Rebecca+C’s+2017+OpEd+Article

=**Free The People**=

I recently attended a march in LA advocating for the stop of rapid crack down on deportation of immigrants and the welcoming of refugees against the Muslim ban and wall. This, being,President Donald Trump’s executive order,barring immigrants from seven Muslim-majority nations and indefinitely blocking entry for syrian refugees,as well as the infamous order to build a mexican border wall and sweep up immigrants who are in the country illegally, has caused outrage. We all know that America still suffers from an infection that is racism. But most people figured as long as we didn’t talk about it, we could avoid dealing with it. There were many who remained willfully ignorant. Then when Trump came along, and dissed political correctness. He gave many the freedom to say what they genuinely felt, whether it be good or not. And guess what shocked the willfully ignorant? The increasingly clear fact that a large percentage of the american population is still racist. So the statement “Trump has ripped the scab off our countries racism” has become apparent.With President Trumps Muslim Ban he has made it okay to assume that an entire race is involved in terrorism. Isolating refugees in need. The United States has always had a moral obligation to admit refugees.I think there are at least three overlapping bases for these obligations. The first is that the US is sometimes responsible for the fact that someone has become a refugee. For example, people in Iraq and Afghanistan who have helped American forces by serving as translators or in other capacities have sometimes been put at risk because of this service. There are already stories of such people being excluded from admission (and hence, safety) as a result of Trump’s policy.The second basis for the obligation to refugees is simply the humanitarian duty to help people in desperate straits when one can do so. This duty has its roots in many different religious and secular ethical traditions. The United States has traditionally admitted more refugees than any other country (although Germany has clearly passed the US in this respect in the past few years). The complete ban on refugee admissions for four months and the subsequent reduction (by half) of the number who will be accepted is a failure to meet America’s humanitarian obligations.The third basis for the obligation to refugees is that the United States and most other countries have acknowledged that the international state system has a duty to protect refugees. In the wake of the failure of democratic states to protect Jewish refugees from the Nazis, the United States led the effort to create institutions that would prevent such a moral failure in the future. That regime already suffers from severe limitations, and the new Trump policy will undermine it further. It's indefinitely analogous, countless Jewish people fled Hitler in search of protection, and most of them did not get it. I think this is a point that's been made by a number of Jewish groups who are trying to welcome Syrian refugees. It's an irony, as many have noted, that this policy was announced on Holocaust Remembrance Day. At the time of the Holocaust, there were lots of Jews trying to flee Nazi Germany, and many Western states, including America and Canada, refused to accept them. President Trump's answer to the question of how many Syrian refugees are too many seems to be "none." None is too many. In the wake of World War II, in the wake of seeing what happened, we vowed never to let that happen again, and that's exactly what we're doing in the case of Syria.These people's lives are at stake, and if the United States turns them away, why do we assume other countries will take them in? And if no one else takes them in, what do we think will happen to them? The goal of the policy is to reduce the threat of terrorism, but many I think that the policy’s actual effect will be to increase the threat of terrorism because it will alienate Muslims throughout the world and will confirm the claim of ISIS that the United States is fundamentally hostile to Islam, but it won’t actually aid in preventing the entry of people who might pose a threat. Openness to immigrants and refugees has played a key role in making the United States what it is today and is a central element in the American ideal.



I am a child of an immigrant, as far as xenophobia and man made borders are concerned. I am also of indigenous descent so my ancestors watched white colonials immigrate to our lands. Now I say OUR because at the time it truly was. It's weird living with the dissonance of claiming an identity with pride, in order to uphold and value community efforts that brought my family and I here. While also knowing well that these visas and borders were constructed by immigrants go know think of themselves as rightful owners and not thieves. Yes, I am an immigrant. And no, I cannot be an immigrant into lands that are my rightful inheritance.

To think where an immigrant goes before they are deported out of this country is something no family member wants to think about. But they do, and It's been brought to my attention the analogous dehumanizing “Detention centers” undocumented immigrants go once they’re rounded up by ICE officers. These innocent as well as non innocent people have to go through one of the most gruesome and harsh conditions just for trying to start a new life in america. The so called “land of the free”. Detention centers for illegal immigrants is nothing new. In fact, these centers were running in both Obama’s AND Bush’s presidency. But this problem is going to get a lot worse with Trump’s terrible obsession with cracking down immigrants. These “ detention centers” are going to get extremely crowded (like they aren’t crowded enough). The immigrants are being held in cramped cold cells for more than 72 hours, (Department of Homeland Security’s own 2008 guidelines say the cells aren’t meant for more than 12-hour processing period), they’re being prevented from wearing extra layers of clothing, they’re woken up every 15 minutes, they’re given little to no medical care when needed, they’re sleeping on toilet paper so the cement floor won’t be as uncomfortable, they’re being deprived from regular routine of meals, as well as sleep deprived. For what? For coming here “illegally”?For not wanting to go through the painful decade of becoming”legal”?the government isn’t doing anything about this because since they’re “illegal”, they barely have the same constitutional rights as a prisoner. I don't know about your thoughts on this but it truly sounds like history is repeating itself.