Free-market economics 101: supply and demand.” Americans are demanding consumers. Violent drug cartels respond accordingly. By analogy, a baseball game cannot be played without pitchers and catchers.
The responsibility starts here, nowhere else! Galling are those pandering to uninformed fear of immigrants, serving enormous quantities of disinformation to advance personal power, influence, and authority. U.S. International law and treaty establish a legal right to Petition for Asylum inside our borders.
Joshua Rubin, founder of Witness at the Border, wrote on the group’s Facebook page Feb. 4: “Migrants traveling sometimes thousands of miles … are NOT the masterminds of a billion-dollar industry. Rather, the players are manufacturers, smugglers, distributors and facilitators. Fentanyl …, passes through … Ports of Entry. … (M)ost of it gets through.”
Among stressors: climate change, frequent severe weather events, mass public and school shootings, political ramifications of Jan. 6, 2021, Donald Trump’s “stolen election — big lie.” More than 1 million people million died from COVID-19. Our 30-healthcare system’s frontline medical professionals were stretched thin. Social isolation disrupted familiar routines creating psychological distress.
July 2020 CNBC: “The coronavirus pandemic may cause as many as 40 million Americans to lose their homes, four times the amount seen during the Great Recession.” Wager-earners experience “Gilded Age II” disparities increasing for almost two generations. A May 2022 LendingClub survey reported “around 64% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck.”
As a career prosecutor working in the Drug Treatment Court field for 5.5 years, we understood people abused drugs to escape problems. Addictive substances and/or behaviors were an unhealthy way to suppress emotional pain. “Problem Solving Courts” addressed causation.
That is a template to begin tackling social problems in a serious, holistic manner. It involves being eyeball-to eyeball, in the mirror honest with ourselves, overcoming resistance required to manifest change when confronting old notions.
The 19th century “Know-Nothing Party” blamed immigrants for social ills. Previous waves of Europeans often had to flee for safety. Interference in Latin American nations and resultant destabilization into the present contributes to millions risking arduous treks north.
Respect rule of law-due process and honor our nation-of-immigrants heritage. Focusing on symptoms, rather than causation, facilitates mistreatment of victimized, displaced people.
We forget our ancestors who were also the “tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” Our ancestors who were “the wretched refuse, homeless, tempest-tost” called by Lady Liberty’s my lamp beside the golden door!”
Rev. Barry Abraham Zavah
Alpine
