Immigration Reform: A Jewish Imperative

Rabbi Dr. Shmuly Yanklowitz writes:

We must remember as a nation the timeless rabbinic teaching, “Do not judge your fellow until you stand in his place” (Pirke Avot 2:4). We must not attack undocumented workers with the harmful, hateful rhetoric that many use today as they are stuck in a very challenging predicament that few can related to. The rabbis even promoted immigration: “He who has not made good in one place and fails to move and try his luck in some other place has only himself to complain about” (Bava Metzia 75b). One cannot remain stuck in an underprivileged region if it is a clear dead end for oneself and one’s family. In the Torah, there is a positive commandment to love the foreigner in our midst (Deuteronomy 10:18), and a negative commandment against oppressing or perverting justice for them in any way (Exodus 22:20, Deuteronomy 24:17). The rabbis elaborated on this prohibition: “You shall not wrong or oppress the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. You shall not wrong with words, and you shall not oppress financially” (Mekhilta d’Rabbi Yishmael Mishpatim). We not only owe them basic human rights; we also have specific religious obligations to go above and beyond to protect them from harm. We should be grateful that America is a desired home for those fleeing dire straits and be proud of what we have to offer.
Significant numbers of Jews immigrated (and continue to immigrate) to the United States without documentation. We also needed a safe refuge like many others fleeing poverty and persecution today. Our responsibility to the vulnerable immigrant (and heroic journeyer) requires that we honor the image of G-d in all people. Perhaps Emmanuel Levinas, the French Talmudist and Jewish philosopher, said it best: “The respect for the stranger and the sanctification of the name of the Eternal are strangely equivalent” (Nine Talmudic Readings: “Toward the Other,” p. 27).
Now is the time to hear the eternal calls of our religious traditions and of human conscience to ensure the dignity of all humans by providing a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants currently in the United States. We are long overdue but sure to prevail, since our commitment is steadfast and justice is on our side.

What kind of person introduces himself as “Rabbi Dr”?

Strangely, the rabbi does not advocate that Israel commit suicide by allowing in millions of alien immigrants.

Rabbis Abraham Cooper and Yitzhok Adlerstein write for The Jerusalem Post: “There is no wiggle-room concerning the consequences of a one-state solution. Combined with a right of return for millions of Palestinians living for decades in Muslim countries, Jews would quickly become a minority in their own land. The lone Jewish state would cease to exist, its inhabitants left as secure as the Yazidis or Christians in Iraq.”

It’s a shame that these Orthodox rabbis don’t similarly support America’s core white population from demographic overturn. I guess nationalism and borders are only for Jews.

The documentary Hollywoodism concludes with a rant by Douglas Rushkoff, author of Nothing Sacred: The Truth About Judaism: “The thing that makes Judaism dangerous to everybody, to every race, to every nation, to every idea, is that we smash things that aren’t true. We don’t believe in the boundaries of nation states, we don’t believe in these ideas of individual gods that protect individual people, these are all artificial constructions and Judaism really teaches us how to see that. In a sense, our detractors have us right in that we are a corrosive force, we’re breaking down the false gods of all nations and all people because they’re not real and that’s very upsetting to people.”

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JJ: Channeling Purim’s Esther, Jewish women fast for immigration reform

JewishJournal.com March 13, 2014:

While many devout Jews across the United States and elsewhere observed the pre-Purim tradition of fasting on Thursday, March 13, more than 200 Jewish women and men are going without food today for a different cause: immigration reform.
This year, members and supporters of the National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW) have recast the Fast of Esther, a minor fast day named for the Purim story’s heroine, as part of a month-long campaign to urge the Republican-controlled House of Representatives to pass comprehensive immigration reform legislation this year.
The “Fast for Families,” a nationwide campaign that began on March 8 and will culminate with an event in Washington, D.C., on April 9, is being led by a coalition of faith groups, labor unions and other organizations pushing for immigration reform legislation. While the broader campaign mentions Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Cesar Chavez as models for their current action — all three men fasted to draw attention to their causes – NCJW is looking to Esther for inspiration.
“We hope to draw on Queen Esther’s courage as we fast to call attention to the importance of just, humane, and comprehensive immigration reform that is sensitive to the needs of women, children, and families,” NCJW CEO Nancy K. Kaufman said in a statement.
For the estimated 11 million immigrants believed to be living in the U.S. without legal status, 2013 saw the Senate pass a comprehensive immigration reform bill that included a path to citizenship. But any hope for immigration reform in 2014 would require that bill to be taken up by the House, which has not yet happened.

