When I was thinking about what to write for this week’s
blog, I figured I’d do something easy and simple, like documenting our big move
into our first home. However, that’s going to have to take a backseat, because,
once again, friends, I am ANGRY. When our internet was finally set up and I
logged on, what was the first thing I see? Trump and his stupid space force,
but that’s another topic for another time. No, I see videos and pictures of
children in cages. I hear their echoing sobs of terror. Why? Because they were
taken from their parents. And I thought to myself, “this is just about the most
evil, inhumane you can do, to rip a screaming, terrified child from his or her
parents’ arms.” There is a special place in hell for everyone in this
administration, you guys, AND everyone supporting it. If saying so loses me
friends, so be it. Whatever you think about immigration, and I don’t really
care, taking someone’s children is NEVER THE ANSWER. Let me say that again for
the stubborn people in the way back that refuse to hear me: TAKING CHILDREN
FROM THEIR PARENTS IS NOT THE ANSWER.
My heart is absolutely breaking for these parents, and their
children. You see, it doesn’t matter if they’re entering the country illegally
or legally, asking for asylum or what have you. To take someone’s children away
is without question unconscionable. What if it were you? What if you were
fleeing from a country, terrified for your life, wanting only the best for your
children and knowing the only way you can do that is to go to a country that
doesn’t want you? What if when you got there, your children were summarily
pulled screaming from your arms against your will, and taken to a “tender age
facility” where they were given blankets and made to sleep on concrete floors?
If after thinking about that you can still say, ‘well they shouldn’t cross the
border,” then there’s a serious problem. These children didn’t do anything
wrong! They are innocents, caught in the human rights nightmare that Trump and
his zealots have caused. Why is this separation necessary? Why do it at all?
WHY? There IS no reason. It’s cruelty for cruelty’s sake, done to a group of
people that don’t have the means to fight back. It’s not even bullying at this
point, it’s simply hate. Yes, hate, because if you can sit and listen to those
kids sob for their moms while they sit in cages, then you’re simply heartless.
The fact of it all is this: you’re never going to see the government round up
white children and put them in what is basically a detention camp. Don’t tell
me this is about “border control” or “keeping America safe from MS-13”. These
children have nothing to do with either of those things. You’re punishing
families for the gall to want better for their kids.
Our entire nation is founded on immigration. Every person
living in this country today, aside from full blooded Native Americans, came
from somewhere else. Just because you were born here, or your parents were, or
even grandparents, that doesn’t make you any better or more important than
those that are coming to live here now. Becoming an American citizen isn’t
easy. The path can take years, and that’s
if you are lucky. When you are desperate to make a better life for your family,
or in real, physical danger of losing your life, there are choices made that
may not be the legal ones, but that doesn’t make them wrong, either. I saw
something today that said “the people that hid Anne Frank were breaking the
law, and the ones that killed her were following it.” Let that sink in, and
realize how precarious our situation is here in America. By not stopping this
horror, we are saying it’s okay to take someone’s children and put them in
camps. We’re descending down an increasingly dark path in which not only are
our morals being challenged but our humanity. Do we want to be known as a
country that allows this to happen? Do we want to be compared to Nazi Germany?
Because guess what? WE ARE. The longer we continue down this road, the worse
things will get. If we don’t stop this, there’s no telling what future
atrocities will occur.
I admit, I used to be one of the people saying “if you can’t
do it legally, don’t come into this country.” I didn’t understand the intricacies
of immigration, or how hard that path to citizenship is. I was incredibly naïve
as to the process. As I’ve grown as a
person, and began to learn more about the complex political world we live in, I’ve
come to see that I was wrong. I was making judgments based on things I’d heard
all my life, and not what I actually thought myself. My thoughts on immigration
aren’t as simple as open or closed borders. America has many opportunities for
people, and yes, protocol should be followed, but at the same time, we shouldn’t
make it so incredibly difficult to live here. It shouldn’t take years to gain
citizenship. Our predecessors didn’t have to go through all the hoops and
challenges to live here. Yet, at every point in our nation’s history immigrants
have been seen as lesser by “full blooded Americans.” The Irish were seen as lazy
drunks. The Italians were portrayed as thieves, or dirty. There were even laws
passed to limit the immigration of Chinese, Asian, Greek, Italian, and Eastern
Europeans starting in the late 1800s and into the 1920s, according to my brief
research. Basically, you were only allowed to immigrate here if you were white enough.
Sound familiar? Here we are, in 2018, still telling people that they aren’t
good enough to live here. The very things that make them who they are, such as
the tone of their skin, their varied cultures, their language, make them
undesirable to live here. It’s 1920s thinking persisting almost 100 years later.
The whole point, and the scariest thing about this new “zero
tolerance” policy, is that it’s making it so much easier for an immoral, crooked,
disingenuous administration to test the waters for what horrors Americans will
tolerate. “Okay, so they didn’t say anything about us not taking care of Puerto
Ricans after the hurricane. That’s good. Good for nothing bad hombres coming into
our country? Hell no! Take the kids, shove them into cages! That’ll teach them!
We got away with that?! All right, let’s start sending them ALL to camps, and
make them EARN their allegiance to us, but they still can’t have rights! And if
they don’t do what we say, well, I guess we know what happens next, right?” I can
see it so clearly, the direction they want to take. What Trump and his administration are doing is
using tactics of fear to control a group of people that cannot stand against
them. It’s abuse, and emotional terrorism, and Trump and his cronies know it. If
we as a nation allow it to happen, then we are just as vile as he is.
My final thought is this: what makes America truly great is
this rich tapestry of different cultures enmeshing with one another to create
what we’ve come to know as American culture. It’s the different cuisine, the
richness of intertwining dialects and languages, the bold stamp of different cultures
on our fashion. It’s seeing an Indian child, a black child, a Hispanic child,
and a white child all playing together on a playground, learning from one
another. It’s communities built from nothing, and neighbors helping neighbors
just because. Our similarities are greater than our differences. Underneath the
different hues of our skin, we are but flesh and bone. We can only be great as
a nation, and proud as a nation, when we lift one another up, and help those
that are in need. We are ALL descendants of immigrants, or immigrants
ourselves, and we should never forget that.
If you want to help these children, and their families,
please call and write your senators and government officials! You can also
donate to the charities I’ve listed below.
Fighting injustice and inhumanity starts with us.
ACLU
RAICES
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