Stop talking about legal and illegal immigration— talk about rich and poor immigrants
Dear Senator Cruz,
Let’s stop talking about legal and illegal immigration, and let’s call it what it is: Immigration for the rich and immigration for the poor.
Because words matter, Senator. Terminology frames policy. Rhetoric frames reality.
Let’s be frank: there’s immigration for the Haves and immigration for the Have Nots.
You and I are products of the journey of the Haves. Our story with immigration is grounded in luck. It’s your story and my story and, unsurprisingly, the story of many Houstonians.
Senator, you often site the account of your father, a Cuban-native, arriving to America with $100 in his underwear. You love telling that story and often use it as an introduction to your identity as an American. But, it was a lawyer friend of your father’s who bribed a Cuban official to get your dad the student visa that got him to Florida.
How lucky for him.
Like your father, my father first came here on a student visa. He was lucky enough to be born the son of an English teacher, so he was able to apply for a scholarship in the United States to study the same thing your father studied. Later, through a job offer in the oil industry, we moved permanently to the United States and my parents’ citizenship finalized in 2015.
How lucky for us.
You and I had the unmerited luck of being born to parents who had the means and resources so that my mother did not have to be separated from my one and five year-old brothers and me when she arrived to America through the Miami airport — so that your father did not have to spend 40 days without a shower in an overcrowded holding facility on the Canadian border.
How lucky we are, indeed.
How we view immigrants in this country — from Chinese immigrants in the 1840s to Eastern immigrants in the 1920s to your father’s journey and mine — it matters. It matters in the policy that is created. It matters in how our fathers are viewed and treated: like humans or animals?
But what about the facts? What does the data provided by our own government say about immigration?
We know that poor immigrants who attempt to apply for asylum legally — the Have Nots — are now denied and turned away from legal ports of entry. They didn’t have lawyer friends like your dad or the luck of an education and scholarship like my dad. Their legal process has been deterred by Trump policy.
We know this is true because the United States currently defies its own asylum laws by forcing applicants to wait in Mexico. Thousands are told to take a number as they bring families to legal ports of entry — asylum seekers following the rules, respecting the legal process. The “Remain in Mexico” policy puts families in danger.
I wonder: if your father hadn’t had a lawyer friend and had to resort to apply for asylum, would he have been in danger of harm from the Batista forces if the United States had embraced a “wait over there” policy?
We know that when asylum applicants are allowed to wait in freedom and dignity for their trial, an overwhelming majority of families show up to their court date according to Department of Justice figures. Attendance rate shoots up to 98% when these families are linked to legal assistance.
This very week, you tweeted in response to Alyssa Milano about visiting the controversial detention camps.
“Yup. Many times. Was there last week. It’s inhumane — and the reason is that Dems won’t fix the loopholes. So “catch & release” continues & thousands of kids continue to get abused by traffickers. Compassion = ZERO kids in the custody of traffickers”
In a viral video, Michael Breen from Human Rights First explained to the House Committee on Oversight and Reform that “These are human beings, not trout.” He continues, “Presenting yourself at a port of entry to seek asylum is exercising your right under international law. You have not been caught. You have volunteered yourself.”
Mr. Breen references our government’s statistics. “And being released implies that you will escape or attempt to escape when, again, in case management 100% of these people showed up at their hearing.”
“I think this language matters,” he concluded to applause.
I agree.
Not only is your rhetoric inaccurate according to the Department of Justice’s own statistics, but you demean immigrants who did not have lawyer friends like your father. You dehumanize legal applicants who did not arrive here on an air conditioned flight like my father.
To your concern about releasing kids to the custody of traffickers: our own department of Health and Human Services lost kids and even placed them with individuals who trafficked children to slavery. In 2016, the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations led by Republican Senator Rob Portman uncovered horrors committed due to the errors of our government. His staff investigated the egregious mishandling of the placement process of unaccompanied minors by the Office of Refugee Resettlement under the Obama Administration. An embarrassing lack of post-release services, including home studies, led to issues like non-relatives with criminal histories sponsoring and later trafficking children to work in places like that egg farm in Marion, Ohio.
The children slept in empty trailers at night.
Our government facilitated human trafficking.
This issue is still a problem. “There are lost children, clearly,” Senator Portman stated just August of last year.
Under the Trump Administration, we’ve lost kids who came here accompanied with their parents, separated by a policy you supported designed to deter poor refugees from trying to come to this country.
“Compassion” for poor immigrants is exactly what our policies and immigration laws should reflect. You tweet about votes chastising anti-semitism and denounce the KKK, but your rhetoric equates immigrants to fish. You criticize asylum laws created precisely because of the Holocaust of the 1940s.
You support allowing volunteers to give donations to detention camps, but you’ve shot down any comprehensive immigration bill since your first year in office in 2013 when Democrats and 14 Republicans attempted to fund border security — including fencing and infrastructure — and increase border patrol agents through SB 744.
Stop talking about America like it’s an exclusive country club where only rich immigrants need apply for membership. Explain to colleagues like Senator John Cornyn that when they tweet out stories like “Texas gained almost nine Hispanic residents for every additional white resident last year” that he’s referring to residents with Hispanic roots that include your daughters and my daughters. Help him understand why his Nativist post earned him the harsh backlash he likely wasn’t expecting amongst his thousands of followers and constituents.
Houston is a city whose economy and culture thrives with immigrants — poor and rich. Some of us were pulled here by economic promise, like my father, and others were pushed here seeking refuge from oppressive regimes, like your father. This city deserves senators who will represent them with respect and work to improve the lives of all who seek to achieve the American Dream, regardless of whether they come from the Haves or Have Nots.
But if I can’t convince you, maybe Ronald Reagan can. His visage hangs on your office wall. In 1980, with the silhouette of the Statue of Liberty behind him at Liberty State Park, President Reagan reminded us what makes America great:
“Through this ‘Golden Door,’ under the gaze of that ‘Mother of Exiles,’ has come millions of men and women, who first set foot on American soil right there, on Ellis Island, so close to the Statue of Liberty.
“These families came here to work. They came to build. Others came to America in different ways, from other lands, under different, and often harrowing conditions. But this place symbolizes what they all managed to build, no matter where they came from or how they came or how much they suffered.
“They brought with them courage, ambition and the values of family, neighborhood, work, peace, and freedom. We all came from different lands but we share the same values, the same dream.
“I want more than anything I’ve ever wanted, to have an Administration that will, through its actions, at home and in the international arena, let millions of people know that Miss Liberty still, ‘Lifts her lamp beside the golden door.’
“That this dream — that this dream, this last best hope of man on earth, this nation under God, shall not perish from the earth.
“Let us pledge to each other, with this Great Lady looking on, that we can, and so help us God, we will make America great again.”