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About Portland observer. (Portland, Or.) 1970-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 12, 2018)
Page 12 December 12, 2018 O PINION Opinion articles do not necessarily represent the views of the Portland Observer. We welcome reader essays, photos and story ideas. Submit to news@portlandobserver.com. Lessons from the Anti-Immigrant Rhetoric Moments that give me hope J asmine a guilera President Trump’s anti-immigrant rheto- ric hasn’t just infected U.S. politics. Now it’s made its way south of the border. As a caravan of hundreds of migrants arrive in Ti- juana, some residents there have started taking up Trump’s ideol- ogy. Juan Manuel Gastélum, the mayor of Tijuana, has been seen wearing a red “Make Tijuana Great Again” baseball cap. In an interview with Milenio News, he painted the migrants as a danger- ous threat. “Sure, there are some good peo- ple in the caravan, but many are very bad for the city,” Gastélum said. And on Nov. 19, a few hundred protested against the migrant car- avan in Tijuana chanting “Tijuana first.” In the days before the pro- test, locals even attacked some migrants with stones. These are the real effects of Trump’s rhetoric. Luckily, de- spite growing anti-immigrant by sentiments, there are still many in Mexico who support and defend the migrants. This gives me hope. Thousands of migrants are fac- ing a humanitarian crisis in Tijuana, after walking more than 2,500 miles. Many simply want their chance to seek asylum in the United States, which is their legal right. But they may have to wait grants to travel safely together to the United States. The media spectacle around the practice now obscures an important fact: Un- authorized migration to the U.S. has been declining for years. Last year, arrests at the border fell to a 46-year low. But just before the midterm elections, Trump decided to pick on a caravan of migrants from Honduras, telling U.S. residents All the administration has done is put the migrants — largely women and their children — at further risk, even subjecting them to attacks with tear gas, a weap- on so brutal that international law bans it in military combat. Mexicans themselves, once the target of Trump’s racist campaign (remember when he called them rapists and murders?), have start- ed repurposing Trump’s words to All the administration has done is put the migrants — largely women and their children — at further risk, even subjecting them to attacks with tear gas, a weapon so brutal that international law bans it in military combat. months for their chance. Not only are the migrants deal- ing with unsanitary, impoverished conditions while they wait. Now they have to face the hatred that’s resulted from Trump’s presidency before they even cross the border. Migrant caravans have existed for decades as a way for immi- that they’re criminals to stoke fear — and to make himself the hero of the story. Trump even deployed near- ly 6,000 military troops to the U.S.-Mexico border while the car- avan was still weeks away, mak- ing it clear to me that this was all just politics for Trump. point the arrow at a new target: migrants trying to escape some of the most dangerous countries in the world. I’m the daughter of Mexican immigrants who saw their own share of hatred when they arrived in the United States. It’s heart- breaking to me that Mexicans in Tijuana would now start turning their backs on these migrants, and it’s clear to me that Trump has in- fluenced them. Just listen to their chants of “Mexico first.” The situation is dire. But for all of the hatred that’s spewed out of this humanitarian crisis, there are hopeful moments. While hundreds of anti-immi- grant protesters took to the streets to express their anger, there were also people countering them with welcoming chants. Many along the caravan’s path welcomed the migrants, offer- ing food, shelter, and clothing. A new president in Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has also promised more humane treatment of the migrants, and plans to work with the Tijuana mayor to come up with a practical solution. If anti-migrant Mexicans are now taking after Trump, I hope more Americans will now take after the Mexicans who chose to welcome the refugees. No matter your ideology, they deserve to be treated humanely as they act on their legal right to seek asylum. Jasmine Aguilera is a freelance writer and reporter from El Paso, Texas. Distributed by OtherWords. org. Heartbreaking Images of the Attacks on Asylum-Seekers Border response a new moral and human low m arian W right e Delman It has come to this: tear-gassing toddlers. Heartbreaking images of the American gov- ernment’s attacks on asylum-seek- ers at the border. In one photo, a barefoot child in a diaper sobs, clutching her mother with one hand and a plastic ball—a lone prized possession—with the other. Her mother, who was pictured in a second photo desperately trying to flee from the tear gas with her two young children, told an interview- er: “I felt sad, I was scared. I want- ed to cry. That’s when I grabbed my daughters and ran. I thought my kids were going to die with me because of the gas we inhaled.” When I saw those pictures last month I was instantly transported back to Birmingham, Alabama in 1963, to segregationist police chief Bull Connor’s use of vi- cious police dogs and powerful by firehoses to attack black children marching for their freedom. I of- ten say that I do this work because I don’t want my grandchildren fighting the same fights we did back then. And yet here we find ourselves, with my grandchildren and young people across the country witnessing our government attacking small children for daring to dream of a better life. President Trump and Adminis- tration officials act as if gassing babies at the border is business as usual, just as they did when the public cried out about our gov- ernment ripping children from the arms of their parents and putting them in indefinite detention in cages and tent cities. But nothing about this is “usual” and we must not allow ourselves to become inured to cruelty and injustice. This is not who we should be as a nation. We must continue to come together, speak out at every turn and take a stand against the outrageous atrocities being com- mitted by President Trump under the guise of keeping Americans “safe.” The Children’s Defense Fund is working at the heart of this issue. When too few were paying atten- tion to the incarceration of asy- lum-seeking women and children in harmful for-profit detention centers, our Texas office fought to stop these detention centers from receiving state-issued child care licenses that would have allowed more children to be incarcerated there for even longer periods of time. Our affiliate was one of the first organizations to report the shameful practice of separating children and babies from their par- ents on the border. We must never ever give up, and we must keep fighting these evil acts. This administration’s attacks aren’t limited to small children and families outside our borders; they are taking action to harm immigrant families already in America, too. The administration has pro- posed changes to the “public charge” rule that have the potential to plunge millions of children and their immigrant families into pov- erty, hunger, and homelessness. When parents and other adults ap- ply for lawful permanent residen- cy or entry into the United States immigration officials currently consider whether that person is, or is likely to become, reliant on the government, or a “public charge.” The longstanding federal policy is to consider whether an individ- ual will rely on the government by examining whether he or she receives cash assistance or will need long-term care benefits. But the change proposed by the Trump administration would allow im- migration officials to deny green cards and visas to a much broader group of immigrants who use pub- lic benefits including non-emer- gency Medicaid, the Supplemen- tal Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), housing assistance, and the Medicare Part D low-income subsidy. With this change, the Depart- ment threatens to shut down le- gal paths to citizenship for fam- ilies that use these safety net programs—including those to which they are legally entitled— to feed their children, put a roof over their heads and keep them healthy. Even people who haven’t used these programs in the past can be denied a green card or visa if there is a suspected risk they are “likely” to use them in the future. Nearly 1 in 4 children in America has at least one immigrant parent, and nearly 90 percent of those children are citizens. By making legal use of safety net programs one of several new heavily weighted factors in de- termining whether an individual qualifies as a public charge, mil- lions of immigrants will be subject to this expanded definition of pub- lic charge, which is likely to cause both immigrants and their children to forego crucial food assistance, health coverage, and safe housing for fear of the consequences. Our inhumane treatment of families and children who come to America seeking a better life is degrading and diminishing us as a nation. It is not protecting us or making us great. Let us show immigrant children and families both inside and outside our bor- ders who we really are by stand- ing up for their safety, their lives and their right to pursue a better future. Marian Wright Edelman is President of the Children’s De- fense Fund.
