{"id":2344,"date":"2018-06-27T13:03:35","date_gmt":"2018-06-27T17:03:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/haiti-observateur.org\/?p=2344"},"modified":"2018-06-27T13:03:35","modified_gmt":"2018-06-27T17:03:35","slug":"often-like-crossing-the-red-sea-it-takes-a-miracle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/haiti-observateur.org\/?p=2344","title":{"rendered":"Often like crossing the Red Sea\u2014it takes a miracle"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t\t<strong>Overcoming The Immigration Obstacles\u00a0<\/strong><em>By Jim Uttley<\/em><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Often like crossing the Red Sea \u2014 it takes a miracle<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The events of the last week are hard\u00a0to believe. Painful sights of children\u00a0being pulled from their families and\u00a0shipped thousands of miles from\u00a0their parents. Crowds of people lined\u00a0up at processing centers along the\u00a0U.S.-Mexico border waiting their\u00a0turn to either to be processed or to\u00a0hear news of what has become of\u00a0their offspring.<\/p>\n<p>As someone who has been involved in an unofficial capacity in\u00a0helping immigrants apply and attend<br \/>\ninterviews in hopes of being accepted\u00a0for a temporary visitor\u2019s visa to\u00a0the United States, what I\u2019m watching\u00a0now is emotional asIrealize how\u00a0unnecessary much of this confusion\u00a0is.<\/p>\n<p>In all the discussion in how to\u00a0deal with these children and teens\u00a0while their parents are in detentention awaiting their fate, I am rather puzzledas to why the American immigration\u00a0and ICE officials have not yet discovered a way to avoid all this\u00a0mess at the border. This could all be\u00a0avoided if the U.S. State Department\u00a0set up processes centers in the countries where these undocumented\u00a0immigrants are coming from. Here\u2019s\u00a0an example.<\/p>\n<p>Thirty years ago when my family and I resided in Port-au-Prince, I\u00a0made several trips to the American consulate near the State University of\u00a0Haiti. People would line up for hours\u00a0in a large, rather dark room that felt\u00a0like an oven in the swelting heat.<\/p>\n<p>The line wove back and forth as\u00a0it advanced toward the windows\u00a0which reminded me of bank teller windows behind which an employee\u00a0of the consulate would sit. As each\u00a0applicant approached the window,\u00a0each needed to have the necessary\u00a0documents \u2014 a Passport from their\u00a0country of birth, a birth certificate \u2014 but in many cases a Baptismal certificate.<\/p>\n<p>Anyone acquainted with document preparation and record keeping\u00a0in Haiti, knows well that many peo- ple never received an official birth\u00a0certificate. The closest piece of paper\u00a0they have to document that proves\u00a0they are who they say they are is a\u00a0certificate that they received from\u00a0their local Roman Catholic priest or a\u00a0Protestant pastor. However, since\u00a0most Protestants, particularly evangelicals, don\u2019t baptize infants, the\u00a0document they would receive was a\u00a0certificate recognizing when the\u00a0child\u2019s parents dedicated or \u201cpresented\u00a0their child before the Lord\u201d asthe\u00a0prophet Samuel was presented\u00a0before Eli the priest in the days before\u00a0Israel became a nation under\u00a0King Saul and later King David and\u00a0Solomon.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, I\u2019m getting off track as\u00a0I usually do when I get worked up\u00a0about an issue. Back to the issue at\u00a0hand.<\/p>\n<p>The applicant also needs some\u00a0official paper from a bank or other\u00a0financial institution which certifies<br \/>\ntheir financial \u201cworth\u201d. In most cases in countries like El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Haiti, etc., many applicants just don\u2019t have the\u00a0resources needed to meet the steep\u00a0standards of the United States government.<\/p>\n<p>Let\u2019s be very honest, there are\u00a0thousands of would-be immigrants\u00a0who will never be able to meet the requirements. The world\u2019s economy\u00a0has changed so much that the gap\u00a0between the rich and the poor has\u00a0grown from the width of Riviere\u00a0L\u2019Artibonite to the size ofthe Gulf of\u00a0Mexico. Asking people to come up\u00a0with the documents necessary to\u00a0obtain a visa to the U.S. islike telling\u00a0someone they need to swim from\u00a0Les Cayes to Isle a Vache (Cow\u00a0Island). An almost impossible feat\u00a0for most people.<\/p>\n<p>The State Department in conjunction with the Department of\u00a0Foreign Affairs in various countries\u00a0could have set up extra facilities outside their consulates and embassies\u00a0to receive people where those who\u00a0apply with the proper documents would receive a special paper which\u00a0will allow them to enter the U.S. legally. None of the processing would be done on U.S. or Canadian\u00a0soil and with that paper in hand they\u00a0would no longer be considered \u201cundocumented\u00a0immigrants.