I recently had an exchange with an individual regarding the children coming to the United States from Latin America; many of whom were unaccompanied or with single mothers, and all were without proper paperwork. This was a big news story throughout a portion of 2014. This person indicated that he and his wife had recently returned from a cruise to Honduras, Belize, and Cozumel in Mexico, but that they had refused to go ashore in Cozumel because the Mexican government, among other things, had allowed these children to pass through their country and into the United States.
I have placed my reply below, along with a few ending comments:
“Now, I must take issue with your complaint about children from various Central American countries crossing into the United States through Mexico, and this will fill the rest of this letter. Your complaint is that some sixty thousand children fleeing poverty, violence, and government corruption have come to the United States seeking shelter.
From a purely secular standpoint let me start by stating my opinion on this matter: “Let all of those in the world who must flee to save themselves from certain abuse and death at the hands of drug gangs and police death squads come to our land.”
The poem inscribed upon the base of the Statue of Liberty reads:
The New Colossus
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
a mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles.
From her beacon-hand glows world-wide welcome;
her mild eyes command the air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips.
“Give me your tired, your poor,
your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
the wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
I believe in those words, but as I read Emma Lazarus’ poem now, I believe also that if the majority of tea party members knew the words to that poem, or even that it exists, they would push to have it removed.
It shall not be removed. This is the United States of America. Tell me, is it all a lie; everything our propaganda has tried to cram down our throats about the righteous mission of this nation? Are we not the nation that stands welcoming the downtrodden of this world? Or have we been reduced to the myth of “Manifest Destiny” and the horrific reality of the “Bush Doctrine?” This, of course, is the precept in which we reserve the right to violate any nation-state’s sovereignty and territorial integrity if we feel there are people there who are tired of being treated like they are less than human by us, or feel that the United States government and its corporate allies are full of it.
These children have come to us seeking asylum from the tempests of the violent world beyond our shores. Unfortunately, they now jump from the frying pan into the fire. They come for the comfort of a “Christian” nation and end up at the end of some minuteman’s rifle. These impoverished and desperate mothers and children who have come here seeking compassion face a political system becoming dominated, by every illegal means available, by people determined to return this country to the golden age of white domination which began to speedily unravel in the 1950’s.
They come to live law-abiding lives of productive work (as soon as they re old enough) and face a militarized police force that shoots people of color and poor whites first, and doesn’t even bother to ask questions later. There was a time when a police officer had to be very cautious before he employed deadly force, as he knew he would be held accountable for his actions. Now they murder with complete impunity for the courts have made it abundantly clear that they will not be made to account for lives they take.
Of course, this militarization of our police forces doesn’t affect communities like ….., but I stood inside Joe’s the week before Christmas and watched US Marshals dressed in camouflage and carrying automatic weapons place one of our community in handcuffs and then into one of their Chevy Suburbans because he knew someone for whom they were looking. They and the Oklahoma City police found this person’s trailer at a nearby trailer park and destroyed it; bashing in the door and breaking every window. Not because they had to, but because they could…with absolute impunity. They then stole it, hauling it away when the man wasn’t even home. I received calls from law-abiding citizens terrified to go outside; not because there were thugs in red and blue out there (Crips and Bloods), but because there were thugs in camouflage and badges out there. The police state had come crashing into their neighborhood…with absolute impunity. Oh, yes, the man was wanted for a technical violation of his probation.
There has been a long history of people questioning and analyzing that little thing called The Third Reich trying to determine if that entire event was strictly a German thing; hence what is known as “The German Question.” Many of these analyses end with the claim that “it couldn’t happen here.” I have a news flash for those people…it is happening here, and it is happening now. The police state protects the wealthy’s “property rights” and puts bullets into the poor when they try to defend their civil rights.
You complain that the American taxpayer will have to fulfill the obligations of housing, feeding, educating and providing health care for these people. Good. Bring us the world’s refuse. They built this place once and they can rebuild it now. I will gladly pay my taxes to stand with them as they do this. I stand with the Mother of Exiles.
What I will not do is offer up another penny to maintain the most bloated military the world has ever known. This country spends more taxpayer dollars on the weapons of death than than the next twenty-three countries of this planet combined. It is no longer the arsenal of democracy of 1942, it is the battering ram of the share-holders.
I don’t want the F-35. I don’t want the Predator drone. I want schools that have more money than they need. I want every person who lives in this country (citizen or not) to have access to health care. I want children to not have to grow up immersed in tea party gun culture. In fact, I’m surprised the tea party and their right-wing evangelical co-conspirators haven’t started their lobbying effort to have their precious second amendment added the the Ten Commandments. Do the propagators of gun culture really think guns will keep them safe or free? It is not the possession of firearms that keeps a person free, but the will to be free that does so.
Are you aware that for the money this country has already spent on the F-35 project, (and we still don’t have an operational unit) we could have placed every homeless person in this country; every man, woman, and child in their own mansion? I don’t want to place homeless people in mansions, I just want them all to have a solid roof over their heads. I want the mentally ill to not have to beg on the streets for money. Heck, don’t want anybody to have to beg for money. I want what God wants, and neither of us have any use for this so called “multi-platform fighter.”
