Do You Really Care About These Children?
- Rai Rojas
- Jun 18, 2018
- 2 min read
I am a refugee. I was an actual 7-year-old asylum seeker in the late 1960s. I remember the days of uncertainty, the pain in my parent's faces, the saying of goodbyes (some of them were forever goodbyes.) And I mostly remember getting to America.
In my 7-year-old mind my first impression is that America was clean and that America was kind. The relief and smiles on parents' faces was all the reassurance I needed. They knew we were safe.
I now read all of the lamentations and criticism of how America is treating this most recent migration crisis and I am simply amazed by the myopic, slanted, and uniformed view held and espoused by so many well-meaning white people.
Here's the thing, these children, (the ones everyone is losing their minds over) they are in as safe a place as they have been in months. Below is a sampling of photos of what these children MUST endure just to get to the United States border.
The train rides out of Central America and through Mexico are harrowing and life-threatening.
Those who survive the train rides have to walk many thirsty miles in the heat, often hungry and on unpaved desert paths. They sleep where ever and when ever they can. Usually outside - the lucky ones find abandoned and vermin filled structures.
The few families who make the trek never know the dangers they will face. Coyotes (the deadly two-legged variety) are everywhere. Ready to rape, rob, and kill.
This is a group of murdered El Salvadoran migrants who refused to join the local cartel.
These are the rape trees. They litter the desert and mark the spots where women have been brutalized and killed.
So please pardon the hell out of me if I don't share the unbridled and sometimes unhinged outrage and angst over immigrant children being held in American Custody. The children and young adults are in air conditioned environment where they get food, water and medical care.
Does it look as if they are incarcerated? Sure - but immigrating isn't easy. My own father was in a forced labor camp for over a year before we left Cuba. We were separated at the Miami airport to have physicals, receive inoculations and given food.
I can't imagine a parent who has just traversed some of the most dangerous and inhospitable land in this continent wouldn't be relieved to know that their child was being taken care of. There are no coyotes here. There are no rape trees here. I think it's shameful to use these families, these kids for political gain.
But then again - that's all progressive know how to do. They stand on the bodies of children and celebrate their misery.