Not My Country
I know I wrote about this subject last week. I know that this was President Trump’s number one priority: his first speech as he glided down the golden escalator, about stopping the murderers and rapists (and maybe some good people) at the border. I know that we are getting exactly what he promised. But my country is not Nazi Germany.
I also know that the “family centered” support of the Trump Administration simply doesn’t apply to brown people. Chief of Staff John Kelly made it clear in his statement to NPR that, while they aren’t bad people, they can’t “assimilate” into the United States, “…they’re overwhelmingly rural.” Hey, General, they’re overwhelmingly Hispanic too.
And Attorney General Jeff Sessions believes he has the plan: let potential immigrants from Central America, legal or illegal, know that their families will be separated and their children sent away if they come to the United States. That way – they won’t come. Put them in jail when they get here, and put their kids in a “kiddie jail” too. And if we run out of room for all of the kids – well our pardoned buddy Sheriff Joe Arpaio has the answer: put them in tents on a military base. That’s a great place to herd a bunch of unsupervised kids.
I know my friends from “the other side” will tell me that it’s not the US Government’s fault. The adults that brought those kids risked them from the moment they left their homes. They risked kidnapping, rape, human trafficking, exposure to the elements, and starvation. And that was just the journey. So they “get what they deserve” when they reach the border.
To quote the kids from Parkland, I call BS. America is better than this. These are the kind of people America wants, folks who care so much about their families and their lives, that they are willing to risk it all for a better place. The vast majority of them are not – “OH MY GOD – MS-13!!!.” They aren’t even the young drug runners from Mexico. They are, literally, “ the wretched refuse of your teeming shore.”
This is what America was made of. And it’s not just what happens to the immigrants, or the kids. It’s about what happens to the Americans who are put in the position of doing these deeds. Doesn’t anybody recognize the words, “you’re just going to take a bath.” Will we start playing symphonies as they go next? Those AMERICANS who are forced to separate the screaming kids from their screaming parents: what are we doing to them?
And for those who say President Obama was doing this before – not so much. There was a whole lot of underage immigrants coming to the border, and the Obama Administration was faced with dealing with all of those teenaged kids. But they were alone, not with their parents. Americans had to take charge and control of them.
Stop this. Stop doing this in OUR name. I know the Trump Administration has promised to stop illegal immigration, and while we can have the long argument about what the policy should look like: STOP THIS NOW. We are America – we do not abuse the weak and helpless, even if it gets a few more votes “from the base.” STOP THIS – in the name of whatever it is you believe in that makes you human, STOP.
