Both parties fail refugees and fail America along with them
SAN DIEGO >> Now that both sides have had their bouts of deflection and denial, we must untangle the mess at the U.S.-Mexico border.
As you know, a big part of that mess is that — before they could plead their case for refugee status — more than 2,500 children were separated with no plan to reunite them with their families.
America doesn’t play fair. It insists that those who seek refuge follow the rules — then it changes the rules. It tells the desperate to only come through designated ports of entry; but, when people do so, it turns them away.
We say that asylum-seekers must show “credible fear” of persecution, then we declare — as the Trump administration did recently — that victims of antiLGBT abuse, domestic assault and gang violence need not apply.
Before liberals get all high and mighty, a similar crackdown occurred in 2014. The Obama administration made it harder for those seeking refugee status to get asylum by narrowing the definition of what it means for someone to face a “significant possibility” of persecution.
Neither of the two major political parties cares about immigrants or refugees. They only care about their own interests.
After all, fear is a bipartisan affliction. Democrats are afraid that foreigners will take jobs from their union buddies. Republicans worry that newcomers — as Fox News host Tucker Carlson said last week — want to “change your country forever.”
Contrary to what uninformed and dishonest reporters and anchors told you about how all this inhospitableness toward foreigners began two months ago, it was more like 200 years ago.
Families have been separated at the border, in one form or another, for the last 25 years under presidents from both parties. Border enforcement is not child’s play. The Department of Homeland Security is a blunt instrument that isn’t equipped, or inclined, to run daycare centers for children — whether unaccompanied or separated from their parents.
Yet the political extremes are no more equipped, or inclined, to engage in much personal introspection.
Liberals have a lot of emotion invested in the narrative they’ve created over the years that claims they’re better, more enlightened and more compassionate than conservatives; and if you challenge them on any of that by pointing out their indifference to the abuses committed just a few years ago by Barack Obama’s administration, they’ll come out swinging.
Meanwhile, conservatives are advancing a narrative of their own and hoping images of brownskinned foreigners entering the United States will scare people into voting for the GOP in November. Instead of offering a solution to the current crisis, Trump simply accuses Democrats of wanting an “open border” and being eager to — as he recently said — “let MS-13 all over our country.”
The left needs to stop running away from recent history. Conservatives need to stop deflecting attention away from what Trump is doing wrong.
Whether Obama supporters will ever admit it or not, the 44th president carried out many of the same abusive policies toward refugees as his successor, albeit more discreetly and less abrasively. He damaged our nation’s reputation as a haven for the persecuted and picked on. Those are the facts.
Obama failed at the border, but at least he seemed to aspire to what he promised the American people: hope and change. All the GOP offers, when uninvited guests arrive at the front door, is terror and nightmares.