"Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me....."(?)

I was way out of date in my understanding of the current crop of news on the immigration situation in the USA. I was still of the mindset that the immigration problems the President, Rick Perry and some of our Oklahoma politicians have been talking about were the usual problems concerned with Mexican nationals crossing the US border illegally, then finding work and remaining, undocumented, in the USA. I was wrong on this. That's what comes of not watching TV news, ever, and eschewing local newspapers due to their heavily Republican leanings - blood pressure can only stand so much!

I'm up to date now. Husband read aloud a few lines from a piece in a local newspaper yesterday, about the facility recently set up to house around 1,100 young illegal immigrants at Fort Sill, Lawton (a half hour's drive from where we live). My response - "But I thought the flow of Mexicans coming into the US to find work had declined a lot recently - so what's happening?"

It turns out that the recent influx, of thousands of mainly young to teenage children, and some with their mothers, from South American countries such as Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador are fleeing dangerous and inhumane conditions in their homelands, and are hoping for some kind of asylum in the USA.

Reading around the net I was sickened by some commentary on this issue. It seems a good proportion of our God-fearing, church-going, US-loving citizens would rather kick out these kids, no questions asked, no aid provided. Yeah, these Americans love the unborn fetus so much it hurts, yet once a child is out in the wide and unkind world they don't give a damn about 'em or their needs.

There are at least three large government facilities set up to temporarily house this new influx of immigrant youngsters: one in California, one in Texas and that at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, much to the chagrin of Governor Mary Fallin, Sen. James Inhofe, and Rep. Tom Cole. Compassion is, of course, an unknown emotion to Oklahoma's ruling body.

I realise that there will have to be limits to what can be done for these young would-be immigrants, but a compassionate approach to investigating possibilities costs little or nothing - and money spent on this issue trumps any amount spent on sending drones to attack suspected would-be terrorists, while in the process murdering many innocents abroad - including women and children

It's quite hard to find a fair and sane assessment of the situation as a whole. I eventually found a piece by a lawyer in California, where there has been a two-fold reaction to the new immigration situation there, half in favour of giving all help possible, half in favour of immediate deportation.

Here is the opening paragraph from his piece at Andrew Nietor's Blog

First, Remember Why They Came
There are many reasons people have come to this country over the centuries. Sometimes it is the pull of what our nation has to offer, and sometimes it is the push of war or violence or famine in the home country. Make no mistake about the current crisis: it is not just a quantitative increase in the number of undocumented aliens coming to this country for work or for "a better life." The unspeakable horrors of violence sweeping Central America recently, including widespread violence against women and children, is unlike anything that has been seen there in decades. When the capital of Honduras is second only to Aleppo, Syria in the list of most murders, and when our own State Department declares that violence against women in Guatemala and across Central America has reached war-time levels, you can understand why people are fleeing, or sending their children abroad. Would you do less for your child if she were statistically more likely to be sexually assaulted than find employment? We can at least be aware of what conditions are behind the crisis as we formulate a response. And we can remember that our own law compels us to listen to a refugee's plight before a decision is made as to whether to allow her to remain here or return.

Mr Nietor goes on to contrast, in detail, the differing reactions of California residents.

“I take issue with many people's description of people being "Illegal" Immigrants. There aren't any illegal Human Beings as far as I'm concerned.”
― Dennis Kucinich

A Fine Subject for Speculation

Cannonfire had a thought-provoking post up yesterday:
Cancer conspiracy speculation: It goes way beyond Hugo Chavez. We'll never know for sure how much that is now pure speculation was indeed fact, skillfully hidden. It would be amazing if all the named South American leaders afflicted by cancer were in fact murdered: assassinated in slow motion. A list:


Lula - Former President of Brazil; Dilma - Current president of Brazil; Cristina Kirchner - Argentina's current president; Nestor Kirchner - Former president of Argentina; Hugo Chavez - Venezuela's President; Evo Morales - Bolivian socialist leader; Fernando Lugo - the Paraguayan President; Ollanta Humala - President of Peru.

"If the world were good for nothing else, it is a fine subject for speculation." (William Hazlitt).

Assassination is usually envisaged as carried out via gun shot(s), but that method has obvious drawbacks. Its immediacy makes it more than likely that the shooter will be identified and apprehended. There's always the chance that the shot(s) will miss target, but still result in capture of the gunman. Technological progress must surely, by now, have afforded would-be assassins more sophisticated and insidious ways of attaining their objective. It's not at all in the realm of sci-fi or dystopia that a direct method of inducing cancer in a targeted individual has been developed. It'd be nigh on impossible to track down the guilty party, or to pinpoint the cause, especially in the case of an otherwise healthy and vibrant non-smoker.

Thinking on this brought to mind a non-shooting assassination case in London, in 1978. The assassinated was Georgi Markov a Bulgarian dissident writer. (From Wikipedia)

Markov originally worked as a novelist and playwright in his native country, then governed by a communist regime under Chairman Todor Zhivkov, until his defection from Bulgaria in 1969. After relocating to the West, he worked as a broadcaster and journalist for the BBC World Service, the US-funded Radio Free Europe, and Germany's Deutsche Welle. Markov used such forums to conduct a campaign of sarcastic criticism against the incumbent Bulgarian regime. As a result of this, it has been speculated that the Bulgarian government may have decided to silence him, and may have asked the KGB for help. He died as a result of an incident on a London street when a micro-engineered pellet containing ricin was fired into his leg via an umbrella wielded by someone associated with the Bulgarian secret police.

(Photograph: Fernando Llano/AP)