"Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
-Emma Lazarus, The New Colossus
I'm well aware our history as Americans is bigoted. Machines lubricated in the blood of the poor, their pedestals and working parts forged by slaves, names forgotten to history. The land stolen from its inhabitants and abused. That the basic ideals were made by rapists who denied the humanity of others. Those ideals, read without context in plain language are the building blocks of my understanding of right and wrong. When they say "All People," they don't exclude the people entering the country irregularly. They don't exclude people on the other side of the world, they don't exclude people because of who and how they love.
The rights of the PEOPLE, means all people. The country has the room, it has the resources and it has the needs for more people. Our ideals, at their plain language best do not allow for the detention of the child who's committed a crime no greater than jaywalking. A crime that only exists because we deign it to. Our ideals do not allow for the torture of even convicted criminals, much less people being detained before trial, much less children being detained for a crime they are not old enough to understand if it was stated in plain language to them.
We like to call this "The Land of the Free, Home of the Brave." These people show more Bravery than most natural born Americans, risking everything, even life, for a chance of being freer. Some like to say "The Land of the Free, Because of the Brave." And I ask you, who shows more bravery? A family trekking here at the cost of everything? Or a well paid, well equipped, well supported government agent greeting them with a gun and directing them to a cage? We are destroying our freedom by locking up and deporting the brave people who come here seeking it. We'll only have the freedom left to Choose between CNN and Fox News. The freedom to choose which color sugar water we like best, which fast food restaurant we eat from. The rest will be directed to us by government bootleather.
We prototyped this behavior on accused terrorists at Guantanamo Bay. We now expand it to migrants and those that the government accuses of being inside our borders without a permission slip. Who will they deploy it to next? The people who dare to live and love as their heart leads them? Those who like guns? People without financial means?
First they came for the Arabs and Muslims, and called them terrorists,
Now They've come for the immigrants, calling them an invasion,
Who will they come for next?
If you don't speak out against it, will anyone speak up for you when the time comes?