A couple of days ago I read on CNN about the 7-year-old Guatemalan
girl - one of the 2,000 refugee children taken away from their parents when the families stepped across our southern border seeking asylum - who after two months in detention in Michigan was reunited this past Sunday with her mother in Florida.
girl - one of the 2,000 refugee children taken away from their parents when the families stepped across our southern border seeking asylum - who after two months in detention in Michigan was reunited this past Sunday with her mother in Florida.
Reading this family's story, seeing the photographs,
 | ...watching the video of the moment of the reunion of the mother and her child, |
| ...listening to the mother tearfully recount her fear that she'd never again see her child and her anxiety that her husband, who was still detained in Texas, would be deported; all those words and images tore at my heart, as do all the stories and images of all the separated children and their parents. |  |
But there was something else in this article that struck me, a message that this mother, tears streaming down her face, wished to send to other mothers: "If you're thinking of claiming asylum here, find another country. The laws here are harsh. And people don't have hearts."
Those words stung, as I'm sure they were intended to, and I found myself grieving not only for the suffering of the refugee parents and children who had the bad luck of asking for amnesty during a brief ill-fated six-week period of "zero tolerance" from May to June, but for the fact that our country is now being seen by some of the most vulnerable people on the planet as a land of harsh laws full of heartless people.
Those words made me sad because in truth there is no law of our land that calls for young children to be taken from their parents and then carelessly lost in a chaotic operation with no system in place to find them.
That is not American law.
Those words stung, as I'm sure they were intended to, and I found myself grieving not only for the suffering of the refugee parents and children who had the bad luck of asking for amnesty during a brief ill-fated six-week period of "zero tolerance" from May to June, but for the fact that our country is now being seen by some of the most vulnerable people on the planet as a land of harsh laws full of heartless people.
Those words made me sad because in truth there is no law of our land that calls for young children to be taken from their parents and then carelessly lost in a chaotic operation with no system in place to find them.
That is not American law.
| Tearing apart asylum-seeking families was merely a capricious passing whim of this man-child who's always seeking entertainment and gratification, |  |
...this particular whim being carried out by two of his more virulent sycophants.
 |  |
And so it's not our laws that have turned our country into a theater of cruelty in the eyes of this mother and the world. Our laws are not of themselves harsh. We are a democracy, and as a nation hold high the pursuit of fairness, decency and justice, though this pursuit is ever on-going, always a pursuit in progress.
And whatever our disparate political persuasions or differing interpretations of our laws, I don't believe that Americans as a whole want to see immigrants, even undocumented immigrants, treated cruelly. None of us likes that over 2,000 children and babies were taken from their parents, some put in cages, some sent to places of detention over a thousand miles away from their parents with no agency in place to reunite them. None of us wanted to see that happen.
Because the truth is that we Americans do have hearts. We have big hearts. We are warm, friendly, out-going, generous, engaging people. We like to help others. We are, for the most part, good people, and we like to be seen as good people in the eyes of the world, which isn't hard, as we Americans really are, as individuals, likeable. And for the most part we mean well. And as a country, though far from perfect and with many wrongs notched into our history, we usually end up doing the right thing, eventually, even if it's as a last resort.
Which is why it hurts to see my country being chastised as a harsh place full of heartless people.
And whatever our disparate political persuasions or differing interpretations of our laws, I don't believe that Americans as a whole want to see immigrants, even undocumented immigrants, treated cruelly. None of us likes that over 2,000 children and babies were taken from their parents, some put in cages, some sent to places of detention over a thousand miles away from their parents with no agency in place to reunite them. None of us wanted to see that happen.
Because the truth is that we Americans do have hearts. We have big hearts. We are warm, friendly, out-going, generous, engaging people. We like to help others. We are, for the most part, good people, and we like to be seen as good people in the eyes of the world, which isn't hard, as we Americans really are, as individuals, likeable. And for the most part we mean well. And as a country, though far from perfect and with many wrongs notched into our history, we usually end up doing the right thing, eventually, even if it's as a last resort.
Which is why it hurts to see my country being chastised as a harsh place full of heartless people.
| And yet what other impression could that mother have at this point? |  |
Still I hope she knows of the outrage that has flamed all across our nation over what was done to her child and 2,000 others.
| I hope she knows that millions of Americans have taken to the streets to demand the reunification of families who have been separated, |  |
...and that the angry, sorrowful outcry continues from sea to sea.
I wish this mother could know that there are millions of Americans who wish with all their hearts that they could do something for all the separated and lost children and for the other mothers and fathers who continue to suffer what she's suffered.
I wish this mother could know that there are millions of Americans who wish with all their hearts that they could do something for all the separated and lost children and for the other mothers and fathers who continue to suffer what she's suffered.
| I wish she could know that, contrary to how we've been represented, |  |
 | ...we Americans really do care. |
Most of all I wish that all the children who've been taken from their parents might somehow, someway, survive what was done to them. I hope somehow, some way, they all make it.
| And I hope that somehow, some way, this mother, her husband, |  |
..and her children,
...are granted asylum and allowed to stay here in the United States to work and pursue a better life.
And I wish that somehow, someway, on some 4th of July years down the road this mother and her family would find themselves celebrating being a part of this wonderful country and one of its good, caring, big-hearted people.
And I wish that somehow, someway, on some 4th of July years down the road this mother and her family would find themselves celebrating being a part of this wonderful country and one of its good, caring, big-hearted people.
| Happy 4th of July from Gahanna, Ohio, everyone. |  |
References:
https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/01/us/guatemala-mother-daughter-reunion/index.html
https://www.miamiherald.com/latest-news/article214251419.html
https://www.yahoo.com/news/7-old-girl-guatemala-reunites-164426157.html
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