Showing posts with label border. Show all posts
Showing posts with label border. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 25, 2019

We Still Condemn Trump's Deplorable Immigration Policy

Trump's deplorable immigration policy is only getting worse it seems.  While the administration has supposedly stopped separating undocumented children from their parents at the border, the children thay have been separated already have still not been reunited.  And as there is currently a crisis at the border with all of the recent asylum seekers, they are increasingly being detained in deplorable conditions without adequate food, water, and sanitation.   We literally have innocent children being treated worse than convicted felons in this country.

And yes, "concentration camps" is the correct term, since the dictionary definition is "the mass detention of civilans without trial".   So it looks like AOC is apparently spot-on.  This is how it started in 1930s Germany, after all--first they had detention camps, then slave-labor camps, and only from 1941 onward did they have extermination (death) camps.

Look, it is clear that a lot of people don't like the term "concentration camps".  Maybe we should call them "torture camps" instead, given that what all too often occurs in them meets the internationally recognized definition of torture, especially when it involves children.  Or perhaps we should call them "Trump Camps" to guarantee that historians forever attach their memory to his name and vile and disgusting legacy, while ironically giving him a perverse ego boost without him even seeing the irony.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration is planning even more ICE raids for the purpose of deporting more and more undocumented immigrants, including those who have been living here for years or decades and have no criminal records.

Clearly, such cruelty for cruelty's sake has NOT been any sort of deterrent, as the number of illegal border crossings has gone from the lowest it has been in years in much of 2017 to the highest it has been in decades by March 2019.  Let that sink in.

That kinda backfired, didn't it?  Meanwhile, the 100% preventable illnesses, injuries, and deaths of both children and adults in these camps just keep piling up every day that goes by.  We can no longer call our country a "shining city on a hill" anymore as long as this continues.  Even the late Ronald Reagan (who coined both that phrase, as well as the MAGA slogan, by the way) must be spinning in his grave right now.

To be sure, the crisis at the border does not have any easy, ready-made solutions at this point, and certainly requires thinking outside the box.  Ideally, all immigrants should come in through the proper channels legally.  But the system is currently broken, and when those proper channels are blocked off by the powers that be, for political reasons, clearly something has to give as a result.  And the train has basically left the station at this point.

Don't look away.  This is how it starts, people.  The banality of evil, and "we were just following orders" and "the law is the law".  So where's the long-overdue outrage?  Remember, the only thing it takes for evil to prosper, is for good people to do nothing.  Seriously.