Friday, August 11, 2023

Us and Them

After walking from Venezuela through the insane lawlessness Colombian border. Walking further north though Narcoville--8 Central American countries--might seem like a cakewalk, if you ignore any variety of human, drug, weapon, automobile traffickers. Then you get to the US where your kids used to be taken away from you with the intention of deterring your emigration, but we've gotten away from that.

Once you get here, you're crammed on a bus or charter plane in Texas or Florida and end up in freezing New York, where you're promptly shipped to where...? tropical Canada in April? 

The political stunts keep getting worse. 70,000 migrants came to New York City in the Spring, 100,000 since August of last year, exhausting even the most liberal NY-ers dealing with a--remember?--resurgent Covid wave. 

And, many more are emigrating from other frightening areas around the world: Haiti, warring countries in Africa, and, the US's favorite, the Ukraine. 

   13 x 18" 2-color letterpress print.
Where will they live? What will they eat? Where will they work? 

The Mayor is a wreck with confrontations from all sides. The governor will give $1B to feed and temporarily house the great number of people before their application for asylum (which could take 3 years  to process) is approved. A temporary work permit may be issued--get this!--150 days after the application for asylum was filed and the mayor is pushing the Biden administration to shorten the wait (awwww, how nice. You wait over four months to work landscaping, construction, or meat processing if you're lucky.)

I feel horrible that the only thing I can do is donate a few bucks and make a print. My Catholic parish has maintained a shelter for years, opened during the Trump years when ICE hounds crawled our sanctuary city. But now? What are we (all) going to do?