I want the men and women who are fighting in foreign lands to come home, yesterday. They are not out there risking their lives protecting our freedom, they’re young, poor saps that bought a lie pushed down their throats by the most sophisticated propaganda machine the world has ever known. Goebbels would keel over in envy at the subtlety and pervasiveness of it if he were alive.
These poor kids are not “heroes,” they’re the sons and daughters of poor and lower middle class families who haven’t the education or sophistication to see what’s happening to them. The captive media calls them “heroes” so that the flow of souls our government can send into their imperial meat grinder never stops. After all, what 19-year old kid doesn’t want to be called a “hero?”
Now, those arguments are all fine and dandy, but if we are to dig our way to the core of the matter surrounding these mothers and children about whom you complain coming to America, we must assess this from a pastoral perspective. I want to begin by asking you a question.
Where would the world be if the Egyptians had turned Joseph, Mary, and Jesus away at the border? Where would the world be if they had sent that family back to the slaughter awaiting the Christ child at the hands of the Judean death squads Herod had sent out to find and kill Him? They were looking for Him and killing every new-born child age two and under in the country.
Where would we be?
I want you to remember that one of those children crossing our border from Mexico may be the Christ child coming back to bring the kingdom of heaven here. Where will the world be if we send her back to the death squads and the drug gangs. This is why the Mother of Exiles stands guard at our door; not to keep people out, but to remind us to welcome them in.
Don’t worry, I know the propaganda of America is all a lie. The great part is, we can make it the truth. We can take the idea of America from those who have turned it into a consumerist nightmare and make it into a reflection of the freedom God wants every person to have. We can make that poem on the base of the Statue of Liberty, that glorious gift of the French people, a reality. All we need to do is cash in hate and greed for love and forgiveness and it will happen.
I have heard you claim that the road of violence, retribution, and destruction of America’s “enemies” is a more practical approach than the way of Christ. That may be so, but I would like for you to answer another question: How is that “more practical approach” working out? Are our “enemies” neutralized? Are they coming around to some flawless logic of our side, or are they growing in number and ferocity? They are growing in number and ferocity, and I don’t see anything practical about that.
At some point the world will have to face the harsh reality that its “more practical approach” is a suicide machine; a suicide machine that is killing people and this planet at a faster pace every day. It steals liberty and replaces it with oppression. Whether it is the Islamic State, the Russian Federation, the Third Reich, or the United States of America, liberty is always under fire from the forces of oppression. I always render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, but it is the nature of Caesar to take more than is his and wait for someone to stand up and say “no more.”
Unfortunately, as things stand now, the world’s share holders will never allow the highly practical method of the way of Christ to guide our actions, because there is too much money to be made; especially off of war. There has never been a war in the history of humankind in which the wealthy have not made huge profits; regardless of whether they were citizens of the “winning” or “losing” side. God forbid, their portfolios should take a hit for peace.
We have police killing people at the drop of a hat, we have wars too plentiful to count, we have genocide still happening throughout the world, we have an American society that is becoming reduced to the equivalent of third-graders fighting it out at recess, and we have tea party politicians claiming that the Environmental Protection Agency and not the Central Intelligence Agency is out of control. All of this and more and you’re angry because sixty thousand mothers and children came to this country seeking asylum and protection from violence you can’t even imagine? I’m sorry, but I just don’t understand your position.
Jesus weeps. I weep. The Mother of Exiles weeps. Maybe it’s time you started weeping too.”
The written response from the individual to whom I wrote that piece was, shall I say, disappointing. He reduced his replies to the issues I raised to analogies, which eventually devolved into an rant on president Obama’s birth certificate. Oh yes, he also went off on something like Colonel Jessup’s “You can’t handle the truth” diatribe from, “A Few Good Men.” Indicating, of course, how dare I question the rate, manner, or reasons my government kills people in this world in my name.
This was not the discussion for which I had hoped. However, he did, in his analogy-ridden reply ask me what I would do if my neighbors (who happen to be Latin American) showed up at my door with their kids and aunts and uncles and grand-parents and maybe a few friends and said “We’re moving in. You’ll need to feed us, clothe us, educate the kids, provide vocational education to the adults, and provide us with health care.”
Although I was so disappointed in his reply that I merely shook my head, sulked for a bit, and then did not write back, my written reply to that…that…I’m not sure what to call it…ah yes, “scenario.” would have gone something like this: “I say bring them! If you are going to try to argue through analogies, which is almost as low as arguing through patriotism (the last refuge of a scoundrel), then let’s a least maintain economies of scale. I would be happy to feed, clothe, educate, and care for the health of my neighbor’s extended family, because each of them would be about 1/16th of an inch tall, and I can afford that.”
However, he neglected (purposefully, I believe) to mention what they said after they told me I’d have to attend to food, clothes, and the other stuff for them. They told me they’d be willing to work hard to help keep the house in order and earn whatever I provided for them, and that they’d do it for less money that others would charge.
People, xenophobia is a disease, and the only vaccination that works is to place yourself in the world village. I agree, the Statue of Liberty is but a symbol, but it is the symbol of what makes being an American an ideal toward which we must always strive. That ideal is so lofty as to be as unobtainable as a life without sin before God.
Welcome them, for they are us, and if we cast them out, then we cast something out of ourselves at the same time. That which we cast out is that with which we can not live, for it is is love.
Peace and love to all,
Niemand