Cause and effect
Who are they are why are they here?
Immigration and the southern border continue to dominate the news cycle — featuring horror stories and political recriminations galore. But those stories have drowned out efforts to explain why millions of people continue to flock to a nation that has long offered shelter to the “huddled masses yearning to be free.”
That’s why a recent Boston Globe story caught my eye: As Massachusetts struggles to find shelter and pay the costs associated with a massive influx of immigrants, there’s been scant reporting on the circumstances that brought more than 11,000 newcomers to the state from October 2022 to September 2023. And that’s just a rough estimate:
“According to the state, 72 percent of migrants counted in state figures were from Haiti, 13 percent were Ukraine, 5 percent were Afghan or Syrian, and 10 percent were refugees from other countries.”
Haiti. Ukraine. Syria. Afghanistan.
What do those people have in common?
Victims of war and strife. And a long-standing Republican belief that it’s better to have a political issue than work toward a solution.
Let’s start with Haiti. A nation wracked by instability and gang violence — not to mention hurricanes and earthquakes.
The Caribbean nation was the first modern state to abolish slavery, the first state in the world to be formed from a successful revolt of the lower classes (in this case slaves), and the second republic in the Western Hemisphere, only 28 years behind the United States.
Yet the United States refused to recognize its independence, invaded the nation in 1915 and stayed there for almost 20 years; and then turned a blind eye to corrupt “leaders” who grew rich off the population.
But if you listen to today’s GOP, it’s not our problem, even if we’ve helped cause it:
“Although tragic, Haiti’s crisis isn’t an American crisis, though we must take steps to ensure it doesn’t become an American crisis. We should strictly enforce our immigration laws to prevent another wave of illegal Haitian migration.”
Then there’s Ukraine. A nation at the center of Vladimir Putin’s revanchist effort to restore the Soviet Union, And at the center of Donald Trump’s first impeachment as he tried to extort Volodymyr Zelensky for dirt on Joe and Hunter Biden to win the 2020 election.
And let’s not forget Trump’s belief in Putin over his own intelligence services when it came to Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election.
And here’s House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Trump Acolyte, and Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Fruit Loops, doing battle over aid to a country that has been the victim of indiscriminate war crimes by Russia because the devout Christian is slowly listening to majority cries for action to aide Ukraine:
"Mike Johnson is not working for Republicans, he's not helping Republicans, he's not even listening to Republicans. Mike Johnson is doing the Deep State's dirty work," Greene said on X. "We need a new Speaker of the House!"
The Syrian refugee crisis is of longer standing, part of a civil war where Putin ally Bashar Assad gassed innocent people. But Republican opposition to resettling Syrian immigrants goes back a few years before that.
And of course Afghanistan, where a botched evacuation overseen by the Biden administration — but set up by an agreement between the Trump administration and the Taliban — left thousands fleeing the country, some even trying to hang on the U.S. military aircraft as they took off.
American fingerprints, large and small.
Then there’s the lack of fingerprints in dealing with the crime and violence in the Northern Triangle of Central America, a source for many of the remaining 10 percent.
And while Trump loves to rail about MS-13, it’s hard to know what Congress and several American presidents have done to alleviate the conditions that send people streaming northward for the chance of a better life.
Think about this the next time Trump or his GOP sycophants who blocked a tough border security package skip some of the words inscribed on the Statue of Liberty:
"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe freeThe wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”