On Facebook recently, I referenced the plight of immigrants, how they were leaving their beloved homelands because they literally were not safe there. There lives were at risk, their women and girls at risk of rape, their homes and their families at risk of destruction and death.
A conservative friend of mine offered some sympathy, saying it was too bad that "some" of those people from these "shithole countries" (although he was sensitive enough - ? - to refer to them as "s%@t-hole countries...) were suffering so much. Some of these who were "legitimately" concerned for their safety should find a safe haven in the US or Mexico or another neighboring nation.
No doubt, this friend was being sincere and trying to be sympathetic. After all, I referred to very real threats in these nations.
But, good intentions...
Another of my FB friends saw the comment and responded to his comment. She is someone who lived in one of these Latin American nations disparaged by our president not long ago. She has family and loved ones there still, but she lives here now. Here she is (name removed for the safety of her family, who are still at risk) responding (posted here with her permission)...
Considering that my two children and my beloved spouse are from a so-called "shithole" country, it is indeed extremely offensive and just plain wrong for white privileged "Christian" people to use such pejorative language, especially when they do not actually know anything about the peoples or countries, or, and this is really important, about how US funding, training, and interventionist policies, along with a few CIA sponsored coups to oust democratic governments, have set up these countries to be the way they are.
I lived for over a decade in one of "those" countries, and the people are some of the most generous people ever, governed by extremely rich and corrupt leaders who were given support by the US. In fact, US banks laundered money for some of the ex presidents, and we also have let in, legally, men who led genocides- we provided them with asylum so that they would not face trials for war crimes and crimes against humanity. These ex-military from these countries, were protected by our country, and yet those who are intergenerational victims of their policies and wars, are now being prosecuted and separated from their own children. Some of the men we let in willingly practiced scorched earth policies to rid villages of all people, and US taught them how to do that.
Until and unless people know the histories, have listened to those who are fleeing, and have researched how the US policies and funding have also made many situations worse, then having a strong opinion about keeping people out is just not ok.
It is never okay to use disrespectful language to place judgement on someone. If I had not been in danger with my family, we never would have left Central America. And we have to worry and live with the news that friends of ours have since been killed. I have known many many people who have been killed. I have seen many others killed in front of us.
No one is making up asylum claims.
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She went on to clarify that she worked with a human rights organization, literally digging through mass graves, trying to identify people for the sake of their families, so they might have at least the small and painful peace of knowing their final fate. She had to leave her home that she loved because she and her whole family had their lives threatened and they would be dead if they stayed there.
She now provides counseling to immigrants here, assisting how she can those suffering the traumatizing effects of US terrorism towards immigrants. She often does this for free because the trauma is real, but the funds to support these neighbors is sadly lacking.
Warning: While I'm okay with comments on this post in support of the oppressed and providing sympathy and positive actions that might help (I could get money to this brave social worker should anyone want to give, for instance...), but I will NOT tolerate even the slightest criticism of these brave people and the noble people and wonderful immigrants they work alongside.
Immigrants make our nation great. It's time to end the criminalization of immigration for people seeking safety.
18 comments:
“It is never okay to use disrespectful language to place judgement on someone.“
Words to live by
“No one is making up asylum claims.”
That’s quite a claim, is proof forthcoming?
Where in US code is “seeking safety” criminalized?
A commenter made some comments about another commenter. While he wasn't wrong (at all, not a bit)... the point of this post is NOT the commenters.
“It is never okay to use disrespectful language to place judgement on someone.“
The exception, of course, to using strong words is for those people who are doing monstrous things and causing harm to innocent people. Fuck that shit! To hell with that kind of evil.
Jesus used strong words against the dangerous religious zealots of the day, so I'm cool with it, too.
I just try to avoid making it about people, but instead, focus on the evil, monstrous actions.
That’s quite a claim, is proof forthcoming?
Knowing my friend, I know she is speaking for her deep and expansive and extensive personal history, especially in Latin America and I'm sure she'd be glad to note that there are always exceptions. The point SHE is making is that in all of HER experience, people are seeking safety, they're not lying about that, none of the people she works with, has a history of, has personal knowledge about... are making up asylum claims, and that number is, no doubt, in the hundreds, if not thousands.
The point being, IF there was a significant percentage of people making up asylum claims, she'd be in a place to have some knowledge of it.
And this is a person who has dedicated her life to the struggle for justice, especially in Latin America, and who is extremely knowledgable and reliable.
So far as I know, there is no significant reliable research on which we can make a judgment call on how prevalent asylum fraud is, but I have seen absolutely no data to suggest that it's a significant problem, percentage-wise.
Where in US code is “seeking safety” criminalized?
As has been the case for a while, and as this administration has made it worse, and as Sessions made it clear: If you are seeking safety from gangs, from spouse or family abuse or anything that isn't a tiny window of oppression/danger, you will not be accepted for asylum here, you will be sent back from whence you came. If you try to come in, anyway, because to return is to die, you will be penalized by force of law. For seeking safety.
That's just the reality of it all.
Hell, even if you have a legitimate claim for asylum due to State Oppression, it's not a given that you'll make it in. We have all manner of limitations and loopholes and red tape that make it difficult if not impossible for many people seeking safety from real threats.
Some of the data...
https://www.wola.org/analysis/fact-sheet-united-states-immigration-central-american-asylum-seekers/
Someone keeps making off-topic comments. If you want to make snide, condescending, nonsensical, irrational comments off topic, you should at least be humorous or amusing or clever.
Failing that, it will be deleted.
This is a serious topic. People's lives are at stake. The oppression of people by our own government is at stake. I will not truck soft-minded nonsense comments.
I've just referenced the testimony of an expert with nearly 20 years of first hand experience explaining how people by and large are not faking asylum claims. Their lives are actually at risk. But rather than raising an alarm and commenters dealing with this life or death situation, I'm getting Tom and Jerry level nonsense from commenters.
Not today, boys.
When you stand before the Lord and God says, "Seriously, guys, WTF?! You THOUGHT I'd be cool with ANY of this? Did you not recognize the great evil you kept either supporting, or excusing or, even when you opted for silence, endorsing?
Which side are you on, boys?!"
...if and when that happens, what will you say?
It's a rhetorical question, don't answer it here.
Just a reminder: This post is about the many, many people who are unable to find safe haven here, who are being condemned and demonized by your leader (What did he say today, called them a virus or something? Jesus Christ!) and the racists who enthusiastically surround and support his every move, who NEED help now, today...
That we need to be beyond calling these neighbors "illegals" or "disease" or from "shithole countries" and move to, you know, not being an ass and actually doing unto others as you'd have them do unto you.
What would you (generic you, out there) have someone do for/with/to you if you were in their shoes? Let's talk about THAT (unless you'd try saying with a straight face that you'd like people to jail you, take away your children and place them in fenced cages and send you back to danger... don't even bother with that nonsense, if it's what you think you think) and come up with positive solutions today. Come up with a plan to get 45 to undo this mess and Congress to come up with moral immigration plans.
Like that.
“In a new lawsuit, immigrant children detained at a government-funded facility in Texas described being forcibly drugged with psychotropic medicines that made them dizzy and unable to walk.
Reveal reported Wednesday that minors held at the Shiloh Treatment Center in Manvel, Texas — described in its Google+ listing as a “baby gulag” — were physically abused and given shots of “powerful” psychiatric medications that “rendered them unable to walk, afraid of people and wanting to sleep constantly.”
TUCSON, Ariz. — When Luis Cruz left behind his wife, four of their children and the house he’d built himself, he’d heard that American officials might split him from his son, the one child he took with him. But earlier this month, the two of them set out from Guatemala anyway.
The truth, he said this week, moments after they arrived at a cream-colored migrant shelter in Tucson, was that he would rather be apart from his child than face what they had left behind. “If they separate us, they separate us,” said Mr. Cruz, 41. “But return to Guatemala? This is something my son cannot do.”
“Why would you undertake such a dangerous journey?” said Magdalena Escobedo, 32, who works at the migrant shelter here in Tucson, called Casa Alitas. “When you’ve got a gun to your head, people threatening to rape your daughter, extort your business, force your son to work for the cartels. What would you do?”
https://nyti.ms/2IlIHDW?smid=nytcore-ios-share
“We are committing Abu Ghraib offenses - permanent scarring torture - on children.
“This kind of trauma can permanently affect the brains of these children, and potentially their long-term development, explained Colleen Kraft, the president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, on Thursday at the Aspen Ideas Festival, which is co-hosted by the Aspen Institute and The Atlantic.
In April, Kraft and some colleagues were permitted to visit a shelter for migrant children run by the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement. She described seeing a room full of toddlers that was “eerily silent.” That is, except for one little girl, who was “sobbing and wailing and beating her fists on the mat.” A staff worker tried to comfort her with books and toys, but she wasn’t allowed to pick her up or touch her, Kraft said.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/06/how-the-stress-of-separation-affects-immigrant-kids-brains/563468/
““This boy seemed devastated—quiet and withdrawn. He barely spoke. I asked if he needed a hug. I kneeled down in front of the recliner, and this kid just threw himself into my arms and didn’t let go. He cried and I cried. And to think he’s been in a facility for a month without a hug, away from his parents, and scared, and not knowing when he’ll see them again or if he’ll see them again. While I held him, I heard the men standing behind me muttering that I was ‘rewarding his bad behavior.’ Thankfully, it was in English, so I don’t think the boy understood what they were saying, but it just revealed their attitudes toward these kids.“
https://www.newyorker.com/news/as-told-to/a-physician-in-south-texas-on-an-unnerving-encounter-with-an-eight-year-old-boy-in-immigration-detention
“The homicide conviction rate for illegal immigrants was 25 percent below that of native-born Americans in Texas in 2015. The conviction rates for illegal immigrants were 11.5 percent and 79 percent below that of native-born Americans for the crimes of sexual assault and larceny, respectively. Illegal immigrants were more likely to be convicted of gambling, kidnapping, smuggling, and vagrancy than natives, but those crimes constituted only 0.18 percent of all convictions that year in Texas. For all criminal convictions in Texas in 2015, illegal immigrants had a criminal conviction rate 56 percent below that of native-born Americans. Legal immigrants had a criminal conviction rate 85 percent below that of native-born Americans.”
The Cato Institute
A libertarian think tank founded by Charles Koch
Your comment indictes that you and people like you would blame Sophie for the choice the Nazis made her take.
Too many of us want to demonize the suffering.
You ignore all context of suffering to comfort yourself. That’s the definition of a brutalizer. Exactly what you are. You’ve rejected faith in a brown man for your white faith.
Grudem is a weak-minded pervert-defending moral coward and I am not impressed by people citing moral and rational cowardice in their defense of an oppressive policy. Move on, Marshall.
That's not much of a response to what his opinion piece presented. What about him, EXACTLY, justifies your hateful, graceless attack on his character? Where in his article did he cite "moral and rational cowardice" in his defense of an oppressive policy? And what policy exactly do you regard as "oppressive" and why? To refresh your memory and to provide for you his actual words in order for you to better form your objections, I post the link again here:
https://townhall.com/columnists/waynegrudem/2018/07/02/why-building-a-border-wall-is-a-morally-good-action-n2496574
This piece is rather comprehensive. It not only answers common objections with reason and logic, it covers Biblical concepts that you've tried to use to support your position and does so in a far more detailed manner that also appeals to reason and logic...and overall, to the best interests of those seeking entry.
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