Celebrating
our nation’s birthday on July 4th reminds us how lucky we are to
live in a country built on democracy. We must also remember that our democracy
was formed and is maintained by active participation of the governed, namely
us. When we see that our government is taking us in a wrong direction, it
requires us to speak out and take action to affect change. Peaceful protest is
one kind of action.
We
are all familiar with the situation on the southern border of the United States
where thousands of hopeful immigrants from Central America either wait to enter
the U.S. or risk crossing the border between checkpoints to seek asylum. Thousands
of asylum-seekers have been arrested and are being held in overcrowded
detention centers. Children have been
separated from their families or caregivers and whisked away to separate
holding facilities. We’ve seen the
pictures on the news of children and adults crowded into chain-link cages with
nothing more than a mylar sheet for sleeping on the floor. Social workers,
lawyers and members of Congress report that these detainees are not given even
the basic necessities of soap, toothbrushes, changes of clothing, or even the
ability to wash their clothes. These
facilities, despite the objections of the Border Patrol, the Trump
administration and Trump himself, fit the dictionary definition of
concentration camps.
This
is why I joined a protest last week in Burlington in front of the offices of
Senators Sanders and Leahy to demand the close of the detention-center-concentration-camps. Hundreds of Vermont citizens including many
from Charlotte showed up for the march from the top of Church Street to the
corner of Main and South Willard Street.
We marchers were determined to raise our voices against these policies
of this administration, an administration that took an immigration policy that
has been broken for decades and exacerbated it to the crisis of the present
day.
I
believe that America is better than this. Instead of walls to keep people of
color out, we need changes to our immigration system that allow human beings
who want to make a better life for themselves and their children into our great
country. When my grandparents came over
at the beginning of the twentieth century, they were not educated, wealthy
people. Nor were the immigrants that
preceded them from whom most of us are descended. But they came and worked at
the hard labor jobs like coal mining, steel smelting, house cleaning or
whatever menial jobs were available that allowed them to provide for their
families. Some started their own businesses like my grandmother did after her
husband’s back was broken in the mines. Rather than being a drag on the
economy, they helped grow the economy.
This
has been the history of this country, and it is just as true today. The migrant
farm worker in Vermont is a benefit to our economy and should not be the target
of ICE as so many in the last three years have been. Three young men were
arrested a few weeks ago in St. Albans as they were shopping and using Western
Union to send money back home to their families. Shamefully, they were turned
in by a “concerned citizen” who apparently observed them and heard them
speaking Spanish. They are just the latest in a series of arrests by ICE in
Vermont of those who dare to take jobs that no one else wants in this country.
This commentary was published in The Charlotte News on 7/11/2019 and in The Citizen on 7/12/2019.
