Saturday, August 31, 2019

Descent Into Inhumanity


In early August 2019, a form letter was sent out by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to a targeted group of non-citizens currently living in the U.S. The letters served as official notification to revoke the special exemption immigration visa status that these recipients are currently under. This program is being completely and immediately shut down, even though there has been no advance announcement or public discussion about such a policy change. The recipients have been given notice to leave the country within 33 days of the mailing date – a chunk of that time already having expired as a result of the bureaucratic mailing process itself.

Who are these dangerous and fearsome targets of this policy change? Mostly children, and their families that have accompanied them, who legally entered the U.S. to receive life-saving medical treatment needed due to their otherwise fatal disease. They include children with such things as cystic fibrosis, heart disease, transplant recipients, and cancer. All would-be fatal conditions except for the care they are receiving, care not available to them in their home country. Care that their doctors say is vitally needed, without which their short-term death is assured.

Take one case that has surfaced in the unfolding news stories relating to this situation. Years ago a seven-year-old girl came to the U.S. from Guatemala, suffering from a very rare enzyme disease certain to kill her. The research hospital affiliated with the University of California-San Francisco invited her to come here to voluntarily participate in a clinical trial being established to find a cure for her disease. Her participation in this group was critical, because given the very rarity of the disease, assembling such a trial group would be very difficult. Fortunately, she was granted legal entry; she came; she participated. Thanks to her contribution, a life-saving treatment (not a cure) was developed. For most of these afflicted children, seeing teenage years is a highly unlikely prospect. However, thanks to this treatment program, she is now 24 years old, recently graduated from college, and thinking about attending graduate school. But to accomplish all of this, she must receive a drug injection on a weekly basis to keep her alive. In thanks for her contribution to health science and helping others to live, she has now been given 33 days to leave the country. 33 days to return to Guatemala, which has no such requisite medical facilities. 33 days not to look forward to the rest of her emerging life, but 33 days to begin her deathwatch. Some may argue that the people on our southern border seeking entrance to the U.S. may or may not be truly in fear for their lives in their home country. There is no such debate about these “33-day people,” Send them home; sentence them to their death.

The DHS visa termination letter not only unilaterally ends this humanitarian visa program, it makes no case-by-case distinction regarding the individuals involved and their respective situations. It further states that there is no appeal to this decision, and thereby no appeal process in place. Upon inquiry from media reporters, DHS cannot even clarify whose idea this was, where it came from, how the decision was reached and by whom, and what supposed objective is to be accomplished. Within the Department, different agencies are pointing fingers at each other as to who was and will be responsible for this program; apparently no one wants to take the heat for this cruelly inhuman decision and non-process.

For several years, we have witnessed our country sink further and further into a sinkhole of national amorality. A sinkhole that has rapidly expanded over these last three years. A sinkhole drawing our citizenry into a daily exercise of hate, anger, and violence toward one another. And just when we want to believe we have finally hit rock bottom, we discover that some unnamed individual, hiding in anonymity, has taken us to yet another new low. This is not an immigration issue, a solution to a national security threat. This is simply meanness for the sake of being mean. It is just exercising power for the sake of power.

We were once the America of hope, of opportunity, of compassion for other human beings, of welcoming arms, of neighbors who looked out for one another. Where has all that gone? I know it still exists in pockets, though increasingly shouted down and hidden in the shadows of our anger. Why are all of our political representatives and religious leaders not standing on the barricades of human decency, reminding us of what is truly important in living our human life. Where are the voices of the citizenry saying that these kinds of actions “are not who we have been, nor who we are, nor who we seek to be.”

Perhaps we thought that separating young children from their families, planting potential seeds of a lifetime of trauma, was bad enough. The bottom of our collective amoral barrel. Apparently it was not. Closing our doors, turning off life supports, deliberately sending sick children home to most assuredly die, is not the America we thought we knew.


©   2019   Randy Bell             https://ThoughtsFromTheMountain.blogspot.com


4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks Randy - so well written and so upsetting.

Anonymous said...

As usual Randy is spot on...where are the decent leaders of yesteryear who stand up against inhumanity?

Anonymous said...

Thank you Randy. I heard something about this yesterday and just finished your blog piece. I immediately called senators Burr and Tillis to voice my displeasure with this un-American act, just another in a series of mean spirited tactics taken by this administration.

Anonymous said...

This thought from the mountain is on target as usual but especially sickening. I keep asking myself besides notifying my Congressional representatives and senators what can I do? I want to do something immediately, something that will stop this lunacy. Someday some few, not all by any means, of our silent senators will feel guilt over the inhumanity they have shown by their silence. Money and power will be empty and they will feel regret, but that will not help these families. What can I do today? I continue helping those vulnerable people I can, but that is not enough. I try hard to remain patient, but this last move has made me more than impatient.