This week I was scrolling through twitter when I saw disturbing pictures of what seemed to be a border control police officers on horses using a wipe to hit Haitian immigrants. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing because I was confused as to why a group of defenseless black immigrants were being targeted with wipes. According to CNN, a mass number of Haitians were trying to find a way to seek asylum into the U.S coming from Mexico. The pictures that were going around were from members of the U.S border control trying to prevent Haitian immigrants from entering the U.S borders. I think people have other thoughts after seeing those pictures all over social media because it looks like they’re using wipes in a brutal way. It’s very sad to see people being treated like this because they’re immigrants trying to seek a better life in another country but they’re being treated in a cruel way. I think as someone whose family has also come to America after fleeing a war torn country, refugees should be treated more kindly because they probably have gone through so much. It was a journey of itself to see how long this group of people have probably traveled while leaving everything behind to seek asylum just to be told in a harsh way to go back to your country is such sad news. The way America sees immigrants is in fact prejudice driven and they are also seen in a very bad light. In reference to The Leavers by Lisa Ko, Polly spoke about her experience in getting separated from her family by immigration because she wasn’t an American citizen. Polly also mentioned how she and others who in this case didn’t have documentation were also being held while being treated inhuman. This experience presented to us by Ko can be similar to issues such as how Haitian immigrants are treated by border control in today’s society. By including Polly’s experience in the book, Ko has only brought further awareness to the idea of how immigrants in America for those who don’t have proper documentation are treated differently. Therefore, I think that the system has set these individuals up for failure by making the process to get proper documentation extremely hard.
Citation:
Wolf ZB. Why many thousands of Haitians converged on the US-Mexico border. 2021 Sep 23.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/22/politics/haitian-immigrants-us-border-explained/index.html
The post is informative. It really shocks me and I can’t imagine that this kind of situation still appears nowadays. I agree with your point that ‘refugees should be treated more kindly because they probably have gone through so much’. I truly hope that these kinds of events won’t happen again. This is related to the book we are reading these weeks and the post is great in total.
Your post is extremely interesting. I think that it is horrible that people can be treated this way just for attempting to enter our country. We have enough resources to deal with these people in much more respectable ways. I agree with your statement that these people likely went through a lot just to get to the border. To be turned away so brutally is wrong in every way.