“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!”
Emma Lazarus, 1883
The word migrant refers to someone who moves to other places in search of work or better living conditions, such as fruit pickers in agricultural states. The word immigrant refers to those who have moved to foreign countries permanently for work or for better living conditions.
An asylum seeker is someone who is also seeking international protection from dangers in his or her home country, but whose claim for refugee status hasn't been determined legally. Seeking asylum is legal. Foreign nationals who request asylum are here because their home country is unsafe for them.
Most of the people fleeing Central America are those whose countries are plagued by corruption, poverty and murder. They are running from horrors in their native countries.
Migrant crisis is the intense difficulty, trouble or dangerous situation due to the movements of large groups of immigrants escaping from the conditions in their country. The "crisis" of the refugee numbers is the system's failure to respond in an orderly way to the government's legal obligations.
In February 2019, Trump signed a Declaration of National Emergency, saying the situation is a "crisis," officially declaring a "Migrant Crisis" in the Mexico–United States border. The crisis is a humanitarian one, reflecting human rights violations and deprivations in the region, and the protection needs of refugees.
Members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus called for humane measures with respect to families and children fleeing violence in Central America and continue efforts to refine administrative policy with respect to the millions of undocumented immigrants living and working in the United States.
As Americans, we are horrified at the carnage in Gaza and the thousands of refugees suffering there.
As Americans, can we not understand the desperation that people fleeing their own countries feel?
What must it take for a mother to walk her children thousands of miles to a different country, different culture, different language? What are they risking in trying to escape dangerous situations in their native land?
Can we not accept “huddled masses yearning to breathe free”? What if the roles were reversed and we were the ones fleeing? Where would we go?
Robbie Moore
* * *
I agree with Robbie Moore that we should honor our humanitarian offer to the world being that we are the greatest nation in the world. We also owe the people that are already here to do a better job of vetting people we let in. We owe that to them/us.
If they have to jump through some hoops, I'm sorry, but if we are to uphold our offer to new immigrants we also have to be discriminating enough to be able uphold the original promise of America in order to continue.
Sam Lewallen