Migration Crisis upon Crisis
As the migrant crisis at the border worsens, federal and state authorities acknowledge the inevitable when hundreds and thousands of people are crammed into small, poorly ventilated rooms with minimal plumbing facilities, families and unaccompanied children coming from regions with poor health care in the first place:
The Department of Homeland Security says unaccompanied minors in Texas receive more ”advanced medical assessments” and care once they are moved from detention centers into one of the state's 29 federal emergency shelters. At the shelters — which are managed by private companies or nonprofit organizations and financed by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement — they go through a “well-child exam” and are given childhood vaccinations “to protect against communicable diseases.” They are also screened for tuberculosis and quarantined if they are diagnosed with a contagious disease or found to have been exposed to it (Texas Tribune 24 June 2014).
Some would argue that this is standard for any migrant's experience coming to the US -- it almost sounds like an Ellis Island or Castle Garden where migrants were screened, naturally enough, for their treatment and for the protection of the larger dense city populations of their destination. Many of my ancestors crossed the Atlantic into Philadelphia, New Orleans, Boston, Halifax, and of course New York. They would have received such basic wellness exams, too. But the danger here is not the potential of contagious disease as much as the reality of actual life-threatening injuries and infections:
In the last week, Garza and at least three other doctors say they have treated hundreds of recent detainees for abdominal pain, skin abrasions and dehydration.
“They are just the things you’d expect from a 15-day trip through Central America,” Garza said. “We’re doing as much as we can with over-the-counter medicine.” (Texas Tribune 24 June 2014)When the photos were released of children and families cramped into holding cells like a third-world prison. But this wasn't the third world -- this was Texas and Arizona.
I have a very good friend who years ago began working as a teacher in one of these federal ICE-outsourced "private companies" and who has worked his way into management. Last week I wanted to hear his opinion of the crisis, knowing that he would have some insider info. His e-mail response:
Its a huge crisis right now.
Im over here in Arizona helping open a new shelter for these kids. There are thousands of kids in the border waiting to be transferred to different facilities. I've been here two weeks transforming a hotel into a shelter. A 300 room hotel full of shit and trash. Its been a lot of hard work but were almost there. We expect to have the kids here by the 26th. I'll be going back around the 30th. I have only been off 1 day since i got here two weeks ago and that's because our crew was too tired. So yea, I don't get into the politics, I don't have time to see whats going on. What do you think? Idk when its going to stop, but it's not gonna stop anytime soon, that's for sure. After this program there are many more soon to be open. I wish I could help but i have class this July, so that's why I'll be heading back home.He's got more heart and concern for this people -- these humans -- than do Texas politicians and Washington bureaucrats. He's young and strong and can work days without a break for strangers he'll never meet again in his lifetime, giving them a place to sleep with some modicum of dignity, much more than those gutless commentators we find in the on-line comments sections of newspapers who simply say, "Send them back" or "We don't need to be spending any money on these illegals." The crisis is complex but the xenophobia and racism presented by some attempts to simplify the question to a simple "us vs them" argument, without considering the regions of crime and poverty from which these humans come. Their xenophobia notwithstanding, this is really only a portion of what we'll be seeing for years. As my friend states, "it's not gonna stop anytime soon, that's for sure."
And as much sympathy we must have for these poorest of the poor, perhaps we should pray more for our own souls, which have hardened into some pharisaical gospel of hate and fear. The Vietnamese Boat People arrived in 1978-79, with an estimated 800,000 accepted into America (an an untold number lost at sea); over one million Cuban exiles have arrived since the revolution in 1959; the Salvadoran-American population is well over one million due to Reagan's interference in that civil war (some claim Carter started the US intervention, but he only politicizing the murder of American nuns; it was Reagan who actually provided arms to the government; the business of America has always been war).
And yet, even after these three major immigration movements from the past forty years, we haven't learned our lesson. Here we have thousands fleeing from poverty, disease, and crime, and instead of offering haven, we process them. We turn them around. We send them back. And we're supposed to feel good about "protecting our borders" when this happens.
https://plus.google.com/u/0/+BruceJMartin Twitter @comstone
