The Guatemalan Consulate in Los Angeles paid for Pedro Pablos bus ticket home to Guatemala. He came to America seeking the American Dream. His first three years, he worked constantly in a variety of construction jobs. This year, he only worked 3 days. He can no longer afford to live in the U.S. He decided to return home to Guatemala, but wanting to avoid the violence of overzealous Arpaio type cops and inhumane treatment in the detention centers, he contacted his Guatemalan Consulate who provided him the ticket and sufficient documentation to return home safely and legally. I commend the Consulate for providing this assistance. It is logical, voluntary but most of all, it is safe and humane. This is a model that workers, citizens and humanitarians can all support. As I earlier reported, other countries, like India, are providing the same repatriating services.
These type of programs cost the U.S. nothing.
Our country spends hundreds of millions of dollars funding privately owned detention centers full of non-felonious workers. They are farmers, seamstresses, meatpackers and technical workers. Sheriff Arpaio spends millions Racial Profiling and incarcerating non-felonious workers, humiliating them, as he marches them through the streets to gain media attention for himself. None of these tactics work. The costs are outrageous. They are abusive and inhumane.
ICE owns a fleet of Con-Air type planes they use to repatriate workers to their home country. Of course these flights are involuntary as the workers are swept away into the night and flown to some unknown town in their home country, no one waiting for them, no one knowing they are arriving, families in America only knowing they disappeared. ICE flew 367,000 of them "home" last year.
Then you have Tucson Border Patrol Chief Patrol Agent Robert Gilbert. He does not believe in repatriation. He prefers prosecuting and jailing them. He prefers "teaching them a lesson." He prosecuted 13,000 "illeeegals" last year, bloating his budget by jailing them for 180 days, then dumping them into some unknown location in the deep interior of Mexico. No family. No notice. Just an unknown dumping ground. The enigma about this man is he married an illegal immigrant from Peru and side stepped the standard immigration policies, expediting the process via marriage. His wife wanted the same thing the migrant workers want, the attainment of the American Dream.
Given the state of our current economy, there are those here that are willing to repatriate to their home countries. We have two options. We can treat people like human beings or we can treat them as subhumans.
I choose Humanity!
“Man's inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn”
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