By Edwin Cooney
I could be wrong, I often am, but we’re so wrapped up in either our justification or condemnation of President Trump’s “no tolerance” when it comes to illegal immigration, that we’re missing the real issue — or, as they say, “the elephant in the room.”
Of course, everyone loves drama. Sadly, even more, too many of us (especially President Trump) get a huge emotional release born of the twin dramas of resentment and hatred. In fact, the president has cut his political teeth on those two negative attitudes. Of course, a healthy dash of political resentment has always kept the body politic of our free society running. The danger comes when everything political is about resentment and hatred.
Both Republicans and Democrats share the blame, to a substantial degree, for the people’s confusion on illegal immigration. The wealthy have more than once taken advantage of the vulnerable status of immigrants and hired them for peanuts. At one point, Caesar Chavez’s United Farm Workers fought the influx of too many illegal immigrants. Generation after generation, Americans have resented and resisted immigrants going back to the 1790s. The issue against immigrants wasn’t about their work ethic, it was about their religion or even with their potential lack of loyalty. Prohibition was largely the result of anti-German feelings during World War I. Even though America needed to bring large numbers of immigrants to the empty plains to resist claims to wide open western territories by Native Americans, Mr. and Mrs. America have nonetheless been generally pretty consistent in their nativism.
Thus, in this country, we are divided over the President’s “no tolerance” policy. After all, we are supposed to be the leader when it comes to “family values.” For many of us, this observer included, it was quite satisfying to see President Trump retreat last Wednesday, June the 6th, and sign that executive order disallowing the deliberate separation of children from their parents.
However, the elephant in the room is the cause and effect issue that no one is talking about.
The president insists that these immigrants are leaving their homelands because they want a piece of the American pie so badly that they’re willing to steal to get it. However, there is a lot of evidence that the real cause of this mass immigration has to do with conditions in El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala. These societies are essentially out of control at home. It appears that some of those Latin American governments are impotent when it comes to protecting the civil and legal rights of their people.
If such is the case, then it seems to me that the heart of the problem is a diplomatic one. In other words, it is an international political crisis. The solution isn’t to punish El Salvador or Guatemala or Honduras. It seems to me that they must be engaged to become a part of the solution to this crisis.
If Latin and South American governments are in fact riddled with drug cartels and gangsters of other types, isn’t it time to jointly address the problem through the United Nations or the Organization of American States?
Consider for just a moment or two what these illegal immigrants have to go through. How many times in our lives have you and I traversed the geographical territory of two or three countries in an effort to find safety and perhaps even prosperity? Can this effort be laid entirely at the blame of criminal greed? What kind of a message is 21st Century America sending to future generations?
I’m convinced that the average person does everything he or she can do to avoid the inconveniences of a trek across hostile territories which inevitably subjects a person to banditry, rape and even murder. How many of us would risk what they risk completely for the sake of greed? I insist — damn few of us!
Somehow, the cry of illegality when it comes to these people’s attempt to flee terror rings a little hollow when one considers the defiances in our own history. There have been numerous times when Americans have deliberately contradicted our own political principles and even defied the Constitution of the United States when it suited us. In the 1850s, for example, southerners who insisted that the federal government had no business interfering with states’ rights were more than pleased when Presidents Fillmore, Pierce and Buchanan supported the Fugitive Slave Law in defiance of the laws and rights of the Northern states which sought to protect slaves living within their borders. Even more to the point, Prohibition was as constitutional as the National Rifle Association’s beloved Second Amendment, but it was successfully defied and revoked by largely law-loving and abiding “true blue” Americans.
The argument that Latin American immigration is bad because, or when, it’s illegal misses the point. Separating parents from their children, or deporting them to their native lands is like insisting that those who run from a fire ought to be sent back into the building because they escaped the flames by running rather than walking!
As I see it, it’s outrageously immoral to punish people because they’re frightened! What do you suppose President Trump would do if he were frightened? Would he worry about legalities if his physiognomy was “in the ringer?”
Nuts!!!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
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