Brian Williams from Compton High School comments: “Are you kidding me? Fasting for illegal aliens? If these jews are so concerned then why doesnt Israel want these illegal aliens…oh, I forgot, jewish Israel forces BLACK immigrant women into forced STERILIZATION…why arent these jewish women fasting for immigrant rights in Israel?”

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You Belong In Israel

No one belongs in Israel more than you.” Why haven’t the jew-hating goyim seized upon this Zionist marketing slogan?

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Vatican Has Stricted Immigration Policy In The World

Comments at the Chateau:

* Go there and see for yourself. I have, it’s an amazing place. The Catholic church carried western culture for centuries. Without it, some of the greatest works of art in existence would not have been patronized.

That said, fuck the Socialist Pope. Let him welcome in the brown hordes and see what they do to the place. They would burn it down in a heartbeat.

* I wonder when the last vestigial culture christer struggling with the inbuilt contradictions of his natural nationalist tendencies with the open borders christinsanity finally understands that since christianity denies race and blood as “myths” (see Mit Brennende Sorge of 1937) it can never coexist with what nationalists are seeking to build: a society fixated on race. Time to dump this levantine cult, people. Today’s multicult christery is in its purest form and it’s not going to roll back as most christians today are already non-white.

* If Martin Luther were alive today to hear this Pope speak, one of his 95 Theses would have looked like this.

He who gives to the poor of his own free will from his own coffers and opens his own home to the needy does a better deed than the man surrounded by vast wealth and residing in his own private walled city who pontificates in front of a bunch of lying, murdering sociopathic heathen living off the stolen wealth of others about the virtue of state coercion and aggression against the innocent while extorting the innocent to become political cuckolds.

* Walking past a big TV in my office lobby I saw a children’s (boys?) choir in New York, connected with the papal visit. For the three seconds I was exposed to the broadcast, they sounded very nice. But the singers were a melange of races and that always jars me. Is there anyone who honestly likes the aesthetic of multiple races or ethnic looks is an assembly that is meant to represent one nation?

See various eastern European choirs or musical groups, or western European a few decades back. The heart grows with joy seeing unadulterated members of a nation represent something larger than the sum of its parts when they preform well. Or see any non-mixed national sports team or military formation.

Schools today mail out ads for class photos. Invariably, the main sample photo shows kids of various colors and now veiled girls too. This phobia of purity of association is the ugliness of our time. And there is a method behind this ugly imagery, and it was articulated by John Lennon in the most inhuman song ever written, slightly paraphrasing here: “Imagine there’s no country. Nothing to live or die for. Just graze, cattle, above you only sky.”

There is such a thing as a brotherhood of man. It happens when two men of different races meet as equals, each speaking from a position of his own strength. Men like, in fact, meeting and getting to know others. But this only works when every man in question has an identity and a home of his own.

The mixing of races and nations is an effort to dehumanize all men.

* The mixing of races and nations is an affront to the Most High, who created true diversity for His pleasure, and not some mixed multitude that invariably reverts to the lowest common denominator.

* Europe should follow the Vatican’s lead, I’d say. Not that I don’t empathize w the plight of refugees but to have a “come one, come all” policy towards them is insanity. Look at Canada. Strict immigration policies. You have to have a skill they need, a job lines up already that no Canadian can fill, and money in the bank before they will even think about it. Not that Canada is perfect but I say they have the right idea there. Nobody accuses Canada of being haters???

[CH: Canada’s immigration policy is certainly leagues better than the US’s, but ultimately an immigration policy that doesn’t have at its heart the goal of preserving the racial balance of the nation for present citizens and their posterity is a policy with a thermal exhaust port that can and will be exploited by nation- and race-hating leftoids.]

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White Flight In Sweden

REPORT: So-called “white flight” is a common phenomenon in Sweden, according to a new doctoral thesis from Linnaeus University.

When a residential area reaches a certain degree of ethnic diversity, Swedes tend to flee.

In the dissertation the economist Emma Neuman examines differences between groups on the Swedish housing and employment. The results show that native-born tend to move away from, or avoid moving into residential areas when it reaches a certain trigger point in the share of non-EU foreign-born.

Swedes migratory behavior therefore seems to be an important factor behind the rise of ethnic segregation in Sweden.

