Right now there is a humanitarian crisis happening that should not be ignored. It is happening right in our own backyard, and yet the response that the Republican Right wants the U.S. to have towards the people suffering as a result of it is to send them right back into the dangerous situation they so desperately need to get out of. I'm not talking about people sneaking across the border to "steal" American jobs. I am referring to the people fleeing Central America to escape the increasingly out of control gang violence that is destroying their home countries.
All along the border, the hate that these so-called "God-loving" Americans are showing to children looking for refuge from an ever more dire situation is absolutely shocking. The same people who insist that life begins at conception, and who claim that so much of what they do is for the welfare of "the children", when faced with children actually in need of their help do what they so often do in such situations, turn their backs to the problem.
To make matters worse, while there are certainly many factors that contributed to the current situation in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, one of the chief reasons things have turned out the way they have is the U.S.'s own drug policies. The very same drug policies that the Right so ardently supports. These policies, combined with a lack of economic development, have allowed those countries to become havens for violent gangs, where there is a now constant threat of abductions and shootings. Unfortunately, the Right does what it always does when faced with the consequences of their own actions and greets them with a combination of blame-shifting, denial and ignorance. If this same situation were occurring anywhere else in the world many of us would be outraged at the host countries response, so where is the outrage towards those who want us to be so cruel when we are faced with refugees at our own doorstep?
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