Showing posts with label immigration. Show all posts
Showing posts with label immigration. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 31, 2023

From Hell to Purgatory: A Poem for the Children

I wrote this poem on November 17, 2012. 

That was when the bickering between the parties was over whether the children of people fleeing the danger in their homelands to come to the USA to find refuge get to stay, or if they have to go back to places they've never been to.

It seemed like a simple thing for me to resolve. Of course, children are not responsible for the crimes their parents commit, but something else was going on in society. People were actually arguing over whether it was sound immigration policy to let the children stay and become American citizens or to boot them out and not care about them. 

It did not seem to matter to many of these people that these innocent children have grown up to be some of America's finest citizens. They didn't even care that if those rules applied when their ancestors were leaving their native homelands that they, too, would be subjects of the discussion. 

After a while, I went off and wrote this poem, wishing we could just kick out a racist citizen every time one of the children needs citizenship, and we just have no room here to say, you are my child. Wherever I am, you have shelter and food while your parents build a better life for you. 

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