According to research, segregation in childhood can have an impact on economic outcomes in adulthood. The children of native-born who have grown up in areas with a high proportion of foreign-born tend to have poorer labor market outcomes and are less likely to begin college or university education.

– Yes, we found a “tipping point” of about 3-4 percent, says Emma Neuman, who is a National Economic researcher at Linnaeus University. When immigrants become so many in a residential area, the native Swedes begin to move from there.

A study conducted between 1990-2007 shows the same, and what many already knew.

– The impact was actually stronger in the 1990s, and then the “tipping point” was slightly lower, ie Swedish-born were more likely to move as soon as only a few immigrants moved in, says Emma Neuman. It might be interpreted to mean that many, after all, has become a little more tolerant, but the overall trend seems difficult to curb.

This does not apply to just any immigrants – immigrants from Europe gives no moving effect, but it is the overseas migrants who have the neighborhood to start moving. Cultures collide quite simply, there’s whole blocks that can be transformed in just a few years, a situation few politicians and journalists need to experience.

Where the Swedish middle class mothers moves away from multiculturalism – while they say they experience this as enrichment, shows the complexity.

– Many speak nicely of ethnic diversity as an enriching factor, but when choosing a school for their children or where to move to, the question becomes very concrete, and then one often choose some form of Swedishness, says Maja Lily, who is a sociologist at the University of Örebro.

The dissertation says nothing about the violence, threats, rapes, robberies, etc. which is the main reason why Swedes flee of course.

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Jewish France At The Time Of The Dreyfuss Trial

Albert S. Lindemann writes in his book Anti-Semitism before the Holocaust:

One observer commented that in the French lycees (the elite high schools): “the Jewish boys topped the list. They understood all the problems, handed in the best compositions, and collected most of the prizes at the end of the year. There was no vying with them; they were far ahead of us… Math, languages, literature, everything seemed to be their forte.”

…With the victory of the republic in 1871-75, the Catholic right was increasingly fearful that the republicans — who were, as far as many Catholics were concerned, mostly atheists, Protestants, and Jews — would try to “dechristianize” the country.

Financial scandals involving Jews were no less notorious than in Germany. One of particular importance had to do with the ill-fated efforts by the French to build a canal through Panama (1881-89). The intermediaries between the Panama Company and the French Chamber of Deputies were almost exclusively Jews, and they were exposed as bribing parliamentary delegates — over a hundred delegates and ministers of state were implicated — to cover up mismanagement of the project. Facing exposure, the Jewish intermediaries blackmailed one another, and one of them finally confessed, releasing information to the anti-Semitic press before committing suicide.

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Rabbi Responds To NYU Professor Who Calls Trump The Next Hitler

I love Rabbi Ari Hier. I just can’t help it. He’s such a mentch.

From DailyCaller.com: Rabbi Ari Hier — the Campus Outreach Coordinator at a Holocaust research human rights organization — had the perfect response to the New York University (NYU) professor who has claimed that Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is a contemporary Adolf Hitler.

Arthur Caplan, a left-leaning Bioethics professor at NYU, co-authored an article on Poynter (as well as tweets incessantly) about the “dangerous” and “proto-Hitlerite” Donald Trump — jumping on the bandwagon of tax-payer funded educators who equate Republican presidential candidates to Germany’s radical mass-murderer and dictator.

Caplan, also NYU’s Director of Medical Ethics, predicted that while it’s easy to say Trump is not likely to win the support of the American public, 1930’s Germany felt similarly about Hitler and he wound up rising to power.

“Can Trump win? It seems unlikely,” the article says. “Of course that is what the media said about a funny-looking spewer of hate with an odd mustache who was dismissed as an awful public speaker and not a serious candidate in Germany in the 1930s.”

…“Unless a person is mean and cruel in a genocidal way,” Rabbi Hier, an executive at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, told The Daily Caller in an interview, “I think making that comparison detracts and takes away from the cruelty of Hitler.”

The Simon Wiesenthal Center is a global human rights organization based in Los Angeles that studies and teaches the Holocaust and anti-Semitism in a contemporary context to confront hared towards Jews.

Rabbi Hier says that drawing analogies between Nazi Germany and other genocidal mass-murders is valid and understandable, but to compare Hitler to GOP presidential candidates shows not only gross insensitivity to Jews, it also shows a lack of common sense.

