EDITORIAL Between migrants and future lie new dangers
Scalabrini Fr. Ademar Barilli of
Brazil put the dilemma for many migrants from the South in stark terms:
If their choice is to die of hunger on their farm in Honduras or to die
in Mexico taking a bold step toward a new horizon, they prefer the latter
(see cover story).
So they throw themselves here, Rigoni said, referring
to the increasingly dangerous border between Mexico and Guatemala,
preferring to die outside their country rather than face the shame of
dying defeated and broken on their land at home.
This is not a good time for migrants. On the way north they are
treated more severely than ever in the wake of Sept. 11. Should they make it
through all the borders, they face an increasingly hostile attitude in the
United States.
For starters, with anti-terrorist fever increasing border patrols,
migrants coming from Mexico are forced to take more dangerous routes, risking
death at sea or in long treks across desert and mountain.
Once we celebrated such heroic pursuit of the future. Now we see
the movement of people through our borders as burdensome. We dont mind if
they pick fruits and vegetables for our tables or perform any number of menial
tasks U.S. citizens shun, but we dont want to pay them a living wage or
even give them the benefit of our laws.
In a distressing decision this week, the Supreme Court ruled by a
5-4 vote that the government, in the form of the National Labor Relations
Board, has no authority to make employers pay back wages to undocumented
immigrants who were illegally fired for labor organizing efforts.
As dissenting justices noted, the ruling will only provide
businesses an incentive to hire more illegal aliens knowing they will be
allowed to fire them without legal liability if illegal immigrants dare join a
union.
Human rights and religious groups are also raising their voices in
an attempt to come to the aid of unaccompanied immigrant children, who make
their way to the United States often as a way of escaping oppression and
political persecution. Once here, though, they are often incarcerated by the
Immigration and Naturalization Service.
According to a New York Times account, Sen. Edward M.
Kennedy, D-Mass., told a hearing in February that more than 30 percent of the
5,000 immigrant children detained each year are housed in juvenile jails.
Others, he said, are kept in shelters for months without access to translators,
education or medical care. Things could change if pending legislation, which
would create an Office of Childrens Services within the Department of
Justice, is adopted.
Meantime, the urge to survive and to seek a future will continue
to override the dangers of detention or even the real possibility of death in
the trek north.
Rigoni understands those urges. What once was depressing work on
the Guatemala border has become a celebration of what he calls a living
Eucharist of a humanity that wants to survive, that wants to believe there is a
future.
National Catholic Reporter, April 5,
2002
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