Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor, Your Huddled Masses Yearning To Breathe Free?

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Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she

With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Also known as the Statue of Liberty poem, New Colossus is displayed on a plaque mounted inside the pedestal of the statue.

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Our country has the biggest lawn ornament in the world just outside our front door. For years she has welcomed the down-trodden and the oppressed to our shore.  America is known as a melting pot. We are a country of immigrants. That's who we are.

However, seemingly overnight President Trump has morphed our country from being a global beacon of hope into a tyrannical regime who is willing to abuse children in order to make a political point.

Last week, I briefly touched upon the topic of government sponsored child abuse. I was outraged not only by the children being herded into gulag-like camps, but the guards in charge of the camps were not allowed to comfort the children. I thought this was as bad as bad can get. Yet,  I did not take into account the level of incompetence of those who were perpetrating this evil.

Thanks in no small part to the news media who have kept this story in the limelight around the clock, Trump finally felt enough pressure to sign an executive order on Wednesday, which would ban the separation of any more immigrant families. Good-hearted Americans took a collective sigh of relief thinking the nightmare was over. D'oh!

We still have over two thousand children still in lock-up around the country. The problem is we kept no record of which child goes back to which parents. We knew the program was evil, but no one knew how sloppily the program was being managed. Moms and dads may have been deported back to Guatemala with no way to lay claim to their four-year-old child in Oregon.

The bitch of it is, we have the technology which could have avoided the problem from the get-go. I am, of course, talking about HOSPITAL BRACELETS! Think about it, all we had to do was tag the kids. I'm talking about a seventy-year-old technology, which could have kept the egg off our national face.

Here's what you need to ask yourself, if Trump had not been pressured into ending the program, how bad was he going to let problem get?  How many children were the government planning to rip away from their parents with no way of reuniting them?

As it is, we will have to live with this stigma of the program for years to come. We are stuck with thousands of children who are going to grow up with severe emotional problems as a result of the trauma we've inflicted upon them. And their trauma was totally avoidable. Even if the guards aren't allowed to comfort the children, the government could have advertised for volunteers to come and hug the children. They would have easily had thousands of good-hearted people taking up the call.

As I write this, good-hearted Americans are protesting the oppressive policies of our government. Locally, hundreds of Portlandians are occupying the local ICE Headquarters. It gives me hope that Americans are speaking out against this tyranny. The question is, when will our leaders take the hint?