Immigration Problems

I once stood on the western shore of Scotland and looked out at a boiling sea, listening to a lyrical melody called the Skye Boat Song. It’s a beautiful sweet waltz about a perilous water crossing.  As I stood there, I wondered how any of them had the courage to even go out fishing, much less take the perilous journey to the New World.  I’d be terrified.

But if I had been living during the Irish Potato Famine, I suspect I would have tried to emigrate.  If I had been my mother-in-law during World War II, I would have done the same thing she did—get out of the Ukraine, out of Germany, out of Europe.  If I was living in the murder capital in the world, San Pedro Sula, Honduras, I would try to flee. 

There were 1,411 murders last year in San Pedro Sula, which has a population of 752,990. Gang violence has people shackled to their homes. Experts say that the effectiveness of Mexico’s battle against drug cartels has pushed crime south to Honduras.  A recent article in the Seattle Times said that people were afraid to venture outside their homes after 2PM. Most of the undocumented children crossing into America say they are from that most murderous town, San Pedro Sula. 

Until 2008, these children would have been given a brief interview and sent back. But in 2008, the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Acts (TVPRA) was passed to reduce child sex trafficking by strengthening due-process protections. Kids now get formal proceedings before an immigration judge.  Of course, the system is miserably backlogged, so the kids are placed in foster homes or with relatives where they tend to grow up.

A tough problem. Some say we should now repeal the TVPRA, that we don’t want these children.  The best solution would be that Mexico and the US team up to stop Central America from being a major transit point for the Columbia drug trade.  But that will take years.  Meanwhile, what to do with the children?

It might help to examine why people are upset about all these children coming. 

Is it because of the fear they are going to cost us money?  If a stray cat came to my door, I’d give it food and try to find its owner.  A child is going to get the at least as good.  Where do I send my check?  The Red Cross?  But what would I do if 57,000 cats came to my door?

Money is scarce, need is ubiquitous.  Help must come from not only federal money, certainly, but churches, companies, families, and aid groups too.  If there are 76,000 kids coming in per year, and each one is placed in foster care (many aren’t, they go to relatives’ homes), and foster care provides $10/day for caregiving, how much is that a year from each of America’s 300 million? I think it works out to a dollar per American per YEAR, or .003 per day.

Are we upset because we feel our culture is changing, and change frightens us? Our community is filled immigrants.  The languages on the signs in my community are Spanish, Somalian, Korean, and Ethiopian.  Women walk to the community college in veils. There is a plethora of faces and styles.  Of course, we may not agree with certain immigrant’s customs.  I examined my interactions with different groups and noticed when I got annoyed and considered the reasons why.  I got annoyed at a Vietnamese service provider who ignored me and whispered in her native tongue to a fellow worker.  But I’m not annoyed at Vietnamese, I’m annoyed at rudeness.  I have to remind myself of what’s really behind the frustration I feel when, for instance, I see an East African woman who has 10 children in her car, none of them wearing seat belts, nor in car seats.  But I was not angry at East Africans, I was angry at people who put their children at risk.  I was frightened when a Latino gang started shooting guns in the parking lot I frequent, but I am not frightened of Latinos.  I’m frightened of people shooting guns in the parking lot.  Latinos don’t have a patent on that.

E pluribus unum.  Our national motto.  Here come the tired, the poor, the hungry teeming masses, yearning to be free.  If we don’t really mean what the sign says, we’re going to have to remove the Statue of Liberty.