Dispatch from a Friend Back Home: Allison

Immigrant rights ARE human rights.

The US government is quick to criticize the human rights records of other countries (one of which just hosted a show-stopping Olympic Games) and while there is merit to such accusations, it is slow to realize that the way it treats its own immigrants are often equally abhorrent.

Listening to Father Ouderkirk recount the story of Pedro, a 13 year old whose mother was detained during the factory raid in Postville, was particularly striking to me. When his mother simply asked her detention officer where she was being transferred in order to tell her family she was told to �shut up�, and that is was none of her business. Now Pedro and his father don�t know where she is.

As an advocate for human rights in developing and third world countries, I can�t help but see the similarities between US government tactics and those of totalitarian regimes abroad. When these foreign governments perceive someone as a threat to their power, they intimidate, harass, arrest, and in some cases disappear their own citizens. These events often begin with an office or home raid with the intent to scare others in the community.

Clearly intimidating and imprisoning individuals is not the answer to �maintaining stability� in other countries, just as intimidating and imprisoning immigrants is not the solution to our country�s broken immigration policy. These are only temporary fixes that spread fear and avoid the fundamental issues.

The presidential candidates need to speak about reform and emphasize that immigration is not a bipartisan issue but rather an American one. The US and the West likes to tout the universality of human rights and democracy, but if we are to have any credibility abroad we must apply these concepts at home.