Dear Editor:
“America was indebted to immigration for her settlement and prosperity. That part of America which had encouraged them most had advanced most rapidly in population, agriculture and the arts.” – James Madison
A bewildering 22 percent of inmates in the federal prison population are immigrants who have either already been deemed to be in the country illegally or who the government is looking to put in deportation proceedings. They are the stock in trade steered into incarceration by a judicial system that incarcerates minorities and immigrants to feed those evil puppet masters who thrive on exploiting and enslaving them. See, e.g., “The Prison Industry in the United States: Big Business or a New Form of Slavery?” by Vicky Peláez published in Global Research.
Moreover, nearly 50,000 unauthorized immigrants were ordered removed from the U.S., a 28 percent increase over last year, according to statistics released by the immigration review branch of the U.S Department of Justice, an inhumane act which destroyed families, businesses and dreams in its wake.
The 22 percent is much higher than the population of foreign-born in the U.S. as a whole-13.5 percent. Moreover, the government confirmed more than 42,000 aliens in federal prisons as of June 24. About 47 percent already face final deportation orders, making them illegal immigrants, and 3 percent are currently in immigration courts facing deportation proceedings. Almost all of the rest are being probed by federal agents looking to deport them.
Immigrants who commit serious crimes, even if they once had legal status, can have that status revoked and can be subject to deportation, hence the high number of cases where an alien is still being probed by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Additionally, The U.S. Marshal Service, is holding about 12,000 “self-reporting” aliens, and almost all of them have already been ordered deported.
The DOJ’s Executive Office of Immigration Review’s data also revealed that total orders of removal combined with voluntary departures by immigrants in the U.S. between Feb. 1 and July 31 were up close to 31 percent over that same period last year. Final decisions issued by immigration judges also rose 14.5 percent during that time frame this year, the DOJ said recently.
There were also a total of 73,127 final decisions issued by immigration judges between February and the end of July this year, compared to 63,850 issued during the same period last year.
The boost in orders of removal over last year is undoubtedly the consequence of President Trump’s signing of an executive order on January 25 requiring more stringent enforcement on immigration. It also mandated the hiring of 10,000 more immigration officers, targeted funding for so-called sanctuary cities and revived a controversial information sharing program known as Secure Communities, which allows fingerprints of arrested individuals to be checked against U.S. Department of Homeland Security databases.
The agency mobilized more than 100 existing immigration judges to DHS detention facilities across the country after Trump signed his January order, triggering a 90 percent increase of the cases those new judges oversaw resulting in orders or removal requiring unauthorized immigrants to depart or be removed. The Justice Department has also hired an additional 54 immigration judges since Trump took office “and continues to hire new immigration judges each month.”
In contrast, between Feb. 1 and July 31 this year, 49,983 unauthorized immigrants were ordered removed, compared to 39,113 last year. Another 7,086 unauthorized immigrants agreed to voluntarily depart the U.S., bringing the total removal and voluntary departures so far this year to 57,069, whereas the total orders of removal and voluntary departures in that same six months last year was 43,595.
When juxtaposed with the unholy alliance between Trump's racist base of white supremacists, neo-Nazis, the KKK and other hate and bigotry groups, the present administration’s assault on immigrants is most un-American and mitigates us as a nation, and must be stopped!
Albert Baldeo, New York |
Dear Editor:
On this day, the 9th of Dhul Hijjah, the final month in the Islamic calendar and the day before Eid ul Adha, the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) delivered his final sermon to his followers.
In it, he specifically admonished everyone who listened that all people come from one place; that women are partners, not chattel; that regardless of our ethnicity, we are all equal with no claim of superiority over anyone else.
He stressed that we must do no harm, but try to do as many good deeds as we can.
Perhaps it is convenient to forget that he felt it necessary in his last words to single out and remind Arabs that they have no authority over any other kind of Muslim. He clearly understood his people.
As we prayed for forgiveness and mercy on this day, we remembered all those who are suffering and devastated by loss, the destruction of their homes, lives and family… from Houston to Yemen to Syria to Haiti to those traumatized by violence, oppression, war and terror.
Most of all, Muslims must collectively and individually decry the indecent excesses of the Kingdom of Saud’s degenerate, reactionary monarchy. For too long, they have trampled the rights of Muslims, rights that the Prophet himself never denied his followers. Yet, the descendants of one family have encouraged, funded and supported the indoctrination of generations of young Islamic scholars, who have been taught a corrosive, ethnocentric version of Islam, one that strays far from the compassionate mercifulness encouraged by the Prophet.
This cannot continue; we Muslims simply must not stay quiet when before our eyes, the spoiled, arrogant heir to the keys of our most holy places, continue to live an obscenely extravagant life, thoughtlessly squandering the wealth of the Ummah on expensive baubles and vanity wars that have shattered the lives of those already living in unbearable squalor, too poor to matter to their self-anointed royal neighbours.
As Eid is celebrated throughout the world, we should all try to reflect on the love, forgiveness, empathy sacrifice and mercy of our Creator. And most of all, how we Muslims can be better people, neighbours, friends, citizens…and humans.
Scheherazade Ishoof Khan via email |
Dear Editor:
Hollywood has been rightly criticised for what has come to be called “whitewashing”, namely the use of white actors playing ‘black’ roles in film. It seems that the APNU+AFC government has implemented a somewhat similar policy in reverse.
Without detracting from the talent of the massive Guyana delegation at the recently concluded Carifesta here in Barbados, the question must be asked why such a huge delegation only had approximately four persons of Indo-Guyanese origin in their midst, given that demographically Indo-Guyanese are the biggest ethnicity in Guyana. Because of the small number of Indo-Guyanese in the delegation, it was then left to other ethnicities to depict Indo-Guyanese culture in dance routines on stage.
One can well imagine the outcry if the opposite situation had obtained.
We will never transcend the colonialist legacy of divide and rule as long as there is not absolute inclusivity of all ethnicities. The same ought to apply to the disciplined forces and the civil service in Guyana.
Lalu Hanuman, Barbados |