Patrol agent reads the birth certificate of Alejandro, 8 — the only thing he brought with him as he and others crossed the Rio Grande near McAllen, Texas, June 18, 2014. More than 52,000 minors traveling without parents have been caught crossing the border illegally since October — many, like Alejandro, hoping to join parents or close relatives already here. (Jennifer Whitney/The New York Times)
Dear God, how distressing it is to see 50,000 children and young women–who are fleeing the parts of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador that are killing fields–being played as political pawns by politicians pandering to Americans’ lowest instincts.
In this case, these are not desperately poor people from those countries willing to risk life and limb over thousands of searing hot miles, aiming to sneak into our country because they are willing to be exploited for their cheap, stoop labor by Americans who are plenty willing to pay them slave wages so that we the well-to-do in America can eat and dress well at low costs and have people to scrub our toilets for us, hammer out houses to enrich our construction businesses and boost our economy, pick our food and pluck our chickens, wash our dishes and bus our tables at our restaurants, make up our beds and nanny our children for us so that we can have fulfilling American lives.
No, this crisis on the border is not about Central Americans sneaking in at all, much less invading like so many barbarians at the gate.
These are kids surrendering at our border in hopes of attaining asylum under an asylum law, a law tailored to care for these very kids from Central America.
A law that was desired by and signed by that compassionate conservative that Americans would love to have back in office, now that he’s been gone for years and memories of his considerable number of failed policies have dimmed, George W. Bush.
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So who in this bitter, xenophobic political argument America is having is calling for repeal of the American law that gives automatic asylum to any man, woman or child who makes it to our shores and borders from Cuba?
Rick Perry? John Boehner? Ted Cruz? Marco Rubio?
Anybody?
Why is a Cuban child’s life so sacrosanct that we’ll find room to absorb the child in south Florida, while the life of an 8 year old Guatemalan boy or a 10 year old Honduran girl–who has seen family members and other children in their schools get literally get chopped up with machetes–is not quite so sacred and too expensive to absorb?
Isn’t any child’s life valued as sacred in America, the one nation supposedly under God?
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I don’t see how rabid, anti-abortion politicians like my own Gov. Rick Perry, who speaks so emphatically about the “sanctity of life,” can so emphatically keep pushing the simplistic solution of sending these kids back to where they came from as fast as we can get them back to where they came from.
The solution is as simple as that in his mind, and in the simple minds of others: we just send them right back to the death traps and killing fields from which they came to “invade” us, or to “break into our country” like nasty little baby burglars intent on robbing us and our treasury and giving us tuberculosis to-boot.
Ick. Look at those disease-riddled kids from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, countries whose lands we’ve raped and peoples we’ve exploited for God only remembers how long now.
Apocalypse Now: Governor Perry and his sidekick and ally in the Press Sean Hannity, patrolling the border on the lookout for 8 year old children from Guatemala seeking asylum under a law passed by George W. Bush’s signature. Talk about a photo op; the Guv knows how to get it.
This “invasion,” in their minds of Rick Perry and others, is somehow the intentional conspiracy of a (Kenyan-born, secret Muslim) President that they seem to suspect of somehow mailing out invitations on White House stationery to the kids to come to America for whatever reason the President might want the crisis of 50,000 children to grapple with. (The Texas governor was once asked if President Obama is a Christian and Perry said yes, he believes the President is a Christian. God must have been relieved to learn this from our Holy Guv.)
Whatever it takes to whip up the emotionalism and passions of xenophobes and racists who can’t even stand the sight of desperate, helpless children flashing on their TV screens–whatever it takes to win a majority in Congress in November and the White House in 2016, well … if it means using children as political pawns in political games that solve no problems, so be it.
Until next time from here where I live 10 minutes from millions of allegedly dangerous little, disease-riddled Guatemalan children ….
God bless you and God bless Central America and the broken, sin-filled world so desperately in need of the grace and tender mercies of our political gods who promise to save us in November.
(Click here for factoids from down here:
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Makes me think of Marvin Gaye’ s music during the Vietnam era….”Makes me wanna holler”
my Christian brothers and sisters are especially troubling when I hear some of their comments. Ain’t no Jesus in them, either! (The comments I mean)
I understand the concept of not being able to open the border to everyone who would like to come to the US. I think it would be overwhelming – which is a compliment to the US. However, I also cannot not fault people who want to improve their lives and those of their families by emmigrating from an area where there is lawlessness and corruption to one where there is hope.
Choosing who gets to stay and who is returned to countries where life and limb possess little value based on what country they’ve come from is capricious and reflects poorly on our nation.
If US leadership wants to stem immigration from Central America it needs to do what it can to better conditions in other countries so that opportunties are created that enable residents to have a reasonable opportunity at a decent life, thereby reducing their desire to emmigrate.
Of course the problem with bettering conditions in these countries, Boll, is that our long history of policies have created a lot of the problems including deeper poverty which leads to drug gangs and ever more corruption and all the rest, which is a whole other posting I’m putting together . I do agree that we have to control our borders and who and how people come in, but we’ve been talking and debating that for how long, and look what constructive, win-win for us and these countries immigration laws we have–we have NONE because of obstructionists pandering to our radicals. Don’t get me started, lol.
I agree with you. My idea of improving other countries involves no military or forcing policies down the throats of other nations, but increased trade and personal interaction between people from different cultures.
I understand that this isn’t a perfect solution, and that it can be almost impossible to reform countries with corrupt leadership, but obviously it’s difficult to get a nation’s citizens to want to stay where they’re at when poverty, crime and hopelessness are endemic.
I feel sad when I saw how many of our citizens were banging on the buses bringing these children to California and just in general being ugly and hateful. I have a hard time understanding so much hate. Unless you are a Native American (I am 1/32 Cherokee), then your family was an immigrant at some point in history. We are a nation of immigrants and perhaps that ugliness and hatred should be directed back at yourself if you cannot see this as a humanitarian crisis. What has happened to make my country so full of misguided hate? This may sound trite but “make love, not war.”
I think the online revolution has empowered haters and lunatics that used to be part of a small and largely ignored “lunatic fringe,” louie, louie. Some of those are now in power in politics and play to each other’s and many other people’s basest instincts. I mean, a lot of otherwise good people agree with haters who say we need to send this “human garbage back to the garbage piles they came from,” and such as that. Politicians say the same thing but in heavily veiled or coded terms. don’t know if the “moderate american middle can keep holding the extremes without breaking. It’s scary.
I have noticed (and this was confirmed by CBS news) that some of those so-called local haters that did the bus banging in CA were not local after all. Some of those folks are “traveling haters” that show up wherever they feel “needed.” You are SO RIGHT about the use of social media by the kooks, Paul. I don’t know about you but I want my kind and civil country back. I used to think of myself as an outsider (sometimes still do like flying my freak flag high) but I feel pretty dang normal compared to all the trouble makers.