Caring and Children and Borders, Oh My.
I have a superpower. It’s not the best one, having more in common with the child in X-2 who can control TV’s with his mind than Jean Grey’s telekinesis.
I care. About basically everything.
Without exception.
This helps, a lot, when it comes to things like self-improvement. I care what readers think, so I try to improve my clarity. I care what other authors think, so I try to improve my depth. I care what agents and publishers think, so I try to improve my conveyance and diction.
I care. It’s helpful.
I care. It’s also a burden.
The migrant crisis ramping up, and eventually coming to a head, has been a huge thing for me to tackle. I try to keep my blog and my twitter as politically identical to Switzerland as I can manage.
It’s not perfect. And honestly? If staying silent about thousands of children being separated from their parents (with no plan or even remote possibility of being returned to their parents) is what gets me my career, then I don’t want one.
Nothing is worth that price.
Wednesday morning, after spending some precious father son time in the morning with my waking child, I listened to the audio of the children crying for their mother, confused and miserable and panicking at everything done to them.
My son is three. When we leave the room, with him still in it, sometimes he panics a little. He’s very emotionally and intellectually developed for his age. But he’s still three. He needs us, and that’s as it should be. He’s three. He’s not supposed to be independent yet, he’s three.
He’s three. The exact same age as the majority of the children in the audio I listened to.
I lost it. I cried, could barely even take a nap which was desperately necessary for me to perform my job. I could barely even think straight. I was angry to start with, furious at how things had escalated so far.
Then I started reading the reactions to this crisis, to the endless party-line ‘meh’s’ to Corey Lewandowski’s entirely disgusting ‘womp womp’.
They ostensibly have access to the same audio. They, the party of family values, heard that same tape and did not break down as I did.
The President’s executive action has a built in demand for Supreme Court action. It is violating a provision that is nearly thirty years old, and common knowledge for every security issue which involves the border. It’s also so incredibly vague that you could drive a busload of migrant children through it and not even notice.
There’s also no information, either in the action or in ANY of the statements since, explaining how the children will be reunited with their families. Judges and Lawyers working around the clock at the border to reverse OR EVEN FIND the separated families are just agog at the lack of cooperation or even concern that the ICE and Border Patrol agents display.
There is basically zero chance that the significant majority of these children ever see their parents again.
Soak that in. In 2018, in America, thousands upon thousands of children whose only crime was their parents trying to make a better life for them will never see their family again, and live in concentration-camp conditions until they either get deported or come of age. Then get deported. Or revolving door through the criminal-justice system because they haven’t been given appropriate education or access to citizenship.
If staying silent about those things, if ‘caring about immigrants more than US Citizens’ means I don’t get to be an author, then fine. I don’t get to be an author. I don’t need to be an author. I want to be one, for sure, but it’s not a requirement. I have a full time job that pays the bills, and I don’t hate it.
But at the end of the day, I can go home and hug my son. And that’s something these parents can’t do. And not talking about that, not showing how much it wracks my soul to even consider such a torment, is more than I can stand.
Sincerely,
Justin
