You don’t really expect this post to offer the panacea to the problem of immigration. But you are taking the trouble to read it, just in case I may have something to say that has not already been said dozens of times about it. Thank you for the compliment and for the confidence. I’ll try not to disappoint you.
The Mediterranean has for some time been the center of attention, as statistics mount and desperate refugees drown. This week the focus has switched from Italy’s refusal to accept any asylum-seekers except those on Italian boats, to the U.S.-Mexico border, where children are being separated from their illegal immigrant mothers. Melania Trump and Laura Bush have been weighing in, pleading for compassion – thereby questioning what Donald Trump insists is part of the Law (illegal immigration is; separating children from parents is not). Jeff Sessions, a.k.a. Mr McGoo, has dared to quote St Paul to defend Trump’s heartlessness. Rednecks would give God a red face, if He had one.
I am the grandson of legal European immigrants to Australia. I was myself a legal immigrant to the U.S., where I spent ten years as a “resident alien”, and then an immigrant to France where I was lucky enough to obtain both a residency visa and a work permit, before becoming a French citizen. I can only imagine the hardship and horror suffered by people traveling thousands of miles to cross the Mexican-American border illegally, and then being incarcerated and separated from their children.
History has been one of emigration and immigration from before the emergence of Homo Sapiens. Sometimes it has involved claiming a “terra nullius” (literally a “no man’s land”), as did Australia’s first immigrants 60,000 years ago. More commonly it meant invasion of occupied foreign territory by war, or by confiscation and colonization (as in Australia 230 years ago), accompanied by the decimation, enslavement or genocide of its occupants. The Maginot Line could not prevent the Germans from marching around it, and even a Mexican wall is unlikely to stop those south of the border from tunneling under it.
In a perfect world, national borders would be respected and immigration controlled by rational laws and compassionate policies for the admission of immigrants and asylum seekers. In the real world, economic inequalities coupled with the instinct for survival will always result in legal and illegal immigration, whatever the risks and whatever the measures taken to control it.
Is there any hope of finding an acceptable, humane solution to this challenge, where residents’ rights are respected and refugees’ needs are met with compassion and generosity ? We all hope there is, but we cannot ignore the magnitude of the challenge or underestimate the cost involved. For there is a price to pay, financially and ideologically. We must make sure that the people we elect are capable, ready and willing to engage in rational discussion and in the formulation and application of reasonable, just laws which protect the rights of both residents and would-be immigrants. The U.S. is paying the price for having elected the wrong people. Can Americans fix their problem, can we Europeans fix ours ? Yes, we can !
RIDENDA RELIGIO
Stephen said:
Countries have every right to protect their borders from illegal immigrants, but what they mustn’t do is treat these already poor and downtrodden people in an inhumane way. Who can blame these poor and desperate families from wanting a better life for themselves and their children? But you then have the southern gentleman Jeff Sessions the US Attorney General quoting St. Paul to justify separating children from their parents and holding them in detention camps. This is not the first time kindly looking gentleman from below the Mason Dixon line has used the Bible to justify something wicked. I’m not excusing Trump from any of this but there smarter people in his government who are the architects of this awful policy. My only solace is that history will totally condemn them all for this evil.
LikeLiked by 1 person
frankomeara said:
Sessions truncated what Paul said in Romans 13. At the beginning of the chapter, Paul does indeed insist on obeying the Law. But a few verses later in the same chapter, verses 8 through 10, he writes : “Owe no debt to anyone except the debt that binds us to love one another. He who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law . . . Love never does any wrong to the neighbor, hence love is the fulfillment of the Law.”
Cherry-picking Scripture is nothing short of hypocrisy.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Stephen said:
“Cherry-picking Scripture is nothing short of hypocrisy.” The trouble is those Americans who claim to follow Jesus conveniently forget his message of love and peace. Even I an Atheist know that was quite his big thing and anyone who doesn’t live by those tenets aren’t Christians but just fans.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Ben said:
The reaction appears to have borne fruit with some movement from the Trump camp with his Executive Order. Although who knows how meaningful this will be. I am encouraged that popular opinion remains a form of check and balance, at least on some issues.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Stephen said:
It’s more likely, what with Trump’s short attention span he just got fed up having to answer all those awkward questions’ he’ll probably go onto something else just as stupid and wicked.
LikeLike
frankomeara said:
Thank you for this first comment, Ben. Trump made this year’s Refugees’ Day memorable by ostentatiously signing and displaying a document, the content of which we still do not know, apparently forbidding the separation of children from their illegal immigrant parents. You have made it memorable by being the first to comment on this hypocritical about-face by the despicable despot in the White House. His fans will applaud the “compassion” of this political weather-vane and forget that he has just done what he said two days ago was impossible. How great thou art, divine Donald !
LikeLiked by 1 person
frankomeara said:
“Better yet, KILL THE KIDS !”. I could hardly believe my ears this morning, when I heard, on French National Radio, a highly respected commentator on geopolitics, Bernard Guetta, suggest that Trump ratchet up his border deterrent of separating children from their mothers – by killing them ! That, he said, would really be a deterrent – and, he added, it would work ! Allies of the United States have never been so vehement in their condemnation of an American President, described this time without tongue-in-cheek by Guetta, in French, as “répugnant”. Some of us would use even stronger language.
LikeLike
Amy Green said:
Johnny Come Lately here, commenting on your great post, Frank. Since the post and comments, it would seem that The First Lady, and not Our Lady, has decided to pour some of her own milk of human kindness on this souring situation. Who better than her, or you or me, who know first hand what it is like to be welcomed to a foreign land. Affaire à suivre…
LikeLiked by 1 person
frankomeara said:
St Paul, later quoted by St Francis of Assisi, said we are all “pilgrims and strangers on this earth”. I would add that we are all immigrants, or the descendants of immigrants. Compassion for today’s immigrants should be part of our DNA, our Daily Normal Attitude.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Stephen said:
I totally agree Frank. The resurgence of nationalism around Europe is very worrying and the form it is taking in Trump’s America is really nasty. You see this buffoon of a president getting up in front of the cameras and spouting the most evil of racism. I never thought I’d see coming from an elected politician this type of language.
LikeLiked by 1 person