The Ultimate Hypocrisy
By Albert B. Kelly
Talk to enough people and
you’re bound to hear many opinions; especially when it comes to undocumented
individuals and deportation. On one side, you can line up a whole bunch of
folks who will be all about rounding up immigrants and depositing them back in
their country of origin. This “drive-the-heathen-from-the- temple” approach is
even part of a campaign plank for presidential candidates this cycle.
On the other side, you can
find people who support a general across the board amnesty- minus criminals and
felons. In the middle, you can find a not insignificant number of people who
support some type of middle ground in between deportation and amnesty-
something that doesn’t separate children from parents or destroy families and
whole communities.
Regardless of how you come
down on the issue- with our May 7th Welcome Home Vietnam Veterans
event at City Hall Annex still fresh in our minds- what do you do with a man
who gave 6 years of his life serving the United States, a place he believed was
his country, in the 82nd Airborne Division, when he doesn’t have the
right paperwork?
Apparently you pack him up
and ship him out; at least that’s what they did to Hector Barajas according to
a CNN story. Think about it, Hector Barajas was brought to the United States as
a 7 year-old child by his parents. This is where he was raised, this was the
place that shaped and molded him, this was the only home he really ever knew or
loved and, upon joining the army as a teenager- the place he was willing to die
for.
All of that didn’t matter;
even risking his life serving the people of the United States in the 82nd
Airborne Division didn’t matter because when it came down to it, he was an
“illegal immigrant” without the right papers and so after all was said and
done, they rounded him up and dropped him across the border in Tijuana.
But here’s the thing, they
had no problem accepting him into the military; somehow it was okay to let the
18 year-old Hector Barajas join up, take
his oath, and risk life and limb defending our country and his fellow soldiers
but now he’s not even worthy to stay because he doesn’t have the right
documents?
It sounds like hypocrisy
to me and even more than that, it sounds like exploitation. Shame on us if we
treat a veteran this way- it seems to me that he signed in blood and put his
life up as collateral; “greater love hath no man than this…” but that doesn’t
matter now because he’s out of uniform so he just gets to go back to “being
illegal”.
It’s akin to the black
soldiers who risked life and limb protecting the United States in WW II; they
could get their butts shot-up in Europe or somewhere in the Pacific alright,
but once it was over- they weren’t good enough to enjoy the fruits of
citizenship- it was the back of the bus for them.
So it is with Hector
Barajas; he was good enough to serve, he was good enough to die for this
country if necessary, but now he’s not good enough to stay. Apparently he’s not
the only one, there’s a “Deported Veteran’s Support House” in Tijuana according
to the CNN story, where the veterans we’ve booted out of the country can find
some support with their fellows.
Maybe I’m wrong here, but
as a veteran who served this country with everything that this service in the
armed forces implies, he earned his citizenship in way that few ever have. And
should some bureaucrat point out that Hector Barajas was at fault because he
failed to file form XYZ with the office of whatevertheheck, it still won’t
change the fact that the guy put up his life as collateral.
Goodness knows there’s a
lot of hypocrisy in government and at one point or another, we’re all guilty of
a little hypocrisy. But for me, this falls into one of those "Woe to you,
scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cummin, and
have neglected the weightier provisions of the law: justice and mercy and
faithfulness” categories.
Assuming there’s nothing
else, like a criminal conviction or some other serious mark against, Hector
Barajas and the other veterans just like him should be allowed to come back home
and live among us in peace.