> The Canadian policeman offers to carry her baby as she makes her way through the slippery snow path. She hands the child to him and then takes the hand of another officer who helps her to the road on the Canadian side. The police bring out a child car seat and place it in their cruiser.
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
We used to be this kind to those seeking safety in our lands. When and why did we stop?
So maybe we never were. But we could be. IMO, Canada is setting a great and kind example here (humane treatment of incoming refugees and a 24 hour turnaround of detained individuals/families).
It should be us doing this at the Mexican border. Instead we're building a wall...
Rhode Island was founded because the Puritans quite like what Roger Williams had to say. Ben Franklin was noted of making a remark about there being too many Germans. The Potato Famine brought Irish emigrants and with it slurs ('mick') and hatred against that demographic. The Southern Italians weren't considered white when they came around (also had their slurs coined, 'dago, 'wop', 'guinea').
A sudden (or continuous, but seemingly overwhelming) influx of an overwhelming amount of people who are "new" upsets the ecosystem. If me and, say 30 of my (relatively) leftist, mostly-holding-graduate-degrees friends (and their spouses, etc) all moved to a small-town in West Texas, surely we'd be looked upon as differently. It wouldn't be because I had brown skin (which I do, and there might be a little bit of 'hmm that fella looks kinda strange' at first). I can tell you from contracting all around the world from rural Alabama to Beijing, that the reason my buddies and I would be singled out would be our mannerisms, our speech patterns, our dress, our modes of communication, and what we consider polite. (I.e., when I'm in NYC, I may see a friend sitting having a coffee al fresco. He's busy on his iPad, I'm late for a meeting - I'm not going to stop and say hello. Contrast that to someone who might take that as a snub and potentially harvest resentment for years.)
This allows me to segue onto a tangent and make an important sociological distinction (it's somewhat relevant, I swear).
Lets say grew up in a small town in Alabama where your pa and all his kin have been for damn near 3 generations. It's completely reasonable to be slightly off-kilter when an aggregate of people disrupt the stability of your living situation. Your memories were formed in that town, you're invested in all sorts of ways in that town - emotionally, financially, you name it. Your memories were formed in that town. The money you made from mowing lawns when you were 12 (do kids even do that now, or do they just Instagram and yell at their parents?) was spent at that local ice cream shop. You had your first kiss in the back your dad's car after you and that girl shotgunned a joint in the school parking lot cutting class. There's still a blood stain on concrete of your parents houses driveway from when you hit on that jock's girl and he came around and broke your jaw (OK, that one didn't happen to me, but you see what I'm getting at, I hope).
That doesn't make you inherently racist, it makes you upset at the prospect of losing some stability you used grew up with and expected (however reasonable or unreasonable those expectations were) to have. Now, if I come around with my buddies, we buy your parents house, knock it down and throw up some ugly McMansion, get a 30 year lease on that ice cream shop's property, knock that down and replace it with a raw-food vegan or fair-trade we-only-serve-black-coffee-here cafe. You'd be upset at the culture shift and not because some brown dude did it. There are certainly racists out there, there's been this media depiction of any Trump supporter being one. This is problematic because it not only does it mask the real issue (there are active neo-nazis out there, burning crosses, and sitting around hating everyone as their Friday recreational event) but it divides the country even further down political party lines.
The people crossing are generally claiming asylum in Canada. They make illegal crossings because they can't cross at a legal crossing and then make an asylum claim, due to the "Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA)".
According to the article, they aren't staying in jail for long.
> "Once that we do all our checks and that we can confirm that they're not a threat to national security, we hand them over to [the Canadian Border Service Agency] who then start the immigration process," Habel says.
Does "immigration process" mean deportation or admission?
Edit: Not sure why I'm getting down-voted for showing not all crossings are safe and quaint like the story from this article. I'm from a border-town in Canada and there's no way I'd risk my life by crossing by foot.
[+] [-] gyrfalc|9 years ago|reply
Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
We used to be this kind to those seeking safety in our lands. When and why did we stop?
[+] [-] hiddencost|9 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Exclusion_Act
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_Act_of_1907
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_America...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_Act_of_1924
Jews in WW2: https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007094
If you had HIV: https://www.immigrationequality.org/get-legal-help/our-legal...
