A Crisis No One Wants to Take Responsibility For

Biden has finally made his way down to the border, but I fear it may be too little, too late.  The crisis has festered for decades.  It is going to be a long time before anyone is going to be able to get a handle on the situation to the extent that we can say the crisis has been resolved.  Meanwhile, people suffer.  Every month tens of thousands of people risk everything to find what America promised to the whole world–give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses.  Well, America got what it asked for; the question is can it live up to that promise.

What is certain is that more enforcement just isn’t going to work, and just isn’t right.  More people armed and with law enforcement powers is going to make a bad situation that much more terrible.  It ignores reality– people wouldn’t be coming in the first place if they had anywhere else to be.    

The situation is a failure on every level.  It is not the fault of any one administration or political party; neither is there any administration or political party not at fault.  The most important thing that needs to be done now is for everyone to acknowledge the wrongs done to immigrants over the course of many years by American government and society as a whole, and stop shifting blame.  Biden could and should start here now.  This isn’t to say that Trump era policies like family separation were not far more inhumane than current policy; it is to say that no one, at this point, has the right to claim to be without fault in this humanitarian crisis.  Accepting responsibility is the first step forward.  I am deeply disappointed that Biden hasn’t taken that first step.  Nothing productive can get done on the border until he does.  I am afraid that Biden may try to shift the blame rather than find concrete solutions.

What it all boils down to, is that America has a responsibility to be better than this.  You don’t get it both ways.  You don’t get to see yourself as a land of opportunity for immigrants, indeed see yourself as a nation of immigrants, and then show a disregard for the life and dignity of people who risk everything for a shot at the American dream.

 If America really feels it must turn away from its border people who are so desperately afraid to live in their own country that they would spend all the money they have and risk their lives and the lives of their children–if it is true that America really cannot make a place for these people within its society, they are at least afforded the right to a safe and humane process by which to be told no.  As part of acknowledging their humanity, America can find a way to ensure they are treated with respect, and not seen as common criminals, just because they too wish for the American dream.