Amnesty International helps you tell your Congressfolk to allow more Syrian refugees into the United States. Not just because refugees are running from terrorism, or because refugees have caused precisely zero terrorist attacks in America, or because our vetting process is actually pretty solid, but because we ought to be compassionate toward folks who are constantly harassed, exploited, and abused. You may be interested to learn that my state's junior Senator (I won't name him, but his initials are Pat Toomey) cited, in his office's letter to constituents about the matter, "credible reports" of Syrian refugee involvement in the Paris attacks as his reason for withholding his help. And when I went to his website and asked which "credible reports" these were, his office merely sent the same letter alleging but not describing "credible reports" that they'd already sent. I hope he doesn't mean the "Syrian refugee passport" found at one of the Paris attacks, which investigators later found to be an obvious forgery.
Meanwhile, Criminal Alien Requirement (or CAR) prison facilities generally house only immigrants convicted of crimes, and as The Nation has lately reported, prisoners in CARs with serious, even life-threatening conditions have a tougher time getting care than folks in federal prisons do -- and that means they die more often. Perhaps I should already have mentioned that CARs tend to be private prisons. Now I bet a lot of Americans think this is perfectly OK, that we should be concentrating on "our own people" or something, but that's the logic, if we can call it that, of folks who've given up on compassion and justice because they require more hard work and more personal growth than they were counting on. A great nation can be great to everyone, after all; why should we limit the horizons of our greatness? So private corporations can keep neglecting prisoners fleecing the taxpayer? The ACLU helps you tell our government to end the private, immigrant-only prison system and do its duty by all of our prisoners.
Comments