The caravans provide opportunity for real compassion

It is no secret that immigration is a contentious issue in US politics currently, and the caravans carrying thousands of people to the United States’ southern border are only adding to the tension.

But let us not pretend like our attitude towards immigrants has suddenly changed in the past 20 years. The United States has had several waves of anti-immigration sentiment, going as far back as 1790 with John Adams’ Alien and Sedition Acts, as well as notably in 1854 with the beginning of anti-Irish sentiment with “No Irish Need Apply”.

In 1924, there was anti-Slavic legislation passed by Congress to help curb the amount of Polish immigrants coming over into the United States after World War I.

One astonishing example of our government not allowing immigrants in need into our country is the incident of the MS St. Louis. The ship was carrying thousands of European Jews in 1939 from Eastern Europe to America and was denied asylum in our country.

This denial of asylum caused many of those Jewish passengers to return to Europe and subsequently be killed in Nazi concentration camps.

This trend of anti-immigration is not new, Americans have never truly been the ‘melting pot’ that we aspire to. We have always had trouble receiving “the poor, the tired, and the huddled masses” like the Statue of Liberty states.

That is why the antagonism towards immigrants is not a new thing in the US, but with the caravans we have a chance for us to change how we feel as a society towards immigrants.

These people that make up the caravans currently are men, women, and children who are fleeing the country they called home because of gang violence, corruption within the government, or a failing economy.

They are hoping to find a safe place to have a new start at life and the US seems to be their desired location.

Most of the migrants within the caravans come from Honduras or Guatemala, both of these countries currently struggling with horrific gang and domestic violence as well as government corruption.

The Trump administration has stated that they do not plan on letting these migrants into the country and that they need to go home and they also have been cracking down on those migrants who have made it into the country.

The current presidential administration claims they are doing this because many of these immigrants are ‘thugs’ or ‘criminals’. Although, this fact has been disputed multiple times and those who do have criminal histories are fleeing their countries because they were forced into gangs like MS-13.

According to an article in The Washington Post, one man in Virginia, Santos Chirinos begged a court to grant him asylum as he feared that a violent gang in Honduras, MS-13, would kill him if he were to be deported.

The court found him not in need of asylum and the man was subsequently deported, and in one week was murdered by the exact gang he feared. Many of the immigrants in the caravan are similarly requesting asylum into the US for those same reasons.

And according to US law, we should be allowing these people to enter our country.

The US has two basic requirements when defining who does and does not need asylum, they have to fear for their safety in their country of origin, or they must be persecuted for their race, sex, religion, political opinion, or nationality in their country of origin.

Most of the migrants in the caravans waiting at the US southern borders are eligible for asylum into the United States.

So why have they not been allowed into the country full of people trying to obtain the “American Dream”? Well, the answer is quite simply that our current administration has caused an influx of racist and anti-immigrant sentiment among the American people.

The fact that one of Trump’s campaign promises was a wall along our entire southern border, or the fact that he has called Mexicans rapists on multiple occasions, showcased but also contributed to the further normalization of racism within our country.

There is an obvious crisis occurring at our southern borders currently, with children being separated from their families as well as people living in makeshift camps in Mexico. These people need help.

As a country that bolsters the rhetoric that we are the land of many is obviously a facade if we refuse to help  people in crisis. Something must be done to help relieve the amount of people at the border, as well as the amount of people requesting asylum.

There is a large refugee problem happening currently, and as Americans we need to step up and help and be what we always claim to be, which is the land of the free.