I will be getting on my soapbox about Immigration issues in the United States. I sincerely wish things were different but I refuse to be part of the white washing and changing history to be more convenient for politicians.
You've been warned.
I noticed that on the issue of children being separated from families that politicians and media are trying to white wash our past history. There are horrendous stories and incidents that happened on a national level. Internment camps of Japanese families, divided and persecuted for their heritage. There was the mass collection of children from the reservations of American Indians where they were stripped of their clothes and their heritage. Beaten for speaking their native language and other horrors that people are trying to deny existed. I remember those times. People forget that in my life time people would cross back and forth across the Mexican and Canadian borders without passports or visas or any other papers. It wasn't illegal to live in Mexico or Canada and work in the United States. This is in my life time and my memory. Not off of some distorted twisted media rewriting history. Chavez and his posse fought to stop the migrant workers that came up from Mexico, followed the plantings then came back through for the harvest. Their families worked together and farmer provided huts to live in. Not good enough. Protests, fights, demonstrations and the borders were closed without warning. So many from other countries were here because until the 1970's and 80's it wasn't illegal. Suddenly people that for generations had migrated with the crops were declared illegal. It was a weird time and as a teenager I noticed the news about this. The now illegal immigrants were scared. They knew what the United State government had done to the American Indian children. They didn't want the same thing to happen to their children. Forty years later it is a mess.
I repeatedly voted for people that promised to 'fix' the immigration issues. So many politicians lied and lied and lied. I am sick and tired of the lies upon lies. Obama had a fully democratic House and Senate......he could have been the leader to solve the problem.....he failed. He put a band-aide over a compound fracture. He did what I believe one of the cruelest gestures of all......he offered you want it, but didn't put into place the needed laws to actually follow up what he offered. The rug was easily jerked out from under the Dream Students because it wasn't based in laws that stuck. He created greater discord and from my perspective enjoyed creating it. I heard the speech he gave to the students in our district.....some of them are children of illegals....Smoke and mirrors promises easily made because he did nothing to put into place the needed changes in unjust and wrong laws. I believe when the smoke clears he will go down in infamy for creating discord and dissatisfaction that we the people could get our heads out of the sand and straighten out immigration laws. To make the laws equitable and possible. I work with many students from immigrant back ground. It is a privileged to work with amazing, hard working students that want what every other person wants to be able to take care of themselves and their families. I am so disappointed in the ugly way people are now blaming and pointing fingers at all the wrong people. Immigration laws are a mess and they still need to be fixed. The current rhetoric and backbiting and spread of half truths and lies for sensational news used to stir people up, not to solve the problem, but to be at each others throats. I am frustrated that this is deteriorating into something that makes things worse and not better.
Heavy sigh, these things are heavy on my heart and mind. I am one small voice in a cacophony of discord that is do nothing to help those that are abused by an ugly system that is in desperate need for repair.
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