Immigration

This is an amazing song which, I think, hits the nail on the head. The artist, Tom Russell, will be in Madison this Thursday. I'm looking forward to it.



There is also an article in the current New Yorker entitled The Lost Children: Immigrant Families in Detention by Margaret Talbot. It is appalling and disheartening, and underscores in no uncertain terms that the bogus "war on illegal immigrants", like all wars, is about massive profits for a few fat cats at the top (and is anyone surprised that in this case, one of the fat cats who is profiting from the suffering of innocents is Dick Cheney's son-in-law?) I am unable to link to it, but I urge you to look it up.

Of course this isn't the first time our country has incarcerated children on a large scale. Everyone is pretty familiar with the Japanese-American internment camps, but did you know that German-Americans (and some Italian-Americans) were also interred in camps, mostly in Texas? Some of them were rounded up in the United States, others were picked up in South America and brought here. The grand plan -- conceived of by George Marshall ("peaceful" architect of the Marshall Plan after WW2) -- was to use these people as pawns to trade with Hitler for "real" American prisoners. Perhaps the most despicable part of all of this was that some of the people who were indeed shipped back to Germany at the height of the Holocaust were Jews who had fled Germany, some as long as 30 years earlier.

Haven't heard about this? That's because the State Department covered it up for years, and it is still not widely known. 60 Minutes did a piece on it a few years back, and there is a traveling exhibit from out of the Twin Cities.

I am absolutely ashamed of our history of human rights violations that continues to this day, but I am proud of my fellow Americans who speak out and who work tirelessly to shed light on the ongoing miscarriages of justice. Perhaps one day we will truly be a country of peace, eh?

City of Immigrants - Steve Earle

Steve Earle gets it right. There are very few of us not descended from immigrants to this country. It is time to usher in a new era of compassion and celebration. I love this song.

Immigration

(Image is of a poster available from the Northland Poster Collective.)

Immigration has fallen off of the front pages of the papers, for the time being. However, I see the human face of our country's current jingoistic policies every day in my classroom. Of my 14 students, a full half are from Spanish speaking homes. Whether their families are here legally or not, I don't know. We don't ask.

In early December one of my students came to school and said that her mom was in jail. The police had come the night before and taken her away. Understandably, her family was reluctant to give us too much information. After several weeks of hearing that she was in jail, the child told me that her mom was in Honduras.

Early on, I asked my student if she had gotten to talk to her mom. She nodded, and said, "My mom just cried."

There is not a father present in this family. The children, a kindergartner and first grader, are living with their grandmother. Almost every day, my student tells me, "I miss my mom." One day she told me, "My mom is sleeping and she won't wake up." I can understand why she might think her mom is dead! We have a home communication system, where papers get sent home in a folder which the students return on the following day. Last week, my student brought her folder back, and she (or someone) had randomly stuck a green plastic tab on it. She pointed to the tab and said, "The police did that because my mom is in jail." When she was home sick on Thursday, she came back on Friday and asked me, "Did you miss me? I missed you. And I really miss my mom."

All I can say is, "I know you do. And I know your mom misses you and loves you very much."

My student is having a hard time retaining what she learns. I wonder why ... [she said sarcastically.]

I am heartbroken over this. What kind of cruelty are we, as a nation, practicing, to separate young children from their parents? This mom worked long hours, but she was always present for her children. She brought them to school, came to parent-teacher conferences, provided snacks for the class. I suspect she was caught in a workplace sweep.

It is clear that the INS is very selective about who they go after. Right now, the target is undocumented workers from Central and South America. I won't say too much, but if you are an undocumented worker from anywhere else, and your skin is the right color, you might have legal problems, but you aren't targeted for arrest and deportation.

I'd like to say that our country is better than this, except we're not. There's always a bogeyman, there's always a group that is singled out for institutionalized cruel and inhumane treatment.

I know, I know. I have had this discussion with friends who are quite progressive, who have little sympathy for undocumented immigrants. There are plenty of ways to get here legally, etc. etc. But the fact is, there are people here illegally, and from a practical point alone, what is accomplished by being cruel to their children?