immigration – Gretchen A. Peck

E&P’s “Reporting On” series takes a look at what it’s like to be a journalist tasked with covering a national/international crisis, or an urgent public policy concern. This month, we spoke with journalists who report on the nation’s borders and ports. With as much national media—and particularly “cable news”—coverage as we have about the southern border, in particular, there is so much more to the story.

I learned a lot from these exceptional reporters, who take us to the border itself; share stories of what its like in communities like Chicago, where the border crisis has been brought to their doorsteps; who help sort through the politics and the realities; and turn our attention to the vulnerabilities of the nation’s ports, so critical to our economy and yet so rarely covered in the detail they deserve.

I set aside my own biases about immigration and allowed the reporters’ stories to stand tall here. But I’m perhaps not unlike so many other Americans who see that immigration is a many-layered complicated issue that’s just not being treated earnestly and effectively by our elected leaders. On radio and TV, we hear gripes about people not coming here “the right way,” but unlike the immigration channels of one or two generations ago, today’s path to citizenship is messy, long, prohibitive, frightening, expensive, and completely out of reach for so many immigrants. We’re failing in not exposing that story.

Having spent part of my childhood living in South America, I also know how dire and deadly life can be in nations to our south—measurably worse today than even in the 1970s. I can understand why people want to or are forced to leave their homes, their families, their livelihoods and their way of life. It’s not hyperbole to say it can be a life-or-death decision.

This is not to discount the serious and steady threat of bad actors coming across the border and exploiting desperate people, parents and their children. We need to stop them, and we often do. But surveillance technology, concertina wire, a big tall wall, and border enforcement alone won’t solve this crisis; it requires a retooling of foreign policy and thoughtful diplomacy rather than isolationism.

We are a champion nation. We broadcast to the world about our exceptionalism, what makes us special, what makes us wealthy, what makes us progressive, what makes us leaders, what makes us (comparatively) safe, what makes us free. To expect people from all over the world—especially poor nations plagued by crime and corruption—not to want to come here, in fact to risk their lives to become an American, is ill-considered.

https://www.editorandpublisher.com/stories/reporting-on-the-border,248922

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Here I sit, finally still, settled — fat and happy over Thanksgiving and family and friends and reconnections and relative good health … and then my wire alerts blow up, and this photo scrolls to my screen.

Photo by Reuters.

This is a child who came to the border from who knows where. She is barely clothed. She may lack shoes; it’s a little difficult to say for sure. She clings to a toy ball, perhaps a thing of comfort, perhaps a small reminder of normalcy during the arduous journey. What must she have seen and endured during that trek?

She is shrieking.

She is held by an adult, presumably. A mother? A guardian? An auntie? A stranger? The woman wears a too-small shirt, her stomach spilling out, the arm holes taught. It depicts a Disney tale she likely hasn’t seen. Where is her own shirt, the one that would fit her? Who is she?

What has she seen during her travels? What has she endured? What has been done to her? Who has she become?

What daily hell did they flea?

They likely embarked on the journey because they were told to. Not by any Soros-esque bogeyman, but perhaps by other local activists or news anchors or through the exportation of our national pride. We tell the world: This is the place to be. We are the shit, man. You want to be here, because we do all things the best. Look at our liberties. Look at our freedom. Look at our diversity. Look at our might. Look at our opportunities. Look at our Kardashians.

Perhaps someone told them along the way that it is within their Right to plead for asylum once they reach the border — that our laws entitle them to that appeal, though it may be a long-shot and especially given the current Administration. Perhaps they carried some of that hope with them along the way, as they bartered away materials things or worse.

And so they walked the miles and endured the exploitation just to get to that border. And our government orders armed troops to pelt and poison them with teargas.

She is shrieking.

Tag: immigration

Reporting On: The Nation’s Borders and Ports

U.S. Immigration: Hell is for Children