Thursday, July 10, 2014

Border crisis is a shame

The border mess of 50,000 children and families escaping violence in Central America is a matter of shame.  Clear and simple: they should be treated as refugees as the current law requires,, whether they have been trafficked by Coyotes or motivated to flee to the US by misinformation and lack of understanding of our laws.

Shame on  GOP politicians pandering to their anti immigrant constituents to  take advantage of a crisis to bolster their core support instead of offering their own plans to solve a problem , all the while blocking  any constructive solutions.

It is shameful that young children are spit at by hate faced demonstrators waiving  American flags. That sets a terrible example to the rest of the world  of how to deal with their own ethnic and religious conflicts and  refugee crises.

75% of Colorado’s 480 thousand  registered Latinos  that voted for Pres. Obama in 2012 and, 70% nationwide, swung key states blue. (source: a Pew poll October 1 2012) They understood that the real culprit is the GOP and a Republican dominated House of Representatives which  has   refused to pass any proposed  comprehensive legislation that would have funded more border patrols and border security in return for a plan to deal with the 11 million undocumented already in our country.

 Should the President visit the border? Did he just commit a Bush Katrina error? Maybe. The GOP is making much of his non visit, but it is a diversion tactic from their own lack of action or sympathy with the plight of the child refugees. Action, though, is more important than photo ops and the GOP as usual is stonewalling action once again.

 Those  few Hispanics and Democrats  who are criticizing the President for not doing more or too much should be careful not to promote  a plague on both houses mentality resulting in many  sitting out elections.  Election of more anti immigrant GOP members to Congress  or the election of a Republican president would  just put comprehensive immigration  on ice for years or even result in more harmful measures. 

Now the GOP is concocting reasons to  oppose the President’s proposal of $3.7 billion to address the crisis by  quibbling over money, dragging their feet while decrying an immediate crisis ,  or advocating putting  refugees  on the next plane back home ,  depriving them of due process. The purpose of the President’s request:  to add more border agents to process and patrol,  to provide humanitarian detention of the influx and to launch a public campaign to educate Central American parents that their children will not qualify for citizenship and will face deportation. Dare Congress to vote no on this one;  the “party of do nothing, stonewall all with Obama’s name  attached”,   will add to increasing  evidence of the GOP’s  dereliction of duty to  govern.


The GOP stance on immigration reform is a sham, if  not a shame:” secure the borders  first and then we might  discuss some way to send immigrants back from whence   they or their parents came, just so any plan does not include a path to citizenship.”  Whatever is done to secure the borders could never be sufficient  because there is no definition  of when enough is enough. It is much like the old joke: “Mother, may I go swimming? Of course you may, my daughter, but do not go near the water.”





Data source:

http://pewsr.ch/VrJFCu  Pew Poll, October 1, 2012

§  484,000 Hispanic eligible voters in Colorado—the ninth largest Hispanic eligible voter population nationally. California ranks first with 5.9 million.
Some 14% of Colorado eligible voters are Hispanic

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