Here’s a horrifying statistic for you (Warning! Autoplay video at that link!).
Before they can reach the American Dream, many migrant women have to survive a Mexican nightmare. A staggering 80 percent of Central American girls and women crossing Mexico en route to the United States are raped along the way, according to directors of migrant shelters interviewed by Fusion.
That’s up from previous reports by non-profit organizations like Amnesty International that estimate the number at 60 percent.
So the conservative estimate is 60%? Yet the Republican perspective on these people is that they are lazy moochers who parasitize American society — when they’re actually strong, ambitious people who have survived a harrowing struggle to get here.
The range of arguments I hear against giving all those recent immigrants asylum:
“They’re just making it up. It’s not as bad as they say.”
“They broke the law, so they don’t deserve our sympathy. No mercy in this dojo!”
Perhaps the most callous of all though is:
“Okay fine, maybe it is that bad, but you know, some things happen and we all die someday. It’s a waste of time to try and prevent EVERY bad thing, we just need to look after our own.”
Despite this refugee crisis (thanks in no small part to the U.S. treating Central America as its playground), we still hear the anti-immigrant crowd saying, “Go to the back of the line and wait your turn!” like their circumstances could accomodate that.
It’s almost like I-got-mine-fuck-you, except most of the xenophobes never had to get theirs. They were born here.
And then they get here, and as ‘illegal’ human beings (how is that a thing?), will be subject to higher rates of abuse of all kinds, wage theft, and deportation if she’s ever caught scraping shit out of our toilets (yes, our, who cleans your office/school/mall toilets, do you think?), but not before detention at the hands of the friendly, never-bigoted, always nonviolent ‘justice system’, where she can catch one of those diseases she didn’t bring here, but which she is unvaccinated for, because no freeloading on our medical system, and her cellmate is a kid who was never vaccinated because ZOMGAUTISM!!1!1!, and then sent back.
Where she’ll try again, because the premises haven’t changed, and she’s rational, unlike those who decry her presence (but not til after she’s done her chores!).
Here in Australia, we’re detaining refugees on offshore facilities, because it gives the government more flexibility in treating them like shit, and we’re keeping them imprisoned indefinitely to serve as a warning to others. Despite the claim that we have to do this because of the huge burden allowing them in would place on our economy, we’re spending several orders of magnitude more on detention that it would ever cost to actually let them live here. One comment that has stuck with me is that we could pay for their board, accommodation and train them all to be doctors for less than we’re spending on caging them like animals. We’re spending AU$500k per detainee, and yet children aren’t given clean clothing, books, decent food, medical attention.
For ultimate irony, we have a Prime Minister who is trying to boost his constantly falling popularity through military posturing about how we have to get involved in Iraq because of how terrible that situation is while simultaneously imprisoning people fleeing from the region because they’re “cheating”. He also once shat out this charming little justification:
To get another angle at republican handling of refugees, read ”The Blood Telegram”
(Winner of the 2014 Lionel Gelber Prize for Foreign Affairs)
“Gary J. Bass shows how Nixon and Kissinger supported Pakistan’s military dictatorship as it brutally quashed the results of a historic free election. The Pakistani army launched a crackdown on what was then East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), killing hundreds of thousands of people and sending ten million refugees fleeing to India — one of the worst humanitarian crises of the twentieth century”
— — —
I am old enough to recall that bloody war. Two million women were gang-raped by the West Pakistan army. ten million East Pakistanis fled to India. Finally India got fed up with this and wiped out the Pakistani army in the East, creating the state of Bangladesh.
Thorough this war, USA remained closely allied with Pakistan, Nixon (or maybe Kissinger) once said if the Indians were upset about getting so many refugees, why simply don’t they shoot them at the border?
Fuck Kissinger. Fuck the ghost of Richard Nixon.
<republican>If they had stayed at home, they wouldn’t have been raped.</republican>
OK, I’ve heard this rephrased as the following argument:
“The trip from Central America to the U.S. is hugely dangerous for anybody, but doubly so for kids. Rape is actually pretty far down the list of Bad Things Likely To Happen. However, if the kids who have made it so far are given asylum, it will just encourage more floods of kids to try to make the trip, putting them in situations no kid should ever be in. So we should deport them as soon as possible, in order to deter other kids from being placed in harm’s way.”
My inclination is to let these kids stay here, because they must have been amazingly tough to make it here in the first place, and we could use people like that. But this this is the best argument I’ve heard for the opposite viewpoint. What do you all think?
This whole situation just disgusts me. I simply can not understand the mindset that says “I got mine, fuck you”. Honestly now, what the fuck does it take from you to be sympathetic and helpful to those in need, like these immigrants clearly are? A dollar or two per month extra in taxes? Is it even that much?
This is one of the reasons I agree with The Walton about borders. They are inherently oppressive and should have no place in civilized society–at least, not as means of limiting and controlling the movement of people. These children are being discriminated against–raped, beaten, killed, and then denied any redress for these crimes against them–because of an accident of geography and birth.
@9 brucegee1962
It’s not like the risks are unknown. The entire reason people are making the journey, and adults are sending their kids on the journey, is that the situation they are escaping is so bad that even the horrors of the journey are a better option. Moreover, if asylum seeking wasn’t made so difficult and people didn’t need to sneak over the border, the journey wouldn’t be so horrible to begin with.
If one group of prospective immigrants gets their cases expedited, ALL prospective immigrants should get the same deal. And if we’re gonna do that, we might as well overhaul the whole damn system while we’re at it.
I’m pretty sure what the Repigfuckers are really thinking is “…but I didn’t get MY turn… :(”
*epic spit*
Seconding everything SallyStrange said.
brucegee1962,
Like Knabb says, being in Central America is hugely dangerous for kids. It’s not like they’re living stable, healthy lives until they randomly decide to hike across a continent for funsies.
Some of the kids we send back to Honduras are being murdered almost as soon as they get there. So yeah, that may be the best argument you’ve heard for that position, but it’s still a crap one. The people making it are basically just choosing to have these kids die or be raped somewhere farther away, so they don’t have to watch.
CaitieCat @#23
So true. I have often noted that the college educated, typically liberal staff of major technology businesses routinely put trash out in the halls labeled “Basura.” Presumably this to help the cleaning people identify the stuff to go away because, as you say, we know who cleans our offices and apparently they can only read Spanish.
I wonder what percentage of those women and girls pretty much know what they are in for along the way, and once they get here, and make that journey anyway. Of course, they may be leaving something just as bad or worse, but that’s a staggering amount of determination.
In the States, it seems that sort of sheer determinations is frequently used in attempt to deny someone something, but with zero personal cost.