Apr 14 2019
I began the week noting staff departures from the US Department of Homeland Security, amid a growing influx of migrants at the country’s southern border. It then got me thinking about the realities of protecting other borders in our modern world.
(Too busy to read and click through all the article links? Listen to this podcast episode, for highlights on the go.)
As The World Turns
Heavy hand, or outmoded laws?
When Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen resigned from her post last Sunday, it sent commentators into various camps, casting her as either the face of “a new standard for nativist viciousness,” or as “neither tough nor fawning enough” for the sitting president. A former Republican went so far as to suggest the administration end the charade, and appoint its true anti-immigration mastermind to replace Secretary Nielsen.
In my earlier podcast episode this week, I took a step back from the heated rhetoric and asked the broader question – what’s actually changed at the southern border, and how might our focus shift to deal with that change? We’re navigating a different migrant population now, one that has different needs and therefore places a different strain on the existing infrastructure that’s been set up to process asylum claims.
In writing this issue of the Peace Matters newsletter, I searched for a like-minded view and approach, and found this excerpt from an interview with an immigration policy thinker:
“The Trump administration has tried to do things that seem really tough but are really quick fixes that don’t fix the systematic problem – so trying to, you know, prohibit access to the asylum system between ports of entry or sending people back to Mexico when in fact what you need to do is fix the asylum system itself. There is a bigger reform that’s needed that you could probably get Republicans and Democrats onboard to do, but they keep going for quick fixes that sound tough.
…the system we have at the border to deal with unauthorized migration and asylum-seekers wasn’t set up for this migration we’re seeing of families of Central Americans and of asylum – large numbers of people seeking asylum. So our asylum system is overwhelmed, and we have not been able to change the institutional structure to respond to this. Is it a national crisis – probably not. But is it a humanitarian crisis – definitely. This is a time where reasonable people should be getting together and trying to figure out what makes the most sense.”
Andrew Selee
President of the Migration Policy InstituteAnti-secrecy hero or destabilizing threat?
Speaking of asylum, the world’s most notorious political asylum seeker was kicked out of his Ecuadorian Embassy refuge in London this week. Wikileaks founder Julian Assange will soon be extradited to the US, to face charges of conspiring to obtain US government secrets. Given Wikileaks’ central role in helping Russia interfere with America’s 2016 presidential election, Julian Assange remains an elusive and controversial player in our quest to protect (cyber) borders and keep our societies stable and safe.
Om Is Where The Heart Is
Getting on the same hate crime page
This is a story that didn’t get much traction in the headlines this week, but is a fundamental issue of our time. The US House Judiciary Committee conducted a hearing on the status and nature of hate crimes, prompted in part by last month’s mosque massacres in Christchurch, New Zealand. According to this article, lawmakers couldn’t agree on the basic facts of the matter. Anti-immigrant gun violence conflated with free speech, and social media platform representatives’ comments commingled with extremist groups using the hearing to raise funds for their violent cause.
To me, the ideological battle at the southern border pales in the face of numerous border-defying threats online, where even a hate crime hearing was (temporarily) infiltrated by the very hate they hope to quell.
Also…when emotions are this inflamed, and the issue has literally become a matter of life and death, there’s little room for a reasoned or rational debate. I don’t question the urgent need to hold a hearing, but I do wonder if such a formal legal (and therefore inherently adversarial) setting is the best first place to address this issue.
By Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration – CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=77916527
Illuminating the unknown
Lest our gaze remain squarely on Earth this week, our imaginations were sent soaring into the intergalactic void with our first ever image of a black hole.
Thinking about space gives me peace. I believe we all began as stardust, and meditating on images like these bring me closer to the stars, and to the infinite spaces of our inner world.
News and Views
Maya Angelou lives on
It’s National Poetry Month here in America. This week, I attended a poetry reading in honor of the late American Poet Maya Angelou.
Local poets read their own work, writings about Maya Angelou, and Maya’s own poems. It was also a delicious thrill to imagine they were talking about me, each time they mentioned her/my name!
Here’s a shot of Jeremy Michael Vasquez in action, as he recited a poem inspired by the women (including Maya Angelou) whose words and deeds raised and shaped him.
In the next issue:
The long-awaited Mueller report will be released soon. Its contents are bound to be as substantive as its fallout. I’ll share whatever I can digest and distill by this time next week.
Till then…
Live well and lead large – Maya
(featured image of House Judiciary hate crime hearing from PBS Newshour. )