[+] [-] gyrfalc|9 years ago|reply
It should be us doing this at the Mexican border. Instead we're building a wall...
[+] [-] koolba|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] leereeves|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] iheartmemcache|9 years ago|reply
Rhode Island was founded because the Puritans quite like what Roger Williams had to say. Ben Franklin was noted of making a remark about there being too many Germans. The Potato Famine brought Irish emigrants and with it slurs ('mick') and hatred against that demographic. The Southern Italians weren't considered white when they came around (also had their slurs coined, 'dago, 'wop', 'guinea').
A sudden (or continuous, but seemingly overwhelming) influx of an overwhelming amount of people who are "new" upsets the ecosystem. If me and, say 30 of my (relatively) leftist, mostly-holding-graduate-degrees friends (and their spouses, etc) all moved to a small-town in West Texas, surely we'd be looked upon as differently. It wouldn't be because I had brown skin (which I do, and there might be a little bit of 'hmm that fella looks kinda strange' at first). I can tell you from contracting all around the world from rural Alabama to Beijing, that the reason my buddies and I would be singled out would be our mannerisms, our speech patterns, our dress, our modes of communication, and what we consider polite. (I.e., when I'm in NYC, I may see a friend sitting having a coffee al fresco. He's busy on his iPad, I'm late for a meeting - I'm not going to stop and say hello. Contrast that to someone who might take that as a snub and potentially harvest resentment for years.)
This allows me to segue onto a tangent and make an important sociological distinction (it's somewhat relevant, I swear).
Lets say grew up in a small town in Alabama where your pa and all his kin have been for damn near 3 generations. It's completely reasonable to be slightly off-kilter when an aggregate of people disrupt the stability of your living situation. Your memories were formed in that town, you're invested in all sorts of ways in that town - emotionally, financially, you name it. Your memories were formed in that town. The money you made from mowing lawns when you were 12 (do kids even do that now, or do they just Instagram and yell at their parents?) was spent at that local ice cream shop. You had your first kiss in the back your dad's car after you and that girl shotgunned a joint in the school parking lot cutting class. There's still a blood stain on concrete of your parents houses driveway from when you hit on that jock's girl and he came around and broke your jaw (OK, that one didn't happen to me, but you see what I'm getting at, I hope).
That doesn't make you inherently racist, it makes you upset at the prospect of losing some stability you used grew up with and expected (however reasonable or unreasonable those expectations were) to have. Now, if I come around with my buddies, we buy your parents house, knock it down and throw up some ugly McMansion, get a 30 year lease on that ice cream shop's property, knock that down and replace it with a raw-food vegan or fair-trade we-only-serve-black-coffee-here cafe. You'd be upset at the culture shift and not because some brown dude did it. There are certainly racists out there, there's been this media depiction of any Trump supporter being one. This is problematic because it not only does it mask the real issue (there are active neo-nazis out there, burning crosses, and sitting around hating everyone as their Friday recreational event) but it divides the country even further down political party lines.
[+] [-] asdfasd123123f|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] maxerickson|9 years ago|reply
http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/chris-selley-as-tr...
The people crossing are generally claiming asylum in Canada. They make illegal crossings because they can't cross at a legal crossing and then make an asylum claim, due to the "Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA)".
[+] [-] ryanx435|9 years ago|reply
If anything, this says sonething about the conditions of their originating countries
[+] [-] leereeves|9 years ago|reply
> "Once that we do all our checks and that we can confirm that they're not a threat to national security, we hand them over to [the Canadian Border Service Agency] who then start the immigration process," Habel says.
Does "immigration process" mean deportation or admission?
[+] [-] CoolGuySteve|9 years ago|reply
Edit: Not sure why I'm getting down-voted for showing not all crossings are safe and quaint like the story from this article. I'm from a border-town in Canada and there's no way I'd risk my life by crossing by foot.
Next time, try commenting instead.
[+] [-] leereeves|9 years ago|reply
Crossing by foot may not be safe (for those without resources or skill in wilderness survival), but what's inhumane?
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] nolepointer|9 years ago|reply