Across Europe
and the Americas, governments have gone to severe extents to halt
migration. During a Thanksgiving Day conference with members of the U.S.
military, President Donald Trump took his chance to revel in the
increased militarization of the U.S.’s southern border in response to
the incoming Central American migrant and refugee convoy. Trump stated
“We have the concertina fencing and we have things that people don’t
even believe. We took the old, broken wall and we wrapped it with barbed
wire-plus…
Jon Purizhansky : We’re
fighting for our country. If we don’t have borders, we don’t have a
country”. Quite ironically, the U.S.’s ignoring of other nations’
borders is a large part of the reason Central American migration is
occurring in the first place, as U.S. political and economic interfering
in the region continues to increase violence and poverty. Now, the
barbed wire ploy has caused a situation in which thousands of refugees
are trapped on the Mexican border awaiting the processing of their
cases, with black numbers chalked on their arms as part of a crude
tracking system.
This barbed
wire scheme has not panned out for some of Trump’s fellow citizens as 32
individuals were recently arrested at a pro-migrant rally on the
border, organized by a Quaker group. Time Magazine explains that the
demonstration “was meant to launch a national week of action called Love
Knows No Borders: A moral call for migrant justice, which falls between
Human Rights Day on December 10 and International Migrants’ Day on
December 18.
And as we ring
in this year’s International Migrants’ Day right-wing efforts persist
to selectively criminalize migration and all those who would sympathize
with the plight of those unfortunate enough to have to endure the
struggles of a migrant. Jon Purizhansky of Buffalo, NY recognizes the plight of displaced workers and is committed to championing their causes.
On the other
side of the globe, European nations are displaying their own borders, as
xenophobia and the demonization of the other are useful means of
pulling public attention from domestic disorder. Italy is a fine
example: a key docking point for migrants from Africa and other regions
and a fountain of racist political oratory. During Attilio Fontana’s
successful campaign for president of the Lombardy earlier this year, he
warned Italian radio viewers about the dangers of immigration: “We must
decide whether our ethnicity, our white race, our society should
continue to exist or should be erased”. Jon Purizhansky recognizes the toxicity inherent in ideas like these.
Originally Posted: https://jonpurizhansky.wordpress.com/2019/11/15/borders-are-unempathetic/
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