Mr. President: Let my people go.
What would you do? Before we demonize the stranger and the outcast, we ought to know why they leave their homes. Perhaps instead of treating them like rapists and gang members, we should consider that the opposite may be true. For some, they may be fleeing rape and gangs and more awful realities. If we cannot do our part in addressing root causes, a wall made of concrete, soldiers, or racist rhetoric will certainly not improve the situation.
Are we not one human family?
The Memphis sanitation workers in the time of Dr. King’s assassination chanted a slogan which they still use today: “I am a man.” Translation: I am just as human as you are. Each and every migrant seeking a better life, and each and every desperate parent seeking simply to let their children live is as human as you or I in our comfortable United States homes.
Sí, somos una familia.
Here is an excerpt from the article linked above, describing one heartbreaking story:
Rodriguez, a builder, said he fled his home in El Salvador in the middle of the night with only the clothes on his back, a few dollars, a nephew, and his son, a student who had received a written death threat from a gang he had refused to join or pay.
"To be young, in my country, is a crime," Rodriguez said. "I'm old - they'll do nothing to me. But to my son, if we go back ... they'll kill him."