We need to do more for those yearning to breathe free: Color Us Connected

This column appears every other week in Foster’s Daily Democrat and the Tuskegee News. Given that this is mostly what the world is focused on right now, Guy Trammell, an African American man from Tuskegee, Alabama, and Amy Miller, a white woman from South Berwick, Maine, talk about the border wall and immigration.By Guy Trammell Jr.

On Oct. 28, 1886, President Grover Cleveland dedicated the 305-foot Statue of Liberty. In 1883, Emma Lazarus had composed “The New Colossus” to raise money for its pedestal. Her words posted at its base call the statue Mother of Exiles. It reads, “cries she with silent lips. 'Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free . . .'"

This cry is in the east calling to Europe, but what about the west coast? Does a cry go out to Asia? Does a cry go southeast to Africa? And should we have a statue at our southern coast, crying to our South American and Caribbean family?

Booker T. Washington utilized his contacts in the news media and government to stop the African Exclusion Measure that was to be included in the 1915 Immigration Act. Even though “African” was in the title, the focus was on preventing Caribbean Blacks from becoming citizens.

My family was a home away from home for many Tuskegee Institute students. Three from Indonesia were regularly in our kitchen preparing their delicious cuisine. Betty Dean, a nursing student and niece of my mother’s Detroit friend, had meals at our table and even did babysitting for my mother. Betty later transferred to a school in New York.

While studying on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, I was offered employment with the Forestry Service by one of my professors. As enticing as it was, with the socialist government’s free medical care, my refusal to be a Canadian immigrant possibly prevented my experiencing their racially discriminatory “Crow’s Nest” (Jim Crow) and “Monkey Cage” business practices.

With sections of the U.S. border wall costing upward of $46 million per mile, construction of the wall will continue  over property stolen from land owners by government lawsuits. It endangers the environment and wildlife, and enables smugglers to victimize more asylum seekers. It saps funding from many truly needed initiatives to become an albatross for future generations.

There are no plans I know of for a northern border wall.

Wall advocates fear immigrating Black and Brown bodies because these darker bodies will be the “minority majority” in the U.S. by 2043. But it’s not about immigration. These darker bodies have been citizens for generations and birth more children than other Americans. Growth is inside the border.

Emma Lazarus had it correct. The Statue of Liberty’s lips are silent. There is no welcome for exiles to come to America and breathe free.

By the way, Booker T. Washington’s defeat of the African Exclusion Measure permitted Marcus Garvey to become a U.S. citizen. Garvey’s teaching prepared a young New York minister to meet and marry Betty Dean, who became Betty Shabazz. Her husband was Malcolm X.

By Amy Miller

The governor of Texas sent buses of undocumented immigrants to New York City last year. He  wanted New Yorkers to know what it feels like to have so many people pour across your borders with no home, no work, no papers.

York and its mayor were overwhelmed by the roughly 80,000 people suddenly living in their city. It’s easy to welcome immigrants of any size, shape or legality when they are not in your backyard. But perhaps the lesson the border states would like to teach the non-border states is not the lesson we must learn.

Every baby, we must agree, is born equally deserving of a good life. I just can’t imagine a reason why a baby born in El Salvador or Syria or anywhere else is less deserving of health and happiness than my babies were. But borders have always been largely about the luck of the draw.

That worked when borders were closed and people lived mostly unaware of alternative possibilities. Now, about two-thirds of the world has access to the internet and smart phones, and even in places like Haiti, the poorest place in the hemisphere, folks are often connected. And by the way, two-thirds more than the portion of people on earth who have adequate indoor plumbing.

The global economy, climate change and a World Wide Web that truly is worldwide are all making a mockery of national boundaries.

People from Pakistan to Paraguay know there are folks living better lives somewhere else, often at their expense. Borders that once were barriers to movement as well as information have been eroding as quickly as the shores of the Fiji Islands.

Residents of coastal communities around the world know that their land is disappearing as a result of greenhouse gases created thousands of miles away by people living lives far more comfortable than their own. Whether or not we build more walls along the border with Mexico, people worldwide are watching how we and other wealthy nations live, and they do not like what they see. As people in other countries face brutal leaders, fallout from climate change and the suffering of their hungry children, they will continue to march toward our borders, whether by air, by land, or by sea. If we don't create a more equitable and environmentally healthy planet as the numbers grow, no wall will be high enough.

Amy and Guy can be reached at colorusconnected@gmail.com

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Commentary: We need to do more for those yearning to breathe free