This week’s reading, watching and listening materials consisted of “A House Divided By Immigration Status” by National Public Radio, “Baby Constantin” from The New York Times and by Caitlin Dickerson, as well as “Separating Children… Breaks My Heart” by Laura Bush.
A House Divided By Immigration Status focused on the Gonzalez family. The Gonzalez family consists of three children and their parents of course. However, the story primarily covers the children and their immigration status in combination with complications surrounding the suspension of DACA — a law that would allowed immigrants to stay in the U.S. and pursue higher education. There are two sisters and one brother, with the brother being the youngest of the three. Their youngest brother is the only naturalized citizen of the three, and as such he has a great deal of responsibility to do everything right in order to succeed in school, get a good job and support his parents in their immigration status. The radio show focused a lot on Jose’s (The youngest brother) older sister, Abigail because she was dealing with the suspension of DACA and having to think about college options at the time. However, I feel that Jose’s story is really the most impressionable because he, as a young kid, is required to be nearly perfect in order to someday support his family, whether he likes it or not. It shows the great deal of pressure that some immigrant families are forced to deal with when they enter the U.S.
“There’s so much pressure on me. So I feel like all the eyes are on me and the family. Oh, I’m just waiting for you to get – turn 21 so you can have papers. But now that we have Trump, I feel like it’s going to be hard to be able to fix them.”
– Joseventura
The video on Baby Constantin followed a family who are from Romania. This family was being persecuted in their homeland and looking to seek asylum in the United States. The way that they went about it was legal, seeing as they had passports. But, the father and youngest child, Constantin (four months at the time), were both apprehended at the border because they were looking to seek asylum. They were treated as most immigrants at the southern border are treated — as if they are enemies of the country. Constantin was separated from his father at the age of four, and his father was sent back to Romania. Constantin remained in the United States for a number of months, in the foster care system. This situation shows a how little care the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is showing when handling these immigration cases. People are heartlessly being pulled away from their children and forced into prison-like holding areas for months on end. I feel that the author’s approach in using baby Constantin to shine a light on the broader view of immigration as a whole is very smart and useful. The author used Baby Constantin on purpose because he was the youngest child to be separated from their parents at the boarder. This draws the reader in because it is such a drastic case. It was a great idea to focus on Constantin because it is able to garner the attention of anyone who has compassion for other human beings and children.
“I started crying because I didn’t know what to do. I fainted.”
-Vasile (Constantin’s Father), on when they took Constantin from him.
Separating Children… Breaks My Heart is the opinion of Laura Bush, and is written in The Washington Post. It covers Laura Bush’s opinion on the “No Tolerance” policy that the Trump administration has enacted at the United States border. Under this No Tolerance policy, the crime of illegally crossing the border has become a much more severe offense, and one of the main things that the border agents are sort-of required to do is separate children from their parents. The problem with this separation is the fact that children are practically being held at concentration camps. They are help in tents and they live in conditions that no child should ever have to experience. On top of this, the U.S. government isn’t keeping a good track of which children belong to which parents. Laura Bush expresses her disdain for these policies, especially considering the fact that the children are completely innocent parties in this equation. I completely agree with her. Laura Bush’s op-ed reveals that our entire society isn’t siding with those who want to separate children from their parents at the border. There are those on the ‘inside’ who don’t agree with the rhetoric being spewed from our sitting President. Her op-ed shows humanitarian values and sides with the families affected.
“can we not as a nation find a kinder, more compassionate and more moral answer to this current crisis? I, for one, believe we can.”
-Laura Bush
When it comes to my family, My siblings and I are first generation Americans. Both of our parents were born to poorer families in Jamaica. My father was more of a farm boy from the country-side. My mother was from a less rural area, but her family didn’t come from any type of money at all. Neither of my parents were able to afford much as young people. In fact, my father’s younger sister passed away due to complications with asthma which my father says “wouldn’t even nearly be an issue for a family which had even a little bit of money.” My parents saw greater things for themselves in the future and decided to work extremely hard in order to put themselves through school, high school and multiple levels of higher education. I feel that, currently, that’s a standard that will persist for my brothers and I. We are expected to continue working hard and to never stop until we are stable in our careers and able to support ourselves. I wouldn’t say that the story of our immigration is preserved or being passed down per-say, but we were always reminded of the luxuries that we are currently afforded, that my parents didn’t have when they were younger in Jamaica. I do feel as if I will never stop being grateful for what I have because of that. The part of our story that is left out is how exactly our ancestors ended up in Jamaica in the first place. I will never truly know my family’s African origins due to slavery. The farthest back I can trace things are about two or three generations. Things get very foggy after that.
Questions:
- Should the blame be cast on President Trump for the separation of families if it wasn’t him who asked for that specifically, but his administration?
- Did President Trump have a duty to thoroughly oversee what his administration was doing in this case?
Grade: 4.5/5