“It shows a lack of sensitivity, a lack of rigorous logic, a lack of the ability to analogize properly, and it certainly detracts from the Holocaust,” he stated. “But I’m not ready to say that they’re making these analogies because they really hate Jews.”

The rabbi affirmed that the misuse of analogies to Hitler are a widespread phenomenon that extend to professional arenas other than just politics. But Caplan and Goldrick-Rab’s Twitter antics are more indicative of the professors than of the candidates they’re chastising.

“Look, when you call Donald Trump Hitler, that is such an egregious misuse of hyperbole and says more about the professor than it does about Donald Trump,” Hier told The Daily Caller. “It just tells me how crazy that professor is.”

“Until Donald Trump starts shipping people to concentration camps, that’s just an outrageous misuse of analogy.”

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Conference cracks down on web hate

REUTERS 2000: BERLIN — German President Johannes Rau called on Monday for a system of rules to govern the Internet to combat the rise in Web sites promoting racism and xenophobia.

“We need a framework that sets boundaries for the use of modern information technology,” Rau said at the start of a two-day conference in Berlin on hate-speech on the Internet.

“We cannot just stand by and watch while opponents of human rights and those contemptuous of democracy exploit these new technological possibilities,” said Rau, whose office is primarily ceremonial.

The conference’s co-organizers, the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center named after the Austrian Nazi hunter, left, said while there was just one Web site promoting hate in 1995, there were now over 2,000.

In Germany alone the number of extreme right-wing home pages has jumped to 330 this year, about 10 times more than four years ago, the country’s internal security watchdog says.

‘To stop hate on the Internet we need European initiatives, but also action that reaches beyond Europe’ — Justice Minister Herta Daeubler-Gmelin

Justice Minister Herta Daeubler-Gmelin told the conference Germany was very worried about the trend.

“To stop hate on the Internet we need European initiatives, but also action that reaches beyond Europe,” she said.

European Justice and Home Affairs Commissioner Antonio Vitorino agreed. “The Internet is an international phenomenon in every sense of the word and any effective response will hinge on high levels of international cooperation,” he said.

Vitorino said there was still a worrying level of racism and xenophobia in Europe and said neo-Nazi groups had moved their home pages to servers outside the continent to sell their books and insignia and promote far-right theories.

Europe to act against cyberspace crime

Vitorino told the conference he hoped a draft European convention on crimes in cyberspace would be completed by the end of this year and said the Commission would also propose an initiative against child pornography on the Internet and discuss similar moves against hate promoted on the Web.

Robert Cailliau, the co-inventor of the World Wide Web, repeated calls for all Internet users to be licensed.

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Simon Wiesenthal Center Rabbis Support Strong Borders For Israel, But No Borders For America

Rabbis Abraham Cooper and Yitzhok Adlerstein write Sept. 21, 2015 for The Jerusalem Post: “There is no wiggle-room concerning the consequences of a one-state solution. Combined with a right of return for millions of Palestinians living for decades in Muslim countries, Jews would quickly become a minority in their own land. The lone Jewish state would cease to exist, its inhabitants left as secure as the Yazidis or Christians in Iraq.”

It’s a shame they aren’t similarly dedicated to protecting the borders of their host nation, the United States of America. Instead, the Simon Wiesenthal Center is dedicated to making whites a minority in America and for the United States to cease to exist.

As Samuel Francis said: “The civilization that we as whites created in Europe and America could not have developed apart from the genetic endowments of the creating people, nor is there any reason to believe that the civilization can be successfully transmitted to a different people.”

April 23, 2010:

The Simon Wiesenthal Center expressed disappointment that Arizona Governor Jan Brewer signed into law a bill that among other things makes it a state crime to be in the country illegally and requires local law enforcement to determine an individual’s legal status and arrest without warrant a person if there is “reasonable suspicion” that he or she is in the U.S. illegally.

“This isn’t about immigration, it’s about discrimination,” said Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder and dean of the Wiesenthal Center. “We should not forget that we’re a nation of immigrants. This law makes no sense– it guarantees and stigmatizes people of color as second-class citizens and exposes them to intimidation and the use of racial profiling as a weapon of bias,” he concluded.

As part of its Tools for Tolerance® diversity programs, the Wiesenthal Center’s Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles and New York Tolerance Center in Manhattan include training law enforcement professionals across the country to address difficult questions and concerns over racial profiling.

* Link:

In response to the overwhelming concern and fear generated in France by far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen and his National Front party’s victory in the first-round presidential vote, the Simon Wiesenthal Center is releasing its newest report, How Le Pen’s National Front Party Would Change France.

