The growing humanitarian crisis at the United States and Mexico border which has seen over fifty thousand child refugees fleeing from Central America recently, has brought out the worst in America’s racists and it’s self serving, lying politicians. Last week’s angry mob of protesters in Texas who blocked the buses carrying hundreds of these children to a different holding center for processing, are a stunning and graphic example of the racism and fear residing in the hearts of many of the so-called “patriotic” God and guns bunch of Americans. The flat out lies that some republican politicians like Texas Senator and Creep Poster Child, Ted Cruz, are telling, with the aiding and abetting of right-wing media propagandists like Sean Hannity of Fox, are so transparently false I have to wonder how they can tell them with such straight faces.
These republicans and pundits know they are lying, they are thoughtfully crafted lies, but they are lies so easily disputed with widely known and easily understood facts, that even these sociopathic liars and actors must experience some embarrassment off camera when they have to speak with anyone personally who knows better. I have to wonder if the Texas Jack-Ass, Governor Rick Perry, went shopping for more new eye glasses to make him look intelligent, before he greeted President Obama this past Thursday on the tarmac in Texas. after talking such utter bullshit and non-sense on the television talk shows the week before. Rick Perry had said that “I hate to sound conspiratorial” as a preface to his conspiracy theory (lie he knows to be a lie) that the Obama Administration was either complicit or actually had planned the refugee crisis. He defended this ridiculous statement later on when pressed by reporters. And then he had to actually meet with and work with the president on Thursday. Was he embarrassed to see Mr. Obama in person after a week of talking shit? I don’t see how he couldn’t be, and I don’t see how Obama refrained from greeting him in private with “so, you dumb shit, two-bit hack from Texas, tell me about how I planned all this, or how I was complicit in it.”
Let’s go over the basic facts first: The fifty-thousand plus children being apprehended at our border trying to enter the United States began in large numbers in January of this year. Most of these children are from three Central America countries, Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador. Most, particularly those coming from Honduras, are believed to be fleeing extreme gang violence and lawlessness in their countries. While republican liars and the ignorant are harping about how Obama encouraged this, and all that other non-sense along the same vein, the fact is that how these children are being dealt with at the current moment by the Obama Administration is in accordance with a bi-partisan law signed by former President George W. Bush in 2008.
This law, the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2008, was meant to address the tragedy of child sex trafficking. Basically, the law requires that any unaccompanied children from a country other than Canada or Mexico, go through a special process before they are immediately deported to their country of origin, until their circumstances are understood. It grants them rights to an immigration hearing with an advocate, access to council, and then placement or care overseen by the Department of Health and Human Services. More detail about the histiory of this law can be found in this New York Times article: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/08/us/immigrant-surge-rooted-in-law-to-curb-child-trafficking.html
It has not been mentioned in any television network news program – at least to my knowledge – any context about the United States’s history or relationship with these Central American countries. The context I am referring to is decades of U.S. military intervention and interference in these countries, our backing of their brutal dictators, our training of torture and brutality to their police and military forces. Details are too numerous and complex to be covered in this blog, but it should be noted that these three countries, along with most of Latin America’s poorest and crime ridden countries, have received the most U.S. intervention into it’s affairs over the past few decades, leaving these countries in utter destruction. The reality is that the United States has been both a direct and indirect cause of much of these countries’ suffering, but you will not even hear that uttered in the public debate here. It’s assumed that the United States is the best country in the history of the world, and that these other countries don’t have their act together because they are inferior, and not our problem or responsibility.
This background history, cloaked in near invisibility to the majority of Americans, plays a part in the racist, anti-immigration rhetoric and fear that infect and motivate the good, gun-toting, freedom lovin’ Americans to take to the streets to stop the busses full of children from even being processed by U.S. authorities in accordance to the 2008 law. These buses were filled with real human beings, children, who had travelled hundreds of miles through dangerous circumstances, fleeing for their life from violence and depravity in their home country. The protesters were real Americans, acting as if they were expelling an invading army of terrorist, freedom haters. Disease was the justification from many of these protesters. They were protecting their children from third world diseases. Signs reading “go home” and other compassionate slogans were everywhere in these mobs, as was the red, white and blue American flags being waved. Regardless of whether or not the children on the buses could read or speak English, it is a safe bet that they understood the gist: we Americans hate you, fear you, go away, we don’t care what you are returned to.
Another great article in the New York Times offers an illuminating portrait of the human tragedies these children are fleeing from, and I highly recommend you read it, please copy and paste the link into your browser:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/10/world/americas/fleeing-gangs-children-head-to-us-border.html
And now, some of the obvious lies and bullshit coming out of some republicans and right-wing pundits:
Senator Creep Ted Cruz of Texas: “…the president is right that it’s a humanitarian crisis, but it is a crisis of his own creation. This is the direct consequence of President Obama’s lawlessness.”
Speaker of the House of Clowns, John Boehner: “This is a problem of the president’s own making. He’s been president for five and a half years. When’s he going to take responsibility for something?”
Senator Fish Face from Kentucky, Mitch McConnell, in response to Mr. Obama’s request of emergency funding of 3.7 billion dollars to deal with the crisis: republicans wouldn’t be giving the president the money “that would allow him to sustain his current failed policy.”
Senator Redneck Richard C. Shelby of Alabama: “I personally have no confidence that pouring billions of dollars into our current immigration system will solve the crisis. I think we have to get serious about enforcing our current laws and protecting our border if we’re ever to get different results.”
High paid Fox Propaganda Asshole Sean Hannity: “This is getting out of hand, all because the government refuses to send people home. I’m not sure why we refuse to enforce our laws.”
It’s pathetic that the above are actual policy makers and opinion shapers. Not a shred of truth in their soundbites, and they know it. They are merely exploiting the fear and dislike of immigrants, and for what? The republican party frequently talks about how much they love children, must protect children, the “sanctity of life” and how “every life is precious.” In the last presidential republican primaries, Governor Rick Perry, in response to criticism of Texas allowing “illegal” immigrants to attend college in Texas with in-state tuition rates and tax payer funded breaks, said of his opponents and critics on the issue: “If you say that we should not educate children who have come into our state for no other reason than they have been brought there by no fault of their own, I don’t think you have a heart,”
I would add to that, Governor Perry, that if you can now stand up there and tell the lies you are currently telling, using the children of the humanitarian crisis on your state’s border as political pawns, after having previously accused opponents of yours of having no heart for their feverish anti-immigration policies and rhetoric, that you sir, have no heart, no shame, and of course as you have already proven, no brain – no matter how many eye glasses you put on your phony face in hopes of looking smart.
There needs to be real immigration reform in this country, but it needs to be based on reality and not racism and fear mongering. There is an immigration reform bill already passed in the Senate, but Speaker and Weeper John Boehner will not even bring it to a vote on the House floor. President Obama has deported more illegal immigrants than any of his predecessors, and has poured more money and manpower into the further militarization of the border than previous administrations as well. But any serious talk or effort at immigration policy is being sabotaged and blocked by the republican party, with their idiots often chanting “we have to secure our border first,” even though it is more secure than it ever has been, and that illegal immigration has subsided significantly the past few years. And now, these same clowns, crying “lawlessness” and demanding that President Obama do something, are blocking his efforts to do just that. And they are doing it publicly, barely challenged by the mainstream media. It’s pathetic, and routine here, but it is the children and families of these children that will suffer.