According to the New York Times, children forced to sell their bodies in the US in order to survive are processed by the authorities as criminals.
In Venezuela, the number of children living in the street has gone down from 9,000 in 1998 (before Hugo Chavez became president) to less than 1,000 in 2007.

The New York newspaper claims 1,500,000 children in the US will live in the streets this year and of those tens of thousands will be forced into prostitution. The average age of such children is 11-14 years old.
Despite the fact that the children are not old enough to have consensual sex, they are often put in prison for prostitution. The Times argues that the real criminals are the parents who abandon their children.

I would argue that’s getting closer to the truth, but its still not there. Why would parents abandon their kids? With healthcare, housing, and education so expensive and inaccessible in the US, unemployed or poor parents must find it very difficult to raise kids.

Meanwhile, yesterday in Venezuela we celebrated day of the children. Through out the main plaza people were selling funny hats and colourful balloons. In front of the main supermarket children had their faces painted and so the streets were filled with little walking, talking cats, dogs, magicians, and an abundance of princesses and bears. That morning, Chavez announced on his weekly TV program ‘Hi president’, the creation of a special program for children of the poor suburbs.

The mission of this program is to “guarantee the social inclusion and the full completion of the rights of children and teenagers, prioritising action with those who are in a vulnerable or high risk situation.”
Included are those children who have become addicted to drugs. Chavez said the program will look after such children because, “The damage is terrible for the children, and unfortunately is terrible for society as a whole, for the family.”

There are still many problems, some serious, in Venezuela. But at least the government is one that truly cares about the people of the country, and puts them first. However in the US I feel that the government just sees people who are suffering as nothing other than an annoyance. They’d rather lock them up than discover the roots of the problems and try to deal with them.