Compiled and written by Center researchers in France, the report touches on the changes the National Front would like to institute if it were to come to power. Topics addressed include immigration, health, crime and safety, and information.

* From Constructing Immigrant ‘Illegality’: Critiques, Experiences, and Responses:

Most of the work with and on behalf of unauthorized immigrants has been undertaken by Christian FBOs. However, some Jewish and Muslim organizations have also been involved. For instance, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has called for comprehensive immigration reform, including a path to legalization and citizenship. Rabbi David Saperstein, Director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, echoed the ADL’s call, drawing parallels between the Jewish history of immigration and the situation of unauthorized immigrants today.

“For over 350 years, our Jewish ancestors have immigrated to this country is search of a more hopeful life, a life free of religious persecution and economic hardship, a life where family members have a chance to be reunited and have a chance to contribute to their adopted home. Today’s immigrants come here for the same reasons as our Jewish ancestors… Who are we to say now that we are here, now that the courage and the hopes of our parents and grandparents in this nation of immigrants have been so richly vindicated, now the door must be closed?”

Jewish FBOs, including ADL, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, the American Jewish Committee, and the Simon Wiesenthal Center have also been highly critical of SB1070 in Arizona. In the words of Rabbi Hier, founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, “This isn’t about immigration, it’s about discrimination. We must not forget that we’re a nation of immigrants. This law makes no sense — it guarantees and stigmatizes people of color as second-class citizens and exposes them to intimidation, and the use of racial profiling as a weapon of bias.”

JASON RICHWINE WROTE:

It was not the kind of message a Harvard seminar expects to hear. Ethnic diversity causes a lot of problems, our guest speaker told us. It reduces interpersonal trust, civic engagement, and charitable giving. It causes us to disengage from society, like turtles shrinking into their shells, reducing our overall quality of life. The more diversity we experience in our lives, the less happy we are.

I came to Harvard to study public policy in the fall of 2004. All of the first-years like me had to take a special seminar class where we would discuss the philosophy of science and the nature of good research. The best class days featured established scholars who would come to present their own papers, which were real-life examples of good research.

The guest speaker who came to discuss diversity was political scientist Robert Putnam, who is something of a celebrity in academic circles. With the publication of his 1995 article “Bowling Alone,” Putnam helped bring the issues of social trust and civic participation to the forefront of social science. His article became a popular book, also called Bowling Alone, in 2000. Written for a general audience, the book chronicled the rapid decline in civic engagement that had taken place in the United States since 1950, and argued that communities without strong social ties are less happy and less successful. The article and the book garnered Putnam numerous media appearances and spawned reams of response articles in academia.

So how did Putnam come to conclude that ethnic diversity is so problematic? The answer begins with the notion of “social capital,” which Putnam defines in simple terms—“social networks and the associated norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness.” Social capital turns out to be an exceptionally valuable commodity. Building complex networks of friends and associates, trusting others to keep their word, and maintaining social norms and expectations all grease the wheels of business by enabling cooperation.

But the value of social capital goes well beyond economics. Many of the activities from which people draw the most deep and lasting satisfactions are stronger and more prevalent in areas with high social capital. People living in these places tend to have more friends, care more about their community, and participate more in civic causes. Where social capital is greater, Putnam says, “children grow up healthier, safer, and better educated; people live longer, happier lives; and democracy and the economy work better.”

After Bowling Alone, Putnam’s next step was to determine why some communities have more social capital than others. To find out, he helped organize a large nationwide survey of social capital indicators that sampled about 30,000 people from a broad array of cities, towns, and rural areas. By collecting demographic information about the individuals and the places they lived, Putnam hoped to gain insight into what makes for a trusting and neighborly community.

When he spoke to my class in 2004, Putnam had started to analyze the survey data, but he had not yet published any findings. He began by telling us about one result he encountered that was thoroughly upsetting to him—the more ethnically diverse a community is, the less social capital it possesses. When a person lives in a diverse community, he trusts everyone less, including those of his own ethnic group. In describing the behavior of people in diverse areas, Putnam told us to imagine turtles hiding in their shells.

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Central American immigrants’ story reflects Jews’ past

“David A. Lash is an attorney in Los Angeles, serving as the managing counsel of pro bono and public interest services at O’Melveny & Myers LLP. He is also a member of the board of directors of the Association of Pro Bono Counsel.”

