The Cold Hand of ICE

American immigration police lay in wait at courthouses and now even hospitals to snatch away people for deportation.  Read below of a father and mother arrested by ICE as they tried to obtain medical help for their baby.  The parents had to choose between their freedom and their infant son's surgery in the hospital.  These are underhanded and despicable ways to treat people who came to America to escape poverty, fear and hopelessness in their native lands.  Many are hard-working tax paying members of society.  The Justice department previously distinguished between people who were living peacefully and productively in America and those who committed violent crimes.  Now there is no reason and no heart, just a ruthless social cleansing.

The COLD hand of ICE

With these despicable acts, America now resembles a Nazi-like terrorist state.  Our ICE police have become akin to the Gestapo.  They do not act to protect us, but to cleanse our society of undesirables, those who do not fit America's primarily white english-speaking culture.

Xenophobia has created a chilling dehumanizing effect, caused by the hateful words of one man and his party.  There are horrifying similarities to past demagogues, leaders who have stirred up people's hate by making them distrust another segment of their society, their Jewish neighbor, the foreigner next door, the black man moving into your neighborhood, the other religion, race, nationality, etc.

For most of the last century American immigration policy has put strict numerical limits on immigration from lands that were considered undesirable, notably China and Japan.  This made it impossible for the country's demographics to change as a result of an influx from such people.  This was intentional.  This strategy and rationale has been America's way of staying predominantly white.

The immigration policy of America in the last decade or so hasn't become lax, it has become less prejudicial.  We no longer ban Chinese people or limit them to some ridiculous number like 200 a year.  That is offensive to us now, but nowadays some seek to ban any influx from strife-filled lands based on fear of terrorism.  That argument gives even progressive-minded people pause.  It is only a fear-based subterfuge, a fake reason to restrict entry to the US.  The real impetus is the dominant culture's increasing discomfort with a changing demographic.  We look around and see people who don't look like us, who speak in different tongues or with accents, who practice different religions, have different customs and modes of dress.  America is afraid of its new neighbors.  That is the reason America has become afraid of immigration and why there is so much focus now on both legal and illegal immigration.

This message of fear coming from some of our politicians resonates with the selfish greedy instincts of many.  The politicians and demagogues tell us 'they are taking your jobs, ruining your property value, bringing in crime', etc.  It sways the rich and the poor with our lowest common denominator, the twin primal motivations of greed and fear.  It befuddles the poor, and uneducated, and it benefits the rich and spoiled.  The ignorant believe they are economically disadvantaged by migrant workers unskilled laborers who work in fields or cleaning houses.  The rich seize political power by fanning the flames of fear and prejudice.

The rule of law is no longer tempered by reason and mercy.  America's heart is broken.

Today fathers and mothers are dragged away from hospital waiting rooms, teenagers are deported to dangerous unfamiliar lands.  Tomorrow may bring much more ugliness.  Will we revisit the genocides of the past, the internment camps or something much worse?  During WWII Japanese American CITIZENS were held in internment camps in America.  Don't think it can't happen here or that it cannot happen again.

It's time we understand the ways we are being played by American politics and who really gains by each change to our policy.  When news agencies are discredited by politicians we lose any ability to discern fear-based political rhetoric from legitimate national security issues.

Wake up America.  This is not the path to freedom.  Darkness and ignorance keeps no one safe.

The Other Side of the Wall

Think yourself there.

Metaphorically we each stand before a wall.  We can't go through the wall.  We can't go around the wall.  We spend our time figuring out how to go over, under or through it.

The wall is our reality.

So long as we struggle with the wall, we make it real.

The wall is the journey, one that never ends and never begins.

There is no progress only effort.

There is no wall.  There is only a belief in the journey.

What is on the other side?

That is the destination.

The moment you become one with your destiny, you transcend your wall.

You do not reach it by wishing, trying or any conventional means.  It is a place in your mind.

Think yourself there.

Pursuit of Happiness

Alas, the indifferent teens on the beach learned they did have an obligation to help the drowning man.  They laughed and recorded him drowning.  He's dead now and they're facing charges.

I mention this to draw a parallel:

Does Congress have an obligation to shelter children who have grown up in America, gone to our schools and lived among us? What will happen to them if we cast them out unprepared and unprotected to the lands their parents fled? Will they too die?  Will Congress be held accountable just like those feckless teens?

What is America's obligation here to life, humanity, what is America but a land of immigrants.  The first immigrants had no passports.  They knew nothing but they came to a new land in search of a better life, a chance at life, liberty and happiness.

The children of DACA knew no better, because they were children.  Here is our chance to teach them what America really means.  Will we open our hearts and show some compassion, or is America already so jaded that we would do this to children living within our borders?

Promise

Some of us are promised a Destiny.  There is a fate that we are destined for.

It may start out one day as a dream.

We may not know how to get there.  Life may be full of twists and turns and it seems our dream can never be.  We may have heartaches.

We may wake up one day and think we've spent decades going the wrong direction, following the wrong path.

Where is that person, place or thing we dreamed about?

What is my destiny?

It is my future self.

Every dream I pass along the way builds her character.  Every broken heart molds her compassion.

She is the woman I dreamt of long ago, and she dreamt of me.

Every dream I dream makes me her.

The emptiness I feel is longing for something outside of me.

It always seems to be something or someone I need to be complete.

But my Destiny is to be whole.

Love must fill the heart and then overflow.  It's nature is abundance.

The magnificent being I saw is love.  She is whole, kind, compassionate, and wise.

Love must fill the heart and then overflow.  It is healing.  It nurtures.

Love is the spirit that heals.  It does not come from you.  It comes through you and is limitless.

Love is our Destiny our Promise and our Future Self.