CONGRESS MUST ACT NOW
There is no excuse for blocking Immigration Reform
Image by Martin Falbisoner, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
The link* shows poignant images.
Six migrant Haitian men on a raft of two tractor inner tubes on a deck of sticks and boards pole their way on the murky Suchiate River between Mexico and Guatemala. Others are visible in the distance.
A family carrying sleeping mats, and backpacks, enters a hot and humid minivan, overcrowded, fetid smelling with human sweat from struggles on the trail.
Many travel on muddy truck beds. Some laden with their possessions cross busy highways to escape detection by customs and border agents— women nursing infants sprint across.
They come from Cameroon, Cuba, Guatemala, Guinea, Haiti, Honduras, Perú, Senegal, Venezuela, and other countries. Besides the physical hardships of foot travel and rickety vehicles through swamps, hills, and mountains, past the bodies of the fallen, they face extorsion and abuse from organized crime, human trafficking gangs, and corrupt government officials. They have experienced assaults, disappearances, murders, robberies.
NGOs report hundreds of adults and children huddled against the elements, while sleeping on sidewalks under monsoon rains along flooded streets.
The shelters they reach are often full beyond capacity.
Who is to blame for this? Who will help these victims of economic hardship, corruption, and dictatorships?
At the US border they face GOP-installed concertina wire and opposition by anti-immigration groups. Organized resistance to migrants by the GOP-controlled Texas government, “Operation Lonestar”, has cost taxpayers almost $12 billon without reducing migration.
I came to the US as an immigrant during the Cold War. It was then expedient for the US to welcome immigrants fleeing Communism. Today, the imperative to embarrass the defunct Iron Curtain is largely gone— immigrants fall prey to our fears of the other.
It is shameful for the GOP-controlled U S Congress to be blocking immigration reform. Why not reform immigration policy now?
Good question. Party lines versus what’s best for the US
Thank you for this powerful message.