He writes for the Jewish Journal June 17, 2015 (but conveniently does not mention anything Israel’s immigration practices, multi-culturalism is for the goyim):

At the facilities, we saw children who were clearly not healthy. Their life-endangering journeys to the U.S. left them exhausted, sick and scared. Many had lost a frightening amount of weight. Even more gut-wrenching, the children plaintively asked their mothers, “Why are we in jail?” Mothers cried to the lawyers, begging for help. Some had been held for six, eight, 10, even as long as 12 months. It was heartbreaking.
Amazingly, most of the detained families have viable asylum claims, making them eligible to remain in the U.S., entitling them to find safety in the promise of democracy. But without the chance to be represented by attorneys, they are without hope. As many as 95 percent of those without counsel will be deported simply because they are poor and cannot find representation. Many likely could pass their “credible fear interviews,” establishing to the satisfaction of U.S. immigration authorities they have a credible fear of returning to their home countries. This means they essentially could prove the bona fides of a legally sufficient asylum claim that, under the law, would entitle them to be released from detention. However, without lawyers, they cannot navigate the system, they are too frightened to tell their stories, the complexities of a foreign legal system are too overwhelming, and so, as a result, they likely will be returned to the dangerous places they risked their lives to leave. All because they are poor and do not have access to help.
One recently released mother told us of how she, her husband and young son had escaped a vicious rogue military group. Their other son, who is older, had been abducted. The family learned he had been taken by the “military.” The mother embarked on a desperate, ultimately futile search for her child. She first asked, asked again and then hounded local officials. She went to the police. She asked friends for help. Months passed, but her son was nowhere to be found. She repeatedly was warned to back off, stop going to the police, told not to contact local or foreign officials. One day, while this mother and her family were visiting her father in a nearby town, neighbors called to warn her not to return home because the family’s house was being ransacked, and angry men with guns were searching for her. The family fled to the U.S. with only the clothes they were wearing, trying desperately to save their remaining son, whose life they still had in their hands. At the border they were detained, the father sent to one facility, the mother and son to Karnes City. They were held for months, the young boy asking for his brother and his father, not eating, getting sicker and sicker. It was heartbreaking.
Another mother was with her daughter. They had witnessed the rape of another daughter and the murder of the father. They themselves then had barely escaped the horrors of their gang-controlled village, with local authorities unable to provide any kind of meaningful prosecution, much less protection. Similar stories abounded.
My thoughts quickly turned to another young woman. Like the women we had just met, she had escaped marauding soldiers in the countryside of her homeland. She was a teenager who had witnessed her sister being brutally raped and her brother carried off by the “army,” never to be seen again. Her parents scraped together enough money to hire someone to smuggle her out of the country. Her treacherous journey landed her in jail. When her family was able to secure her release, terrified and sick, the family sent her off again. This time, she reached the United States. She was reunited with her grandmother while in detention. When they ultimately were released, she managed to make a safe life for herself. However, she was forever scarred, forever frightened, forever missing her absent family members. That lone, brave teenage girl was my grandmother, fleeing from the pogroms of czarist Russia.
It is often said we are a nation of immigrants, all of us having become Americans because someone in our past was strong enough to escape oppression and find safety in the arms of democracy. Whether it was czarist pogroms, Nazi genocide, Middle East dictatorships or communist regimes, all of us are here because our ancestors had the inner strength to flee for their lives and make it through the Karnes City and Dilley of their day. Our Jewish bubbes and zaydes, often as young children, came through Ellis Island or through European displaced persons camps. Their immigrant transition was difficult. Language issues, poverty, anti-immigrant attitudes and anti-Semitism made for a hard climb up society’s social ladder. They were helped by a system of Jewish communal support and by the safety net of community. Today, American Jews are the living embodiment of one side of the current immigration debate. We are here and thriving in the United States because, despite many obstacles, this country opened its arms like no other culture had ever before done for us. These Latin American women today are escaping the same kinds of dangers, obstacles and nightmares that our ancestors fled, seeking peace and solace. As Jews, our histories remind us of the hurdles they will face and the helping hands they will need, which are within our hearts to fulfill. The ghosts of our grandmothers today are sitting in detention in southern Texas.

David A. Lash and his ilk are dedicated to the destruction of the borders protecting the United States of America. What is the best treatment for his ilk? I hope 50 illegal immigrant Mexicans move on to his block soon.

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