Refugees

I came across the video of a gaggle of screaming geese in Murietta California.
They were upset that the evil federal gubmint was intending to process three charter buses worth of “illegal” women and children.
These illegal people had come to the southern border, not for the usual reason, that of obtaining employment picking our tomatoes or cutting our meat...no...
These illegal humans had braved the gangs and the cartels and the intervening hostile governments and pseudo-governments...trudged through the desert in early summer...in order to escape the low intensity conflicts in their own countries.
These three “countries” in central america are in a rather sad state.
Ineffectual local and national governments, infused with rampant corruption, are simply no match...on the local scale...for the Maras...that is, “Gangs”...who actually run the show in these places.
Hunting the Maras is another group....the Vigilantes...
These are former(or current. It remains murky.) police and military men...some of whom were trained at our own Fort Benning...who seem to be just as bad as the Maras. Perhaps worse, due to the tacit support given them by what passes as Officialdom.
This scenario is a direct grandchild of the Reagan Doctrine...but it goes back much further than that. See: Monroe Doctrine.
Our tax dollars have been supporting dictators, training death squads, and funding coups in the region for a century or more.
Since the 1980's, it's gotten orders of magnitude worse.
Nafta, Cafta and other “free trade” agreements have gutted the local economies of these places...mainly by forcing our subsidized corn into their markets, impoverishing their agricultural sector (which is historically composed of what we used to call “small farmers”).Having no way to make money...and seeing as how artificial entities like Cargill,Tyson,and Swift (just to name 3) continue to hire such illegal people, as a matter of policy... these unemployed illegal men, invariably head north.
The Maras and Vigilantes are simply the predators left behind to fill the void.
At every turn in this centuries long saga, we, the American People, have either been blissfully unaware of what was being done for our benefit, and in our name...or we have been complicit.
We elected the legal men who conceived of and enacted the policies that led directly to this current mess.
And what do we do, when the fruits of our apathy and collusion show up on our doorstep, seeking safety, and a more secure life than that we have left them?
We scream at them to go home...we shoot them in the desert...we put them in warehouses...like so many surplus parts.
And when the magnitude and moral repugnance of the situation finally makes us look a little less exceptional than we would like...and our evil gubmint shifts the responsibility for these people from a militarized border army, to the “Health and Human Services” wing, we go nuts.
How dare that bad ol' Obama Huusein, right?
A few things come to mind...
“Whoever oppresses the poor shows contempt for their maker”...for instance.
How about,”...inasmuch as ye have done to the least of these my brethrin, ye have done to me.”?
On the Statue of Liberty, it says:
“"Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "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!"

Little of the mythology surrounding immigrants and thrown around as spittle covered “facts”, is true; merely excuses that inflame certain segments into apoplexy.
Go back far enough, and we are all immigrants...even “Native” Americans. They came largely from Asia, at least 14,000 years ago. The rest of us are of a far more recent vintage...and should probably keep that in mind as we continue to argue about who the country belongs to.
Way to go, America.

Ab Irato,
Amfortas
Mason, Texas