The BDN Opinion section operates independently and does not set news policies or contribute to reporting or editing articles elsewhere in the newspaper or on bangordailynews.com
Mary Offutt is a retired nurse/paramedic living in Deer Isle. As a nurse she has worked with migrant farmworkers and asylum seekers in Maine, and served on six medical missions to Latin America.
I believe Americans’ strong feelings about immigration are fueled by a diet of junk information that often has no basis in fact. My perspective might not change minds. I hope only to inspire people to seek the truth.
At the root of this problem now dividing the nation is Congress not agreeing on immigration reform. The last reform in 1996, which was during a Democratic (Clinton) administration, increased border enforcement, mandated detention for certain offenses, and expanded grounds for deportation.
Having been married to an immigrant, and worked as a nurse with immigrants and migrant farm workers, hearing the White House press secretary continually used the words “rapist,” “murderer,” “gang member” to describe immigrants. makes me wonder if we’re talking about the same people. As if blaming crime on immigrants isn’t enough, a range of other lies that don’t meet the straight face test have been issued, including “they’re eating the dogs … they’re eating the cats.”
The fact is, native-born U.S. citizens commit crimes at higher rates than immigrants. Look it up if you doubt this. In fact you should always fact check what you base your opinions on.
Current ICE efforts in Maine are focused on African immigrants who are among the least likely to be criminals since they have already been extensively vetted in a process spanning 18 to 36 months. Multiple international and U.S. agencies are involved in a seven-step vetting process, including the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the Resettlement Support Center, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (part of the Department of Homeland Security), U.S. Customs and Border Protection and Transportation Safety Administration.
Immigrants and migrants live in perpetual fear of losing what they’ve worked hard to get in this country. ICE activities have escalated this fear, resulting in traumatized families, children separated from parents, unnecessary deaths, eroded public trust in law enforcement, not to mention immigrants not daring to leave the house and go to work.
“As any chef will tell you,” famed chef Anthony Bourdain wrote, “our entire service economy — the restaurant business as we know it — in most American cities, would collapse overnight without Mexican workers.” He went on to say, “[I]n two decades as a chef and employer, I never had one American kid walk in my door and apply for a dishwashing job, a porter’s position—or even a job as a prep cook.”
“Constitutional rights” is a term we hear often now. Ratified in 1791 just four years after the Constitution, the Bill of Rights guarantees certain rights to “the people,” not “citizens.” This important distinction is at the center of criticism of Department of Homeland Security activities.
Protestors make up only a fraction of Americans who insist that federal authorities at all levels observe the constitutional rights guaranteed to anyone on U.S. soil, and to arrest the worst immigrant criminals as they claim to be doing.
There’s also the question of humanity. Too many stories describe law-abiding immigrants being roughed up and taken away by masked men wearing black pouring out of black SUVs, and too many people with no criminal record except maybe a speeding ticket vanishing into the detention system.
What training and instructions are given to new ICE and DHS recruits that seem to turn them into heartless thugs who pull over a car, shatter the driver’s window and snatch a father, leaving the mother in a car she can’t drive and the newborn covered in broken glass, as recently occurred in Maine? It’s wrong on so many levels.
Targeting brown and black people is all too familiar to me, someone who was raised in racism in the South. These efforts don’t reduce crime, because immigrants are less likely to be criminals than native-born U.S. citizens. I take comfort that these shady practices — and the murder of Alex Pretti and Renee Good — will cause a backlash of such magnitude that Trump Republicans will be voted out.