President Trump just proclaimed a national emergency. Seems like we are being invaded by a hoard of human traffickers, drug runners, gang members and other undesirables. Photos of the aliens show men who look like farm workers, lots of poor women and very young children. Most of these are from Central America and they have walked and ridden on the tops of freight trains to get to our borders. None of them are threatening border personnel with pitchforks. And they aren’t in anyone’s face. Many are lining up to seek asylum from the violence in their own countries, especially El Salvador and Honduras. The people in the caravans look to me like refugees. They look desperate.
El Salvador has a murder rate of 65 per 100,000 residents. The US rate is 4.9%. (Christian Century, Nov. 21, 2018, p.7) Honduras is another nation with many towns and neighborhoods run by vicious gangs. The gangs control drug trafficking and have the police and military in their back pockets. Ditto for many areas of Mexico.
If you haven’t lived in one of these countries or visited the US-Mexican border, you don’t understand what it feels like to live in a country where if you have no money, you have no rights, no food security and no security for your children.
The caravans are unsettling. But all most of these people want is basic human respect. They want to be accepted at our borders so that they can find jobs and a home. They come here searching for peace like many immigrants before them. For many, they simply can’t go back.
Let’s face it. Many of us don’t want El Salvadorans and Hondurans (and Mexicans) here because of their race. A century ago, Italians were considered greasy and dumb. Irish immigrants during the mid-nineteenth century came to the US and searched for jobs only to be met with signs like”No Irish Need Apply.” Many of the new immigrants are of color. Trump and his supporters think these people will tarnish our whiteness.
Trump’s phony emergency hides the really urgency that we face as Americans: Our understanding of the nature of our country as a place of welcome to all races and ethnicities is rapidly diminishing.