One of the things that fascinates me about Americans living today is the willingness of many of them to treat immigrants like horse dung. I just don’t get it. No, I’m not saying that they treat people like that directly. I’m saying that they support and even get excited about how the U.S. government treats immigrants like horse dung.
Consider what the U.S. government has done to migrants it has sent to El Salvador. Pursuant to a deal that U.S. officials have entered into with the Salvadoran government that involved payment of $6 million in U.S. taxpayer money, U.S. officials are sending migrants to that country to be incarcerated in a brutal prison in which it is common knowledge that torture and other horrific human-rights abuses are taking place.
Many Americans are outright giddy over what is happening. They think it’s fantastic that people who have never been convicted of a crime are being subjected to this type of horrific mistreatment.
Why? How can anyone get excited over the fact that the U.S. government is treating human beings like horse dung?
It’s all because these people had the audacity to come to the United States in an effort to save or improve their own lives and the lives of their families. What’s wrong with that? Well, they didn’t wait their turn by standing in line back in their home countries, where many of them were faced with death by starvation. They entered the United States illegally.
Big deal. Nonetheless, does that mean anything goes when it comes to mistreating people? Just because people have entered the United States illegally, does that really justify treating them like horse dung?
After all, doesn’t the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibit U.S. officials from inflicting cruel and unusual punishments on anyone, foreigners and Americans alike? Are we just supposed to ignore or forget about that amendment when we think about their sending migrants who have never been convicted of a crime to serve time in a brutal foreign prison? What about when U.S. officials begin doing the same to American citizens? I’ll bet there are Americans who will also be giddy about that.
U.S. officials say that the people who are now serving time in that El Salvador prison were members of a Venezuelan drug-running gang. Even if that is true, does that warrant treating them as horse dung? If they are accused of having broken the law, what would be wrong with indicting and convicting them before they are sentenced to serve time in a brutal, tortuous foreign prison?
In fact, we don’t even know whether the gang accusation is true, even though many giddy Americans say it must be true if federal officials have made the accusation. Moreover, is it against U.S. law to have been a member of a Venezuelan drug-running gang? I don’t think so. But even if it is, none of them were ever indicted or convicted of that offense here in U.S. courts.
Moreover, isn’t it possible that some of the migrants were coerced into being gang members? Wouldn’t it have been nice if they had been given a chance to show that in a trial by jury that is guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution? Or are we supposed to forget about that amendment too?
We should also keep in mind that drug gangs are a direct consequence of drug prohibition, a program that is at the heart of the U.S. government’s decades-old, failed, and destructive drug-war program. Shouldn’t that be a consideration before people are treated like horse dung?
U.S. officials have admitted that at least one migrant who was totally innocent was mistakenly renditioned to El Salvador. He’s now incarcerated in that brutal prison. Yet, U.S. officials are fighting fiercely against a U.S. District Court’s order to bring him back. They won’t even ask El Salvador to return him to the United States. They even suspended a federal prosecutor for acknowledging the truth about the mistake to a federal district judge. They want that migrant to stay right where he is, no matter how innocent he is. Like I say, horse dung.
Consider the people in the small African nation of Lesotho. The people there have a per capita income of $1,000 per year. Yes, you read that right. Per year! Many of them make a living by making denim that is exported to the United States for bluejeans. Seventy percent of what they produce is exported to the United States, producing $240 million in annual revenue. However, those poor people only purchase $3 million from the United States. That means that the U.S. is running a huge trade deficit with Lesotho. Oh, no! Isn’t that terrible? That means that those poor people will be punished with an enormous tariff of 50 percent, which will decimate them economically. They have to be treated like horse dung too, with nary a peep of protest from Americans, many of whom go to church every Sunday wearing their religion on their sleeves and talking about the “brotherhood of man.”
I love Americans who lived during the period 1880-1910. It’s hard to imagine that 20 million immigrants flooded into the United States during that 30-year period of time. That’s because there were virtually no controls on immigration. It was also the most economically prosperous period in the history of man. Also the most charitable. One man — John D. Rockefeller, who today’s Americans revile as a “robber baron” — actually gave away $500 million … and not because of an income-tax deduction because there was no income tax at all.
In fact, those Americans hated and rejected everything today’s Americans stand for and favor. That’s why there was no: income taxation or IRS, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, farm subsidies, education grants, (minimal) public (i.e., government) schooling, school vouchers, (minimal) immigration controls, Federal Reserve, paper money, welfare, welfare state, national-security state, Pentagon, CIA, NSA, FBI, gun control, foreign wars (except the Spanish American War that American imperialists succeeded in launching), torture, indefinite detention, state-sponsored assassinations, renditions, war on terrorism, Cold War, foreign aid, foreign interventionism, regime-change operations, and other statist programs that are near and dear to the hearts of today’s Americans and that have converted the United States into one great big dysfunctional, violent nation that treats people like horse dung.
Many years ago, I was visiting Cuba. A man about 18 years old approached me, lowered his voice, and said, “Sir, may I talk to you?” I said, “Sure,” and he took me to the side of a building where he was certain no one could hear him. He said, “Sir, I know you’re from the United States. I just want you to know that my greatest dream in life is to go to New York City and see the Statue of Liberty.”
I didn’t have the heart to tell him that the Statue of Liberty no longer has any real meaning for the American people, except as a nice historical landmark for tourists to visit. One thing is for sure: Many Americans today are ashamed of the inscription at the base of the statue and, deep down, wish that it would be removed. Placed on the statue in 1903, the inscription reflects the mindset of those 1880-1910 Americans who I love and who opposed treating people like horse dung:
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” —Emma Lazarus
November 2, 1883
