IMMIGRATION WATCH-Seven decades ago, a lawyer named Paul Herzog was desperate. He was a Jew in Nazi-controlled Austria. He went with his family on a trip across Europe, seeking a country that would give them refuge. But they would not find it.
Countries at that time had a strict policy of not granting refugee status to those fleeing violence. The United States was one of those countries, and had famously demonstrated its ruthlessness by refusing to permit the Ms. St. Louis, a ship carrying Jewish refugees, to dock in Miami. My grandmother and her children — my father and aunt — would survive the war. Herzog, my grandfather, would not, perishing at Auschwitz.
It’s 2014 now. I read about the crisis of unaccompanied child migrants and I can’t but contemplate the grandfather I never met and my own children who I see every day. The crisis of children and families streaming to our borders, many of them fleeing violence in their home countries, has unsurprisingly elicited a strong negative reaction. Last week, protesters in Murrieta blocked a public road and forced buses full of women and children to turn around. The women and children were migrants who had arrived at border crossing points and sought temporary refuge.
Undoubtedly, the prospect of many strangers arriving in one’s community is fearful. But the proper response to fear is not inchoate rage — it should be the desire to become informed. Who are these people? Why are they coming? What will be done with them? The answers are available.
The majority are from Central America. This is documented by the U.S. Border Patrol’s own investigations. They are seeking protection not only in the United States but in Mexico, Costa Rica and Belize. Surveys carried out by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees have found that the majority of migrants are fleeing servitude, rape and murder at the hands of criminal gangs.
Many are arriving at the U.S. border where they do not try to cross surreptitiously, but rather present themselves at U.S. border posts and request protection. Under U.S. immigration law, any person who arrives at a land or air port of entry and expresses a credible fear to their life if returned to their home country, must be given a chance to plead their case before an asylum officer or immigration judge.
The law further requires that appropriate care arrangements must be made for children.
These rules are not a recent enthusiasm of the Obama administration or immigration activists. They have been part of international law since the 1940s, and of U.S. law since 1980. They resulted from the disgraceful events of the 1930s, when Jews fleeing Nazi persecution were refused refuge in many countries — including the United States.
Similar waves of migrants have come to our country in recent decades. In the spring of 1975, over 120,000 Vietnamese refugees fled to the U.S. when the communists took over their country. In 1980, the Mariel Boatlift saw 130,000 Cuban refugees flee to South Florida in less than a year. At the time, our policy of resettlement in the United States was deeply unpopular.
In 2014, no one is advocating for a blanket resettlement of all migrants. Many qualify to stay in the United States under rules that provide protection to those fleeing persecution and crime. Many more, after being screened, will be found ineligible for such protection and deported. What is certain is that many of these children are frightened, hungry and, above all, traumatized by the violence they have witnessed in their home countries. No rational person flees their home unless motivated by desperation.
These human beings deserve our compassion. This is not a statement derived from armchair idealism, but the bitter experience of my own family.
(Paul Herzog is an immigration lawyer in Los Angeles. This column was posted first at the Press Enterprise.)
-cw
CityWatch
Pub: Jul 13, 2014