should occupy these lavish, historic lodgings, and eat in the glorious Gothic dining hall, with sixty-foot carved ceilings and iron candelabras. Their meals can be served, of course, by students.

As the students sweat, then freeze, in the Army tents, they will learn some valuable lessons. Toughness, for one, akin to that once shown by the past generations of students whose names are carved on the walls, since they died in our nations’ wars. (Few Ivy students will make that mistake ever again.)

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More importantly, they can share the pain that illegal immigration inflicts on the rest of the country. Up till now, poor things, the only impact they saw was the presence of low-cost nannies, exotic food trucks, and healthy quarterly earnings in Daddy’s investment portfolio. Now they’ll gain a full-spectrum, close-up view of what the rest of America deals with.

I’m hopeful that the Trump administration can resolve all asylum claims before the students have total breakdowns, and attack the immigrants with croquet mallets and badminton rackets.

John Zmirak is a senior editor at The Stream, and co-author of the new book The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration.