Heartsick

This morning, I heard the news about the ICE raids in Mississippi and was heartsick as I listened to the details.  Workers rounded up with their hands tied behind their backs; ICE agents proud about these actions, as if they are acting within the law and that somehow makes them moral and good.

Rule of law is only valuable when the laws are just.  And, as this NPR story illustrates, raids like this round up hard-working people doing jobs that no one else wants.  Raids like this tear apart families and leave children with no one to care for them.  Raids like this make nothing better for anyone.  We aren't safer after the raids because we were never at risk.

Meanwhile, the large corporations employing the undocumented workers have nothing to say and, worse than that, nothing to fear.  The owners breaking labor laws haven't been arrested and likely won't suffer a single troubling consequence.  Those consequences are reserved for poor, hardworking immigrants struggling to make their lives better. 

There is nothing great or good about this.

Perspective

This week, my son registers for his first set of college classes.  While I worry about sending my only child off to college, thousands of hard working immigrants are separated from their children at our borders because our president is a racist, ugly, heartless little man.

Perspective.

As long as there are flowers, I will live in hope and fight like hell to make sure that my nation lives up to its promise of equality, justice, and liberty for all.  

Freedom and Justice for All

The alternate title for this posting could be “Poor People Love Their Children, Too.”  I also considered “Happy Birthday, Nation of Immigrants.”  By now it should be clear that I am writing about the current immigration crisis of children being detained at the border as they seek to enter the United States.  NPR has been running some terrific stories about the problem.   And they have lingered in my mind.  If you’d like them to linger in your mind, you can find them here.  

My day is filled with the needs of children.  They are well-loved children who are safe and secure, which is a very lucky thing.   The challenges in my world are most often in terms of their parents who, like parents everywhere, worry about their kids.  The Latin and South American parents who are sending their children on an unknown journey north in pursuit of the elusive American dream are sending their children because they worry about their children’s safety, security, and ability to eat.  These are basic needs.  Concerns about them can cause reasonable people to take risks that the rest of us find unthinkable.  There is no way that I would send my 14 year old on a harrowing 1500 mile journey to sneak across the border.  Of course, I don’t have to do that to keep him safe and nourished.   The fact that other people do have that worry makes me terribly sad.  That they live in our world, let alone our hemisphere, makes it my responsibility.

That responsibility is complicated by the fact that I live in the United States, a nation of immigrants.  The privilege of being an American is not one that I earned; it’s an accident of my birth.  I respect the fact that good luck that put me in this situation and I believe I should pay it forward.  I expect my government to do right by the children we find at our borders.  As I see it, we have two options:  send them back to safe homes or keep them here.  Sending these children back to safe homes means helping the governments in places like Guatemala and El Salvador to keep their citizens safe; it means ending government corruption and finding a way forward for the citizenry’s basic needs.  If we can’t (or won’t) do that, then these children should become ours.  We should keep them safe, nourish their bodies and minds, and find a way to take them into the homes, churches, schools and communities of their relatives in our nation.  If they don’t have those resources, we should share ours.  

I realize that neither of these solutions is easy.  I understand the complexities of opening our nation to strangers.  But, after all, as a nation of immigrants from all over, we have always been a nation of strangers.  And with that status, we have fostered some powerful ideas (the Declaration of Independence is a big deal, a fact we acknowledge every year on July 4).  We have done some powerful things (the World War II victory comes to mind).  

There are children at our doorstep and they need us.  Let’s show them the basic humanity that we would extend to a stranger on our own front porches.  Let’s do right by these young immigrants and fulfill the promise of freedom and justice for all. 

Dare to DREAM

It is no secret that I wish for a much more expansive immigration policy in this nation.  I've written about it at length.  In the next two weeks, the Senate may finally vote on the DREAM Act.  This legislation has been before Congress in one form or another since 2001.  The bill has already passed the House and only needs passage in the current lame duck session of the Senate.  It would permit a pathway to legal residency for current illegal immigrants who arrived in the U.S. as children, have lived here for more than five years and have completed high school (or earned a G.E.D.).  To actually earn legal resident status, they would have to finish two years of college or military service.

A recent New York Times magazine article details just how deserving these young men and women are.  Some of them are in college right now, working toward a college degree that they may not be able to use for legal employment.  Imagine the courage it takes to pay tuition, go to school, and dream of a future when your only prospects are low-paying jobs in the illegal economy.  If the American dream means anything, it means opportunity for people like these students.

I will confess that it made me very proud to learn that many of the students most active in the DREAM movement are enrolled at UCLA, where I went to college.  The Chancellor of their university has spoken out in favor of the legislation.  I wish these fellow Bruins, and the hopes and dreams that they represent, the very best. They are Americans who do their nation proud.  They deserve the opportunities and prospects that the rest of us can so easily take for granted.

Please contact your Senators and ask them to support the DREAM Act.

So Much for the Huddled Masses Yearning to be Free

I've been troubled by U.S. immigration policy for most of my political life.  In 2006, my very first post for this blog was a discussion of immigration in the United States.  The furor surrounding Arizona's new immigration law certainly had me thinking about the subject again.  Then yesterday, on the day Arizona's ridiculous law came into semi-effect,  I read that Senator Lindsay Graham (R-SC) is considering introduction of a Constitutional amendment that will eliminate birthright citizenship. 

What have we become?

Though I have nothing but condemnation for the approach Arizona takes in their law, I am sympathetic to the idea that the federal government has let down the states when it comes to immigration.  I am not particularly concerned about enforcement, per se, since I believe that we should return to the open-door immigration policy that made us the land of opportunity.  I will oppose with all my might a Constitutional amendment to eliminate birthright citizenship.   In the meantime, with the exception of Graham's dangerous proposal, Congress has dodged responsibility on this issue.  It's time for us to contact Congress and demand that they lead and address some of the most pressing issues related to immigration. 

For one thing, the current Congressional failure has resulted in a myriad of deeply troubling developments.  Illegals who arrive as children may receive an education but when they graduate high school, no matter how accomplished they are, they may not be able to attend college because they can't qualify for the federal financial aid that is available to their peers.  And they can't get a job for lack of a few documents.  Should they find a way to make it through college, they graduate with skills and a college diploma, at home in a nation that will not treat them like the citizens they clearly are.

Undocumented workers labor in a world of scant regulation of labor practices, unable to complain about any poor treatment they endure for fear that a complaint will result in deportation from the $3 an hour job that keeps their head just above water.  Fear of deportation keeps these same vulnerable people from getting driver's licenses or reporting the crimes committed against them.  A sick illegal resident may receive emergency treatment because by law hospitals cannot turn them away.  But chronic health conditions are unlikely to receive treatment, thus shortening the life-spans of these hardworking people.

These problems are just the tip of the iceberg.  Enough. 

Let's be the nation that the Declaration of Independence promises we will be.  Let's fulfill the pledge of the Statue of Liberty.  Let's demand that Congress take action to arrange an amnesty program for the illegals who are here now.  Let's figure out a way to open our borders and additional citizenship rights for others who come here seeking the historic opportunities our ancestors sought for themselves and passed down to us via birthright citizenship.  Let's discuss this seriously without hyperbole and fear of the other.  Let's understand, respect and embrace the reality that we are a nation of immigrants.  And most importantly, let's quit pretending that this problem will go away on its own.