We Should Be Tearing Down Walls, Not Building Them
– By Ed Kociela –
I had the occasion to cross the border recently for some medical treatment for my wife at the San Diego VA hospital.
The last thing you see, as you sit in line to reenter the United States, is a very tall metal structure strung with a ton of frightening razor wire across the top.
As you drive the highway west towards San Diego, you can see this wall off in the distance, a foreboding, ugly scar on the landscape in the middle of a horribly hot and hostile desert filled with things that would rather kill you than deal with you where there is no water, no food, no shelter for a seemingly endless stretch. Donald Trump called it his “big beautiful wall,” promising it would keep drugs and hoodlums and drug kingpins out of the United States. He promised it would secure the border from terrorists, that it would stem the tide of immigration.
While it is true that the threat of foreign terrorism has been replaced by an ever-growing threat of domestic evil-doers, as evidenced by the Jan. 6 rebellion at the U.S. Capitol, there is still a substantial number of undocumented immigrants in the country, many of them having entered the country legally with valid visas that have since expired. There are still those who challenge the desert and Border Patrol by setting off across that desert wasteland in hopes of making it to the Promised Land where, for the most part, disappointment and fear dash their hopes and dreams.
The border debate hit the headlines again when approximately 16,000 Haitians gathered at a site along the border on the other side of a small Texas town. Small groups found access to the U.S. side only to be attacked by Border Patrol cops on horseback who whipped them with their reins and tried herding them back into Mexico. It was ugly before God and all humanity, a modern-day enactment of slavery in the antebellum South.
We’ve mucked it up greatly along the border, treating those from both the north and south shabbily. I can remember a time when I was able to slip into either Canada or Mexico without having to show a passport or secure a visa. Not now, of course, where everybody is suspicious, everybody a potential enemy, so many are paranoid Qanon conspiratorialists ready to drop the hammer on people who represent a different skin color, practice a different religion, abide by a different set of cultural rules or simply differ in opinion.
The greatest damage has been done to the U.S. by people who arrived legally, not some poor guy willing to take a crappy job in the fields during picking season or find menial work in the service industry where they are vastly underpaid.
Before you start yapping about So-and-So Country does this and Such-and-Such country does that, let me remind you that does not make it right, regardless if that country is friend or foe.
This is really nothing new. During World War II, thousands of Jews were denied asylum in the U.S., boatload after boatload turned back in the ports to return to Nazi Germany or other European nations where a great many of them were rounded up, sent home, and ended up victims of the Holocaust. From President Franklin Delano Roosevelt on down they were eyed suspiciously as potential spies. They weren’t, which deepened the stain of blood on our hands.
While nowhere near the proportions of the Holocaust, the current situation is the result of murder and mayhem in Central America where governments are unstable and the power resides in the hands of crooks and thugs and their burgeoning criminal enterprises. As a result, only an unreasonable, unfeeling, unyielding creature would deny these people refuge. All they are seeking is peace and a way to provide for the minimal comforts of life: food, shelter, and a job.
They aren’t trying to come here to rob the welfare system or take away from whatever benefits you and I have earned through our years of hard work and sacrifice. Besides, except for slim, humanitarian benefits, they can’t touch a single penny of that. In fact, because they must provide a Social Security number to gain employment, there is a lot of money going back into the system that will benefit everybody but the undocumented. Qanon will tell you differently. So will the hard-right Trumpsters, Fox News, and a bunch of half-baked pseudo-revolutionaries with a chip on their shoulders and a gun on their hip who have all lost the compassion of humanity.
You see, whether we are from Utah or Uruguay, Pakistan or Pennsylvania, Haiti or Hawaii, we are, in the end, all the same, and should be regarded as such.
Citizenship brings certain rights, from voting to health and welfare guarantees, of course, and should always be the acid test. But, it should not mean that we turn our backs on those from other places where life is impossible to imagine.
We are all children of the same planet and we should be treated accordingly with the same freedoms and dignity.
Instead of building walls to separate us we should be building bridges to unite us.
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(The photographer told PolitiFact that he did not see the agent whip the migrant — he saw him grab him by the shirt as the horse’s reins dangled.
The images and videos of Border Patrol tactics led the Department of Homeland Security to order an investigation. ) Politifact.
PARAGRAPH 4 – do your homework sir instead of spreading MSNBC / CNN / Socialist propaganda.