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writing for godot

A Disgrace Within Our Borders

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Written by Patricia Nash   
Tuesday, 29 July 2014 12:38
The fury I felt when I saw the videos soon turned to an aching sadness. It takes a lot to make me cry, but I cried. I cried over what some people in this glorious country have become.

The ugly scene took place outside the town of Murietta, CA, where a group of so-called Americans, waving our beloved flag, the symbol of the mightiest country on earth, screamed wrathful invectives at three busloads of women and children who had risked everything to escape rape, torture and death.

Those desperate mothers and children came from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala because lying human traffickers in their countries told them they’d be welcome here. The greedy profit-seekers demanded thousands of dollars per person, so parents sold everything they had and gave the criminals what they demanded to transport their children to what they thought was safety. The families who could afford it sent the mothers along; the majority couldn’t, and sent only their children. That’s how desperate they were.

In those countries, riddled with corruption and drug cartels, violence is a given. Christians are murdered for going to church, young girls are raped by drug gangs and boys are forced into killing for those gangs. Carlos Dada, the editor of El Faro, a Latin American News Magazine, was quoted in The Texas Observer on April 16. He said, “In El Salvador when a child turns 15 there are three choices: become a victim, become a victimizer, or go to the United States.”

The journey, part of which meant being squeezed into hot trucks, was long and perilous. Some were sexually and physically abused by the smugglers. Many were abandoned in central Mexico, where they had to walk around mountains and through deserts to reach the U.S. border. The terrain is brutal (Google it with the satellite view). But all of them, some as young as two-years-old, kept going. Finally, they made it into the arms of the border patrol. They were then put on buses to be driven many hours to a location intended to be a temporary shelter until they were processed.

When they arrived, they were not met with compassion, but by enraged white Americans waving the flag and telling them to get out of town and go back where they came from. Those hateful people got their way – they stopped the buses, which had to turn around and be driven to another city where the mothers and little children, many of them unaccompanied, would be locked up in crowded quarters that weren’t prepared for them.

My first thought when I saw this was, “I hope those protesters don’t claim to be Christians.”

Some Republicans are blaming President Obama for the influx of refugees. In their ignorance, they cite the Dream Act that allows children of illegal immigrants to stay here for an extended time. They obviously haven’t read the law, which states clearly that it applies only to children of undocumented workers who were here since 2007.

President Obama, bowing to political pressure, said most of these women and children will eventually be deported. But many lawmakers want to send the children back immediately. They are obviously unaware that to do so is illegal under a law passed in 2008 with the approval of every member of Congress.

A June 29 ABC News story explains: “Unaccompanied minors fall under the bipartisan law, ‘William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008’, which passed the House and Senate unanimously and was signed into law by President George W. Bush. That law says the children must be held humanely by the Department of Health and Human Services until the courts release them to a ‘suitable family member’ in this country.” The full text of the bill can be found online.

It’s encouraging that some lawmakers, including Republican senators Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and John McCain of Arizona, are proposing to make it easier for refugees to escape the dangerous conditions in their homelands.

And although most church leaders have remained eerily silent, some Catholic bishops and Baptist ministers are deeply disturbed by the way the refugees are being treated and are organizing efforts to help them.

And yes, we can help them. If we can afford more than $4 trillion to support two wars for profit, billion-dollar planes we don’t need, a military budget that equals all the military budgets of all the countries on earth combined, and billions in subsidies to rich oil companies, we can help those children. And if we refuse, shame on us!
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