The other side of the asylum-seeking argument
Jun 18, 2018, 10:41 AM | Updated: Jun 19, 2018, 5:47 am
A youth who traveled with the annual caravan of Central American migrants waits for access to request asylum at the US-Mexico border in Tijuana, Mexico, April 30, 2018. Stickers like the one on his chest were also seen pasted to the exterior fence at the port of entry. (AP Photo/Hans-Maximo Musielik)
(AP Photo/Hans-Maximo Musielik)
Maria Espinoza is the child of a Mexican-born father and heavily-involved with immigration issues. But she is frustrated by stereotypes around those points.
“My father was born in Mexico. He came here the right way,” Espinoza told KIRO Radio’s Dave Ross. “… I have so many Latino friends, who are liberty-loving Latinos who feel like we are getting a bad name because we’re lumped in and assumed to be for illegal immigration. That’s not true.”
Espinoza is founder of the Remembrance Project out of Houston, Texas. The organization is as controversial as the issues it promotes — it claims to be a voice for victims killed by illegal aliens.
RELATED: We’ve become a nation that separates children from parents
As the controversy around asylum-seeking parents — separated from their children — has grown, Espinoza’s own voice has been elevated. It has also garnered the attention of President Donald Trump as he promotes his views on immigration. In Washington, 206 people have been detained in a federal detention center in SeaTac. Many of them are parents separated from children at the US-Mexico border as they sought asylum, noting gang violence and persecution in their home countries. Many do not know where their children have been sent. The federal government is housing many in camps.
Espinoza, however, has little sympathy for the parents caught in the system after crossing the border illegally.
“The parents are the ones to blame here,” Espinoza said. “Obviously, they are not good parents. They should be prosecuted for child endangerment, child neglect, just like you would an American parent. How many Americans go to jail for crimes they committed and they have children? We’re going to tell someone who robbed a bank, or who murdered someone, that because he’s a parent we can’t send him to prison for his crime? This is outrageous.”
“The word is out and has been out for some time on what to say,” she said. “They’ve been coached and told what to say, by even by American lawyers, who assist these foreigners who cross illegally and they claim they are refugees. Nothing has changed in their country. America continues our US foreign aid by millions of dollars. Mexico is going to get $96 million in 2018 to help them do … I’m not sure what. If they are running from gang violence then that is what our money is for.”
Asylum legislation
House Speaker Paul Ryan is ready to propose two bills this month to address the issues around asylum-seeking parents and their children. One bill will allow the children to stay temporarily, but won’t grant citizenship or green cards. Espinoza argues that children, even DACA recipients should not get any special treatment.
“We need to take care of Americans first, and it seems like our Legislators in DC don’t care, don’t mind about separating American families when our children are six feet under or shot in the head while they are waiting at a stop light, or beaten, tortured, or burned to death by an illegal alien or macheted by at MS13 gang member,” she said.
Congressmember Suzane DelBene, who represents Washington’s 1st District, said that if Republicans really wanted to solve the problem, they would have.
“It’s really preposterous for think that in a place where the Republicans have the White House, they have a majority in the Senate and a majority in the House, that it’s anyone’s fault but theirs,” DelBene said at a Monday press conference.
“… they are capable of moving legislation whenever they want,” she said. “As long as they agree on it, they can move it through both bodies and the president would sign it. The reason nothing has happened is because Republicans don’t want anything to happen.”
@RepDelBene in Seattle on immigration @KIRORadio : pic.twitter.com/5zwskE5fLD
— Mike Lewis (@MikeLew65) June 18, 2018
DelBene is the cosponsor of the “Keep Families Together Act” which would ensure that parents and their children could not be separated when they cross the border. She is asking for Americans to keep pressuring the Trump administration and lawmakers to end the separation policy.
“We can continue to highlight these stories, to highlight what’s happening to people, to really call this out for what it is,” DelBene said. “It’s inhumane, it’s immoral, and it’s un-American. And to make sure that people across our community, across our state, and across the country demand that we make a change; that the Trump administration makes a change to their policy. And hopefully that will cause them to make a different decision.”
America came to the US to escape domestic violence so severe her abuser set fire to her bed while she slept. @RepDelBene immigration news conference, Seattle. @KIRORadio pic.twitter.com/Rm04LdYwI7
— Mike Lewis (@MikeLew65) June 18, 2018
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