If it was up to me, we’d let everybody in. The refugees, the asylum-seekers. Anyone who wants to come, let’em in. We can figure out who’s a criminal or infiltrator or Communist sympathizer after the fact.
That would be my stance.
And that is a terrible, stupid stance.
Although it’s dumb as hell to go around saying, “We can’t let any Syrians in until we can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that neither they, their children, nor anyone in their family line for the past 10,000 years has so much as sneered at the American flag” in the name of security, ignoring a humanitarian crisis half a world away, it’s equally dumb to let anyone who wants to come enter.
And no, this is not code for “Don’t let the scary brown people in, but whites are alright.” No. Like I said before, I welcome all refugees with open arms. Asian, African, European, Latin American. I lift my light beside the golden door.
We have to be a little realistic. This seems to be obvious.
Equally obvious should be the fact that Trump totally just played us. Any time he starts a policy that people hate, he’s known ahead of time who was going to get pissed off. Then he waits, he hesitates, he wavers, and finally, he caves to pressures of his opponent and…gets exactly what he wanted in the first place.
Every time.
Ok, I don’t have a lot of evidence for this, but as Trump is a successful businessman and the tactic of asking for something you know the other guy is going to say no to so that you may “compromise” and get what you really want is not a new business strategy, it feels like a safe assumption to make.
But that’s not what this is about.
This is about what’s quickly turning into a humanitarian crisis the likes of which this continent has not seen since the days of slavery, Jim Crow, and mistreatment of Native Americans. (So, yesterday, basically.)
People should obey the law. I think we can all agree on that. Laws, like rules, should be flexible enough to bend, and if a rule has to be broken for the good of all, it probably wasn’t a very good rule in the first place. Asylum seekers should seek to entry this country legally. Many do and are turned away on the border (Vox has an article on this phenomenon). Others choose to endure long waiting lists, during which time their lives are still endangered by drug cartels or ISIS or whoever.
At least, that’s what I assume.
See, the truth is, I have no idea what’s going on.
I have some sources I rely on (BBC News, USA Today, the AJC, and yes, Fox News. CNN and MSNBC have even MORE commentary than the right-wing news station, and that’s saying something.) All of these sources have been and are called into question on a daily basis. What’s worse, even photographic evidence cannot be trusted. Hell, we can’t even agree on what color a white and gold dress is! (I went there.)
Our news sources are biased. We never get the complete picture whether because the reporters have an agenda, are too lazy to research, or we just plain don’t have access to all the facts for national security reasons. We’re all operating on partial knowledge, and the scary thing is we’re so convinced our side is right we refuse to even listen to the other side.
“But Obama and Clinton did the same stuff! Where was your outrage then, you millennial snowflake?”
Well, like most millennials, I was in elementary school during Clinton’s presidency. As for Obama, the answer is simple. There was outrage. A lot of it. Maybe there weren’t any hashtags or Tumblr pages, but protests happened. People made phone calls. There were marches. Don’t you remember?
Guys, I don’t have solutions. Is it wrong to separate parents from children? Yes. But it took me too long to come to that conclusion. I’m simply so used to government incompetence and cruelty for the sake of kindness that it doesn’t strike me as odd that our border security — like our criminal justice system and education system — cares more about making annual budget goals than actually helping the American people.
We can’t be keeping kids and adults in separate detention centers. There’s no real reason for it. In fact, it would probably create more problems to separate every child from their guardian. That’s a great way to lose track of people, let me tell you. Now if the parent is a danger to the child, by all means. Do your thing, DFCS. But using the threat of taking someone’s child away to keep them from entering the country illegally feels a step beyond the pale.
Compound that with the fact that it doesn’t really matter. Most parents would say, “At least my kid’s alive. I may never see them again, but at least the cartels won’t get them.” Heartless? Not really. Not if you’re desperate enough. And we cannot forget the desperation of these parents.
Does that excuse breaking American law?
Yes. No. I don’t know. Should I be sent to jail for stealing a loaf of bread to feed my sister’s kid?
Shouldn’t these parents try to use legal means to seek asylum?
Of course.
But I ask you this, are you aware of the process of seeking asylum? Because I’m not. I have no idea. And I can’t promise you that if the cartels took over the eastern seaboard I wouldn’t try sneaking into Canada or California to get away from them. Would I stop to look at the Canadian embassy’s guidelines for it? Maybe. If I had internet access and could read French or English. If I could be certain I had several months to apply for asylum, call their agency to see where my paperwork went, apply again, get rerouted, etc.
Let’s be clear. Government agencies are less efficient than Jar Jar Binks in an elocution contest. They are Byzantine structures that, like the Byzantines, collapse under their own weight with the mass of a dying star. I’ve been to my local social security office to apply for disability. I had to go down there because nobody over there answers the phone, and you will never speak to your caseworker or see the file they keep on you ever because reasons.
And you seriously expect a truckload of borderline homeless Hondurans, people who climb through mounds of refuse to scavenge for food and discarded electronics to melt down for scrap metal to have the patience to sit through three hours (at minimum) of filling out forms, probably bribing public officials, and having to restart the process because government employees are the dumbest people on the planet? Oh, and the whole time they’re desperately hiding from the cartels and trying to keep their kids from joining one gang just to avoid getting killed by another gang.
Am I wrong? Am I being ethnocentric? Is Central America not a terrible place to live? Isn’t that why they’re coming up here? Look, I’m not saying it ain’t beautiful. It is. But it ain’t south Georgia. And as we all know, south Georgia is freaking horrible if you’re not over 50 and a Daughter of the Confederacy.
My point is, these people are in an impossible situation and deserve our sympathy. And maybe a little bending.
Just the other day, President Trump issued an executive order reversing the zero-tolerance policy introduced in April which required the separation of parents from children. Why was the separation required? Because the new policy charged the adults with felonies, which would mean jail-time, pending a hearing, and the law at the time forbade holding kids and adults in the same facility. This makes a bit of sense, as adults are, by and large, complete bastards. Not all of us. And not all the time. Most of the time, in fact, we try to reach for the wondrous potential we know we have deep inside. But we generally prefer to be bastards when we think we can get away with it.
Again, notice my wording at the end there. Notice the lack of sources? That’s because I am not a lawyer and I’m typing this at 10:30 at night and am too tired to read dry, overworked legal documents to figure all this shit out. Yet somehow we’re supposed to argue this on Facebook with Donna from HR and act appalled when she doesn’t recognize our immediate, armchair expertise? Who the hell do we think we are?
For now, it seems we will be holding parents and children together indefinitely until such time as the hearings to determine who’s a legit refugee and who’s a dirty rotten moocher (Ayn Rand’s words, not mine) can be carried out. And I assume they’ll be using the same facilities with the tinfoil blankets, concrete walls painted with Orwellian images of past presidents, and of course, chain-link fences. Oh, joy.
To sum up, the zero tolerance policy still remains. The families that were already broken up will most likely remain so for the foreseeable future, but no more will be divided.
Just as planned.
