Response to refugees lives in gray area
Watching the refugee crisis unfold in Europe these past few weeks, with millions desperately fleeing bloodshed and poverty in Syria, Libya and other places, I saw an image that struck me: a small boy receiving a teddy bear when he arrived in Germany.
A tiny gesture, sure. But compare that with the reception Central American children received in the U.S. as they fled bloodshed and poverty in their countries: a group of angry Americans blocking their buses and shouting for the children to go back home.
That scene played out last year as federal immigration officials, trying to alleviate overcrowding at facilities along the border, tried to send three busloads of children to a facility in Murrieta, Calif. The crowd got its wish when the buses were diverted elsewhere, but the scene was an ugly reminder of how this nation of immigrants can often forget its past and reject those fleeing for their lives.
To be clear, I’m not defending illegal immigration or calling for open borders. The fact that we have 11 million undocumented immigrants in this country is a reminder of a broken immigration system that should be overhauled.
But there’s a big difference between people trying to come into the country for economic reasons and refugees fleeing for their lives. Since 2013, more than 138,000 children tried to cross the southwest border without their parents, unaccompanied minors whose parents felt it was better to send them off alone on the dangerous trek through Mexico rather than keep them at home.
In El Salvador, gang violence has become so vicious that the country recorded 911 homicides in August, the highest monthly total since the nation’s civil war ended 23 years ago. Honduras now has the highest homicide rate in the world and Guatemala’s is the fifth-highest.
I understand that European governments have in many cases accepted refugees as an act of last resort in the face of a migrant crisis that has led to 2,850 dying as they tried to cross the treacherous Mediterranean Sea, according to the United Nations.
But now that the government of Germany has announced it will accept up to 500,000 refugees a year, and other European countries have followed suit, the reaction of those countries makes me envious.
The German navy created a “Stuffed Animal Task Force” to ensure that children plucked from the sea are given something to hold onto during the dangerous journey. Austrian citizens have donated so many items for arriving refugees that many end up being thrown away. British volunteers are seeing their offices inundated with donated goods.
The response in the U.S. to last summer’s unaccompanied minor crisis was far more subdued. Churches in Austin pulled together emergency kits for the arriving children. A teen in California organized a clothing drive. But for the most part, those children were greeted by admonitions and politicians fighting to keep them out of their communities.
The problem, I think, lies in the fact that we’ve gotten to a point where we’ve conflated undocumented immigrants, economic immigrants, refugees and asylum-seekers. The immigration debate has become a blackand-white argument between those who encourage people seeking a new beginning in the U.S. and those intent on keeping the rest of the world out. We’ve lost the ability to see shades of gray, to separate a child fleeing threats of kidnapping in Honduras with a person just seeking a better-paying job here.
Americans should continue pressing Congress and the White House to address the nation’s immigration system. But as that debate rages on, we should never let it blind us to the point that we can’t even rustle up an old teddy bear to give to a frightened child looking for help.