From time to time I listen to Rush Limbaugh on our local Fox news affiliate radio station. Yesterday he was gleeful, positively over the moon, about a New York Times report that record numbers of migrants are now pouring across our southern border, over 2,000 a day, over 76,000 last month. Limbaugh somehow spun this as being President Obama's fault, referring to Obama's program expanding the number of Central Americans with children and victims of domestic abuse eligible to apply for refugee status in the U.S. What made Rush Limbaugh so happy was his conviction that this movement of people was proof that Donald Trump has been right all along about our country needing a border wall to keep these people out. As it turns out, most of the 76,000 are parents with children fleeing violence and destitution in the gang war-torn countries of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. It also turns out that these exhausted, often sick, dehydrated, or injured refugees, who've crossed Mexico on foot and continue to travel in caravans for safety, are crossing the U.S. border between legal ports of entry - often geographically treacherous, dangerous areas -
According to the United States Immigration and Nationality Act, "Any alien who is physically present in the United States or who arrives in the United States (whether or not at a designated port of arrival ...), irrespective of such alien's status, may apply for asylum ..." Which means that migrants on our soil have the right under our law to apply for asylum, notwithstanding Donald Trump's attempt - which was struck down in court - to abolish this law on his own. Ours is the richest country on the planet, with an over-abundance of land, food and resources, a country founded as a haven for refugees and built by the hard work and dreams of the huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
And yet our billionaire President, cheered on by a small but loud minority,
...continues to erect walls against the helpless and the desperate and to make the hallmark of his administration cruelty to refugees, even small children, to whose suffering he and his disciples are blind, to whose pleas for help they are deaf. I wonder if God will punish us all for this? References:
1. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/05/us/border-crossing-increase.html 2. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/08/immigration-reform-central-american-refugees/494948/ 3. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/15/us/trump-central-american-refugees.html 4. https://www.wbur.org/news/2018/12/03/asylum-explainer 5. https://www.uscis.gov/legal-resources/immigration-and-nationality-act 6. https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/white-house/article91978142.html 7. https://www.lexisnexis.com/legalnewsroom/immigration/b/outsidenews/posts/trump-is-not-king-cannot-change-us-asylum-system-via-executive-action
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November 2024
I am a traveler just visiting this planet and reporting various and sundry observations,
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