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The whole process should onlytake a day or two. Most people coming\u00a0from Latin America, the Caribbean\u00a0or elsewhere don\u2019t have tons of\u00a0documents and a \u201cpaper trail\u201d so\u00a0long because they don\u2019t have computers,\u00a0bank accounts like most\u00a0North Americans. Nor are they on\u00a0their smart phones from morning to\u00a0midnight making contacts with God\u00a0knows who, like most of us do.<\/p>\n<p>It would be so helpful if this\u00a0whole Immigration affair that\u2019s been\u00a0going on in the Western Hemisphere<br \/>\nfor at least the 1400s, could be as\u00a0simple as what my good friend who\u2019s\u00a0also on Facebook shared in a post\u00a0from one of his Facebook friends. I\u2019d like to share this with you: \u201cLEGAL VERSUS ILLEGAL\u201d Here\u2019ssome history on legal versus illegal things :<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<ul>\n<li>Legal : Slavery<br \/>\nIllegal : Helping people escape\u00a0slavery<br \/>\nLegal : the Holocaust<br \/>\nIllegal : Smuggling Jewish people out of Germany\u00a0Legal: Segregation<br \/>\nIllegalP : Refusing tomove to the\u00a0back of the bus<\/li>\n<li>Legal: Apartheid<\/li>\n<li>Illegal: Fighting a Apartheid\u00a0If the extent of your morality is\u00a0based on whether or not something is\u00a0legal, then you\u2019ll find excuses to\u00a0accept some truly horrific, evil\u00a0things.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>We are 7.5 billion tool-using primates stuck on one giant rotating rock in one painfully average star system. Our borders are arbitrary. We\u2019re all one species. Our differences are superficial. Either you\u2019re a<br \/>\ncompassionate, decent, fair-minded\u00a0person, or you\u2019re not.<\/p>\n<p>You don\u2019t get to put up arbitrary\u00a0border walls around which people\u00a0you see as human beings. And if<br \/>\nyou\u2019re trying to come up with justification\u00a0or rationalization for putting children in cages, you are probably a\u00a0person who would say \u201cWell, we\u00a0can\u2019t let slaves escape\u2014it\u2019s the law.\u201d\u00a0\u00a92018 Kelsi Leigh<\/p>\n<p>Would that each and every\u00a0undocumented immigrant who has\u00a0crossed the American and\/or Canadian<br \/>\nborders would have received the\u00a0same \u201ccompassionate, decent, and\u00a0fair treatment as fellow human beings searching for that better world\u00a0or the \u201cshining city on the hill.\u201d<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>cet article est publi\u00e9 par l\u2019hebdomadaire Ha\u00efti-Observateur, \u00e9dition du 27 juin 2018 et se trouve en\u00a0<strong>P. 12<\/strong>\u00a0\u00e0 :\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/haiti-observateur.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/H-O-27-juin-2018.pdf\">http:\/\/haiti-observateur.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/H-O-27-juin-2018.pdf<\/a>\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Overcoming The Immigration Obstacles\u00a0By Jim Uttley Often like crossing the Red Sea \u2014 it takes a miracle The events of the last week are hard\u00a0to believe. Painful sights of children\u00a0being pulled from their families and\u00a0shipped thousands of miles from\u00a0their parents. Crowds of people lined\u00a0up at processing centers along the\u00a0U.S.-Mexico border waiting their\u00a0turn to either to be processed or to\u00a0hear news of what has become of\u00a0their offspring. As someone who has been involved in an unofficial capacity in\u00a0helping immigrants apply and attend interviews in hopes of being accepted\u00a0for a temporary visitor\u2019s&#8230; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2331,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,11,48,33,41,45],"tags":[387,485,492,501,604,635,648,699,1220,1326],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/haiti-observateur.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2344"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/haiti-observateur.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/haiti-observateur.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/haiti-observateur.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/haiti-observateur.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2344"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/haiti-observateur.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2344\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/haiti-observateur.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2331"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/haiti-observateur.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/haiti-observateur.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/haiti-observateur.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}