Last week, I noted a story about a German family seeking permanent asylum in the United States because they wish to home-school their children. In the comments section, some took exception to the fact that I felt that the story had direct resonance with the ongoing immigration debate in the US.
Along those lines, I came across the following:
Most of the people at Annunciation House are seeking asylum but U.S policies are less generous to Latin America and favor more political hotspots such as Cuba and China. Only two out of every 100 Mexican applications for asylum are granted, said Garcia, an intense man who does not mince words.
Source: The Miami Herald, Deportations and divided families along the border
Annunciation House is located in El Paso, Texas. I can’t help but note that the asylum-seekers in question are not fleeing one of the richest countries in the world because they don’t like the public school system. They are fleeing situations such as the following:
Across town, a peasant woman rests at a shelter. She recently fled Mexico and the drug cartel hitmen who murdered her husband, oldest daughter and 2-year-old grandson because the husband refused to work as a mule, carrying drugs through the desert into Arizona.
Part of the point I was trying to make in the previous post was: if one has compassion for a family who want the right to educate their children in a particular way, then one should have even more compassion for persons fleeing drug violence (or, even, those willing to cross the dessert for the privileges of cleaning a McDonald’s or doing yard work).
Now, granted, compassion alone is not a good basis for making public policy, but the thing that all of these stories have in common is the way in which foreign persons can come to, and stay in, the United States. It is a system that can be arbitrary and needs a serious overhaul.
