Refugee Blues

 Yesterday, the manic cruelty of Trump's war against immigrants reached a new climax, when he decided to revoke Temporary Protected Status for Syrian nationals. 

The way the administration justified the move was typical of their rhetoric. 

"Conditions in Syria no longer prevent their nationals from returning home," DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin first declared: a statement which—while absurdly untrue—at least gestures toward the statutory criteria for TPS; and so is less insane than it could be. 

But then—she contradicts herself in the very next sentence: "Syria has been a hotbed of terrorism and extremism for nearly two decades," she says. 

Wait—so, is Syria a safe place to involuntarily deport people? Or is it a "hotbed of terrorism"? O which one? is it each one? to borrow a line from G.M. Hopkins. 

Then McLaughlin follows it up with still another non sequitur: "[I]t is contrary to our national interest to allow Syrians to remain in our country."

Unless it's not the non sequitur it appears—in which case, what McLaughlin is actually trying to say is that Syria is terrible (a terrorist "hotbed"); therefore Syrians are terrible; therefore it is contrary to our national interest to have any Syrians here. 

And indeed—I think that is what she is saying. 

She is—in effect—putting a big sign at our nation's borders saying "We Hate Syrians." Their mere existence, as Syrians, is to be judged "contrary to our national interest." 

But in that case, the U.S. government is just flagrantly engaging in nationality discrimination based on stereotypes. Can you scream "arbitrary and capricious decision-making"—not to mention "equal protection clause violation"—more loudly?

The Syrian TPS designation is of course only one of many such humanitarian immigration statuses that the administration has sought to revoke. 

They are also litigating right now for the legal privilege to deport Venezuelans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and others to their home countries—where they face—as anyone who has followed the last decade or more of news will be well aware—the specter of dictatorship, persecution, starvation, and torture. 

Syrians, of course, may well face the same if they are deported to their home country—which, while it has a new government, has nonetheless suffered under war and dictatorship for more than a decade at least. (Is it not a "hotbed" of violence, according to our own DHS press office?)

Once we had a country and we thought it fair,
Look in the atlas and you'll find it there:
We cannot go there now, my dear, we cannot go there now.

—as Auden's refugee narrators observe, in his poem "Refugee Blues." 

But the presence of Syrians and other TPS holders is "contrary to our national interest," the DHS press office tells us. 

Why? I guess because these men and women have the temerity to want to eat; to want to work; to want to live. 

Came to a public meeting; the speaker got up and said;

"If we let them in, they will steal our daily bread":

He was talking of you and me, my dear, he was talking of you and me.

It is really the crime of poverty and hunger, above all, that is charged against the world's refugees. 

After all—the same day he announced the end of Syrian TPS—Trump also unveiled a new program to allow mega-rich immigrants abroad to buy visas to the United States—so long as they have a million dollars handy. 

I don't know why the administration holds it so much against refugees that they dared to be poor—dared to ask for work in humble jobs at paltry wages on the bottom rung of our economy—to pay taxes—to support our economy and fill our nation's public coffers without receiving any public benefits or rights of citizenship in return...

I don't know why this humble request to be allowed merely to survive—this most basic and ancient right of hospitality for the stranger, not to be cast out of the tent and placed into the waiting hands of their pursuers and kidnappers—should be met with so much hatred, insolence, arrogance, and cruelty. 

See yonder poor, o'erlabour'd wight, 

[...] Who begs a brother of the earth 

To give him leave to toil; 

And see his lordly fellow-worm 

The poor petition spurn, 

Unmindful, tho' a weeping wife 

And helpless offspring mourn. 

—as Robert Burns once wrote. 

He had no explanation of the phenomenon to offer; all he could do was leave us with an observation that experience, alas, has never contradicted, despite the passage of centuries since he wrote: 

Man's inhumanity to man 

Makes countless thousands mourn!