The pictures of crying children being separated from their parents is unbelievably sad. So it is unbelievably cruel to use that cruelty to discourage immigration to mainland USA from Mexico, its drug-plagued and poor neighbor. But as one perceptive observer said migration has been going on since man began to look for food, safety and the means to live. Human beings walked to migrate, they did not need airplanes or cars.
Trump’s idea of putting a 2,000 mile wall across the border will be just as futile. The mountains between the two countries did not discourage poor Mexicans from crossing. They have been doing that for years. Why should a wall stop them if they needed to cross. It will be harder but determined immigrants will try and find the way through.
US President Trump tried to calm protests more rationally by issuing an executive order to stop the separation of families. But news reports claim that it has caused more confusion and impossible to implement because of faulty documentation and children unable to answer who they were or the names of their parents. Remember the children were Mexican. Moreover, the order did not reach far enough to the lower subalterns, soldiers who were already implementing separations. When Ivana Trump who was said to have persuaded President Trump came down the plane to the site of separations, she was wearing a jacket with bold letters asking “Do we really care”? Insensitive, but truthful if you ask me. The truth is that the issue of migration has been going on for decades and if I may add Filipinos too were once upon a time used to discourage immigration by separating families. A senior Trump administration official told The Associated Press news agency that 500 of the more than 2,300 children separated from their families at the border had been reunited since May. It was not clear how many of these children were still in detention with their families.
All this was envisioned, of all people by Muammar Gaddafi who warned if the West led by the US destabilized Libya there would be thousands upon thousands who would be knocking at their doors to escape the violence and mayhem.
Gaddafi’s prophecy and threat that Libyans will migrate to Europe came true. Even before Gaddafi was thrown out and killed some 40,000 people were waiting at Libya’s border ready to flee into Tunisia. Before them more than 75,000 crossed the border since chaos began. The UN refugee agency issued an urgent appeal for the mass evacuation of the refugees in Tunisia.
As usual force was attempted by sending the USS Kearsarge, an amphibious assault ship with 800 US Marines, headed for the Libyan coast along with two other naval vessels. The ships could support humanitarian efforts as well as military operations. A Canadian navy frigate is to sail for the Libyan coast so it could meet up with the Kearsarge.
We were in London at the time when husbands were allowed to bring in their wives but wives did not have the right presuming that more Filipino women could find employment easily as caretakers and domestic help. It is quiet there now but when Margaret Thatcher came into power and embarked on a program to stop immigration she could not do it to Indians and Pakistanis because they were already in the UK as huge communities.
The Filipinos were a weak community and at that time were unprotected by their government. This became an issue that my husband and I helped to bring to the International Court of Human Rights. I went with them to see the Filipino women’s case heard. It was known as the Immigration Widows’ Campaign. I hope to be able to write a book on that someday. So Ms. Ivana we do care.
To inject humor as Filipinos usually do, one actually wrote a book on 1,001 ways to evade immigration laws. When the war in Greece broke out Filipinos told me how they hitchhiked all the way to Europe.
Migration of peoples have been going on since time immemorial. Indeed, that is how the world was populated. To attempt to stop it by law or military force will be futile.
And what will happen to United States of America if immigrants leave? Hard to contemplate how it will survive it when it was its immigrants who worked to make it a rich and powerful country.
As for Filipinos if they should call a one-day strike, the world will have to close its hospitals and hotels and shipping will come to a standstill. We care President Trump. An executive order will not do because migration is a natural phenomenon. He is quoted to have said that even if he issued an executive order, the policy against immigration will continue. How? By changing the world? By changing the history of man?
For now Trump is dealing with the issue of children separated from their families, but it will have wider repercussions if as he says, the inhuman measures against immigration will continue. I can already see how they will bore holes through The Wall and get in whether Trump likes it or not.
By the way, the balangay used by migrants in our region from country to country was invented and made by Filipinos. The South China sea was a common treasure that we should all care for.