immigrants

The Marsh Girl

April 13, 2019

“Yet in reality, she was only an abandoned child, a little girl surviving on her own in a swamp, hungry and cold, but we didn’t help her. Except for one of her only friends, Jumpin’, not one of our churches or community groups offered her food or clothes. Instead, we labeled and rejected her because we thought was was different. But, ladies and gentlemen, did we exclude Miss Clark because she was different, or was she different because we excluded her? If we had taken her in as one of our own, I think that is what she would be today, If we had fed, clothed, and loved her, invited her into our churches and homes, we wouldn’t be prejudiced against her.”

-Delia Owens

 

Unalienable Rights

December 19, 2018

‘In this world,

hate never yet dispelled hate.

Only love dispels hate.

This is the law,

ancient and inexhaustible.’

-Buddha

~

‘Seek justice,

encourage the oppressed.

Defend the cause of the fatherless,

plead the case of the widow.’

-Isaiah 1:17-18

~

‘Theirs was the fullness of heaven and earth;

the more that they gave to others, the more they had.’

-Kwang-Tze

~

‘Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.’

-Mark Twain

~

‘Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.

II Corinthians 1:17

Declaration of Independence

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all (wo)men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness —that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

“As above, so below; as below, so above.”

No human is illegal.

September 12, 2018

I recently met a professor who left a predominantly white college to teach undocumented youth in Souther California. When I asked him how it was going, he said, “Best move I ever made. My previous students felt entitled and demanded to be entertained. My undocumented students are hungry to learn, hard working,  and courageous enough to keep moving beyond their comfier zones.”

America will be renewed by people with those qualities. And if we who have privilege and power will welcome them, collaborate with them, and help remove the obstacles in their way, the years ahed will be full of promise for all of us.

-Parker Palmer, On the Brink of Everything

CNSNews.com

Susan Jones/Sept. 12, 2018

https://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/susan-jones/ice-issues-proposed-rule-keep-families-together-pending-immigration-rulings

On Sept. 7, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) issued a proposed regulation that would make it easier for the government to detain adults along with their children — but even that family unity plan is controversial.

Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) on Tuesday night accused the Trump administration of intending to “establish internment camps to lock up children behind barbed wire.”

“So we’re going from the horrendous policy of ripping children out of their parents’ arms, and of course we’re still trying to reunify all those families — to a new strategy of building internment camps that would be funded through…I.C.E.”

Merkley told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow he has obtained a document showing that the Department of Homeland Security is taking $10 million out of the FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) budget and is transferring that $10 million to ICE to support detention centers where children could stay with their parents or legal guardians.

Until recently, the Trump administration was essentially arresting the adults, then putting their children in custody of centers run by the Health and Human Services Department.

Merkley and Maddow noted that the $10 million cut out of FEMA’s budget happened at the start of hurricane season, and now, with all eyes on the approaching Hurricane Florence, they criticized the transfer:

“So $10 million comes out of FEMA when we’re facing a hurricane season, knowing what happened last year,” Merkley said. “And then look what we’ve had since, a hurricane just barely missed Hawaii; a tropical storm that almost became a hurricane hit Mississippi; and now we have this hurricane Florence bearing down on the Carolinas.”

Merkley said he finds it “extraordinary” that the Trump administration would take money from FEMA’s response and recovery budget to build what he calls “family internment camps.”

“And we haven’t done anything like that since World War II,” Merkley said. “It absolutely comes from a dark and evil place in the heart of this administration. They’re going from one strategy of inflicting trauma on children to a new strategy that they’re trying to implement to inflict trauma on children, all to send, as Jeff sessions says, a message of deterrence to discourage people who are fleeing persecution from ever considering arriving on the shores of the United States of America.” 

(Merkley said much the same thing on CNN Wednesday morning.)

~

“We have been taught that in the annihilation of a mail, the ancient virtue of the family is destroyed. And in the destruction of the virtue and traditions of a people, vice and impiety overwhelm the whole race.”

Bhagavad Gita

Dollars for Social Good

August 7, 2018

 7 activist groups supporting families at the border that need our help right now.

[by Nicole Gallucci, Mashable]

1. Raices

2. ACLU

3. Young Center For Immigrant Children’s Rights

4. Border Angels

5. Kids In Need of Defense

6. Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project

7. Donate via ActBlue

https://mashable.com/2018/06/18/child-separation-immigration-charities-donate/#25xJ4fmF4qqE

Letter to the Editor

January 19, 2018

The Oregonian

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!

“This is the often-quoted phrase engraved on the base of the Statue of Liberty. For more than a century, the statue with its inscription has been a beacon of hope for immigrants — many without “merit” — who have fled to our shores, seeking a better life in our country.

We would do well to reflect on what this inscription means to us and what the Statue of Liberty represents before we give our assent to building walls, limiting immigration to favored foreigners and kicking Dreamers out of our country.”

Mike Kane, Wilsonville

1.18.19

September 7, 2017

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