Pages

Monday, August 27, 2012

THE MANIPULATION OF IMMIGRATION ATTITUDE -- OUR COUNTRY IN NEED OF GOOD SAMARITANS, NOT SUPERPACS

          The reality                                                                     The propaganda

Click on blue higlights for further information

To warn us that we are constantly menaced by illegal immigrants, a new group has formed in the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.  This vocal cadre of 10 within thousands of ICE employees has grabbed headlines by complaining that their own agency is not being strict enough bringing actions against immigrants, and they’ve launched a lawsuit against their own bosses to prove it.
 
“NumbersUSA, a group that advocates for reduction of immigration, is funding the lawsuit on behalf of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents opposed to current policy. The suit goes after two key Obama policies on immigration: prosecutorial discretion to focus on criminals and repeat offenders, as well as deferred action for undocumented young people.”  *

Outside of the question of political nature of this lawsuit, pushing the hot-button immigration issue in this election season, and whether a super-PAC like Karl Rove’s Crossroads America might be funding NumbersUSA [nobody knows where the super-PAC money goes], there are the questions of common sense, Gospel charity, and the continued contribution that immigrants legal & illegal make to our society. 
On common sense, a friend of the family who works for ICE recently expressed his opinion that most of his coworkers think that this in-agency lawsuit group is a minority going way overboard, and that enforcement has to be focused and sensible.  You can’t go after everyone that’s here illegally, even if you had four times the agents, while spending even more on drones and spy camera balloons for our border patrols [dejavu Port Huron's "mooned" balloon? --some to be recycled from Afghanistan] .  And do we need to do this in this time of drastic across-the-board federal budget cuts?  Other ICE agents I know, from my church including my brother, approach their jobs logically, and with compassion.


At a family wedding this summer, a guest described to me his being a mechanic maintaining two large farm operations.  The Mexican and Guatemalan farm laborers he worked alongside, he supposed were undocumented.  With the language barrier they were somewhat hard for him to get to know, but were indispensable workers, and some had become valued friends.   He believed his boss was paying them fair wages, and providing just working conditions--after not being able to find local laborers to employ.
Immigrants built this country, and they are still vital contributors to its structure, and our daily bread.  That doesn’t impress Roy Beck, founder of NumbersUSA who seems a rational advocate for his cause of more impenetrable borders, apparently disclaiming those who would use hate language against immigrants.  He finds Gospel charity impractical in this instance.  "There's no question that the gospel is pretty radical, but that's just not the way the world works," he said. "Whenever we've had peaks of high immigration, the most vulnerable in our society have been the ones to suffer."  What causes the suffering is not addressed.  There’s routinely a struggle across borders between rich and poor.
Bought & paid for with U.S. drugs & weapons dollars -- violence based market, made in the USA
 
ext week we’ll look at a wave of violence, drugs, weapons, and militarized war on drugs, that is currently driving refugees into the U.S. from Mexico --- and at the movement in Mexico that comes now to the USA, pleading for an end to the violence.  It’s led by Javier Sicilia, a Mexican Catholic poet and professor, who lost his 24 year old son in the crossfire.
 






Background stories on Javier Sicilia, and link to his current caravan from Tijuana to Washington, D.C.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/14/world/americas/14sicilia.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-13141263
http://www.caravanforpeace.org/caravan/  ---  Please consider joining in some way.

For more on Roy Beck -- https://www.numbersusa.com/content/learn/about/roy-beck-executive-director.html

* http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/23/kris-kobach-immigration-lawsuit-obama_n_1825272.html

 The Good Samaritan "after Van Gogh"
 
Illumination by Kathy Brahney
 

No comments:

Post a Comment