Human Migration

The current immigration debate is raging across the nation, fueled by inconclusive tweets and messages by the president. One day he’s for the zero-tolerance approach - whispered in his ears by far right advisers - then the next day he signs an executive order to end the cruel practice of separating immigrant children from their parents at the border, all the while keeping the false information in circuation that blames Democrats for a law that prescribes that children cannot be detained when their parents are persecuted for illegally crossing the border.
Whoa.
Let’s just all take a deep breath and think about it. First off, we need to acknowledge that human migration is as old as humanity itself. As all mammals, humans are pretty much always on the move to find a better place to live for us and our families. In old Europe, the first son got the family farm. The second son went to join the clergy and the third was the one to seek his fortune out in the world. Of course, this is simplified, but you get the idea.
We live at the Bering Strait, right where 10,000 years ago —give or take — people from Eurasia crossed the landbridge and came to North America, most likely to seek a better life.
If we haven’t known it before,  the Disney movie Moana teaches us of another great feat of migration: The great wayfinders of Polynesia, who sailed out from their islands  of Micronesia in an eastward expansion to populate the Polynesian triangle from New Zealand in the South to Rapa Nui in the East, Hawaii in the North and Tahiti in the middle.
As for America, we all know about the Mayflower and what happened next.
Every decision to uproot one’s family, to pack up and go somewhere else is a very, very serious decision that probably is not made lightly and not with the intent to ‘infest’ another country.
According to news accounts, those families run from gang violence and they run for their lives.
If this administration purports to make America safe again while protecting “Christian values” then I would like to submit that pulling up the gangplank is neither making this country any safer but instead is terrorizing those separated kids and their parents, antagonizing the world and violating the Christian way.
This approach just makes us look heartless and cruel while real problems remain unaddressed. —D.H.—