reflectivepundit

Call Them Asylum Seekers or Refugees—Not Illegal Immigrants or Migrants

By Brigitte L. Nacos

As I read this morning’s New York Times at the breakfast table, an op-ed article by Brad S. Karp and Gary M. Wingens, chairmen of two of the country’s most prestigious law firms, was of particular interest.

First, the authors provide a concise survey of President Trump’s violations of international and constitutional law in his administration’s inhumane treatment of asylum seekers at the country’s Southern borders. Second, the article reveals that the law firms Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison and Loewenstein Sandler “sent a team of lawyers to represent parents detained near the border in Texas” cooperating with non-profit organizations that try to protect the rights of affected adults and children.

What struck me though was the article’s headline “An Army of Lawyers for Migrants.” The authors do not use the term migrants that would indicate people moving from place to place mostly to find work but they rather write of “families seeking asylum” and refugee laws about the legal requirements for the treatment of asylum seekers.

When I saw the same article in the online opinion section of the Times I noticed that it had the fitting headline: “The Law Did Not Create This Crisis, but Lawyers Will Help End It.” I bet that the wording was changed for the print edition simply to shorten the headline in disregard of the fact that the term “migrants” has a different meaning than asylum seekers.

Like the Times other leading news organizations use the terminology that this president and his supporters prefer. Whether supportive or critical of the administration’s policies and actions reports typically refer to illegal immigration and illegal or undocumented immigrants or migrants.

Thus, in today’s Washington Post an editorial critical of the crisis caused by the Trump administration carries the headline “The right way to respond to the migrant influx” and calls those crossing the borders “illegal immigrants.”

President Trump has his reasons for calling asylum seekers, refugees from dangerous places, “illegal immigrants” that “infest” or “invade” our country bringing us allegedly criminals, gangs, and rapists and prevent us to “make America great again.” Like all demagogues he utilizes the power of words to widen us-against-them and good-versus-evil divides.   

Editors and journalists, too, ought to know that language matters.

Have You Left No Sense of Decency, Mr. Trump?

By Brigitte L. Nacos

When you try to keep up with a president who manages to lie in his public statements several times within less than one hour—as he did last Friday during a question-and-answer session with the press, you learn rather quickly there is nothing coming from Mr. Trump’s mouth that can surprise you.

More troubling is that some seventeen months into the Trump presidency there is nothing he, his inner circle, his administration, and his cheerleaders in the Congress can do that is particularly surprising.

We expect nothing else. We are no longer shocked. And most of us watch in silence--even though many resent Mr. Trump and his attacks on America’s constitutional foundations.

That’s what happens, when autocrats, dictators, fascists tighten their grip of control on the people, not just their fans.  

Mr. Trump does not hide his authoritarian end-game. As he himself stated last week, he does not merely admire North Korea’s despotic leader Kim Jong Un for his complete control of his people. Instead, he wants to be America’s Dear Leader with us ("my people, he said) giving the same attention to him when he speaks (meaning required over-the-top applause in North Korea) as North Koreans do to their leader.

Never mind that in the last 24 hours or so a few Republicans have voiced mild displeasure over the forced separation of desperate asylum seeking families at our Southern borders.

While no longer surprised by anything said and done by this presidents and his supporting cast, I now know that I can still be shocked. I am deeply shocked about the so-called zero tolerance border policy set and enforced by the president and his administration.

I am shocked as I look at the images of babies and toddlers and young children and teenagers forcibly taken away from their mothers and fathers.

I am shocked as I look at cages holding mothers and fathers apart from their equally caged children (Of course, I shouldn’t be surprised since the president himself has dehumanized black and brown people in his rhetorical outbursts—always the prelude to dehumanizing actions).

I am shocked as I see the pictures of detention facilities for now orphaned boys and girls and the start of establishing  tent cities  for children in areas where super high temperatures are the norm.

I agree with Maureen Dowd who wrote in her last column on this American disgrace that the Statue of Liberty is crying.

I am crying, too.

Is there no end to this madness? Is there no voice loud and powerful enough to bring America back onto the right path?

I think of the great moment in U.S. history, when one courageous man stood up to U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy and his witch hunt of an allegedly Communist dominated deep state: Joseph Welch, chief counsel and defender of the U.S. Army under attack by McCarthy, told the Senator in one crucial hearing, “At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”

This was a turning point. The beginning of the end of McCarthyism!  

The time has come to ask the same question of the U.S. president (and Trumpism).  

Have you left no sense of decency, Mr. Trump?