Editorial:
Immigration reform has travelled a long and weary road with some highs; most notably the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) that was passed to protect children by the Bush administration. But there have also been a lot of lows. What once started out as, “immigration reform” has now deteriorated (again) into a law enforcement border security plan with little resemblance to any sort of “reform” to realistically deal with the 11 million immigrants in the United States seeking legal documentation.
For the Hispanic community, it is begun to slowly sinking in that immigration reform for all intents and purposes is dead, and is not going to happen during the final years of President Obama’s administration. One would think that fact would be the low point of the immigration issue, instead we are now witnessing the issue sink even lower with children being used as political pawns by the two (Democratic and Republican) bickering political sides.
To be shocked as to what has occurred in Murrieta would be an exaggeration. Murrieta after all lies at the heart of the anti-immigrant movement. With the city’s mayor calling out racist xenophobes to action, to protest and blockade busses carrying immigrant mothers and children should surprise no one with the reception the women and children immigrants received in Murrieta.
The verbiage that was witnessed by the nation and the world coming out of the mouths of racist protesters is nothing new. We have heard it all before, but the drum beat of hate was put on full display in Murrieta this time, because it was directed at children! The question for society becomes, can the United States get any uglier when it takes out its hate on innocent children who fled fearing for their lives? One has to ask what happened to all the Christian values that the right wing professes’ to believe?
Innocent children have now become the latest focal point for racist protestors and the anti-immigrant community.
These racists have taken the opportunity to demonstrate to the world their racist and hurtful beliefs with children. Our do nothing politicians are also using the children as props by taking the opportunity to use them for photo ops, and to reiterate their non-solutions positions on the serious issue of immigration!
As stated above immigration reform is dead, it is not going anywhere, the protestors have already won the battle, so what are they protesting? Maybe the battle has been won, but the war has not been won, because the issue is not going away soon. In fact (in our opinion) the immigration issue is only going to get worse in the coming years.
For this we have to lay the blame (for this debacle) at the feet of President Obama who has been unable to move the issue forward. President Obama when he first ran for office promised to make the immigration issue a priority during his first term!
Instead he pushed it aside and let the issue languish for four years, and begin deporting over two million Mexican immigrants at a record rate.
In President Obama’s second term he again promised to pass immigration reform, yet to date he has had neither the will nor the skill to move the issue forward. His inability to bring the two sides on the issue towards a compromise has turned the immigration issue into as he stated a, “humanitarian crisis.” In his first term he had political leverage, in his second term he has none, because of his status as a lame duck President.
To date President Obama has given the nation the usual standard political response to the latest crisis that the nation has witnessed in Murrieta, CA. Throw money at it, $3.7 billion dollars plus $615 million added to fight wild fires, to grease the wheel for passage, which kicks up the price tag to over $4 billion dollars. Of that, $1.5 billion will be allocated towards greater border failed security, again to appease the Republican Party whose myopic view of immigration reform is more law enforcement/military solutions!
The real question for the politicians is, instead of taking photo ops why didn’t they do something about clearing the roads of law breakers? The President and Congress persons and Senators could have stepped in and ordered the necessary law enforcement personal to insure that the freeways and roadways were clear, and agents did their jobs.
It’s understood by all in our community that if it had been the Chicano community protesting and blockading the roadways, that the police, military and Homeland Security would have made sure those roads would have been cleared.
As any experienced protestors knows full well, if one protests on the side of the road all is legal, but if one blocks the roadways it is illegal, that is unless one is a white protester that represents the xenophobic feelings and positions of the anti-immigrant Republican Party that was represented by the Murrieta community.