December 4, 2023 by Michael Weymouth
In the blue state/red state debate last Tuesday night between Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis and California’s Governor Gavin Newsom I was struck by the negative connotation moderator Sean Hannity attached to the list of foreign nationals who had tried to seek asylum at our southern border.
Hannity’s and DeSantis’ point was that among the immigrants were potential terrorists bent on doing harm to Americans. While this may be a possibility, it does not address the likelihood that the vast majority of them are just seeking a better life for themselves and their families. The chance that they will one day make significant contributions to American society is far greater than the possibility that they intend to do us harm. I was reminded of this by a segment on the PBS Newshour on Friday, which was a story about Yia Fang, a Hmong chef in the upper Midwest who had started a restaurant to introduce Hmong cooking to the local dining scene.
Thousands of Hmong people settled in the upper Midwest after the Vietnam War ended as part of the Indochina Migration and Refugee Assistance Act of 1975. The Hmong were given favorable status because of their support for Americans during the Vietnam War. Thousands more followed after passage of the Refugee Act of 1980. It’s hard to imagine refugee-friendly Acts like those passing in today’s divided Congress.
As a photographer for Save the Children, I had a first-hand view of the Hmong people in Thai refugee camps from which many of today’s Hmong-Americans came. One class at the camps taught children how to survive in the cacophony of the American street: how to order a hamburger at McDonalds, or how to ask for help, for example, as well as the more serious development of English language skills. The pride I felt as an American watching this process take place was enormous, but nowhere near the emotion I felt when I photographed these children in their next iteration, after they had arrived in America and were continuing their Americanization.
I shot the attached photo at a Save the Children-sponsored program in Atlanta. To see children, who had been born into violence and war, happily thriving in our country is an extraordinary experience every American would benefit from. Unfortunately as long as the Sean Hannitys of the world politicize our immigration issues, few Americans will ever seek that opportunity.
For my part, my experience with the Hmong people made me fully appreciate how much American generosity is really what Makes America Great.
Michael,
You totally missed the point DeSantis and Hannity were making.
Foreign Nationals are pouring through our Southern border by the millions. The US Government has absolutely no idea who these people are, or where they will ultimately reside. There is no country any where in the world, including the Vatican, where the borders are open for any person to simply walk into that country without “registering” with the immigration government.
The point Hannity and DeSantis were making is that among the unidentified millions of Foreign Nationals now in the US, there are likely some “bad guys” in that group bent on causing harm to the United States. Our government has absolutely no idea who they are or where in our country they are presently located.
No one argues the ‘better life’ point you make in your second paragraph. 1 “bad guy” per 10,000 people will lead to a potential of 200 “bad guys” among the estimated 2 million unidentified Foreign Nationals.
If there was any possible negative connotation by Hannity and DeSantis with respect to foreign nationals, they were directed soley to the unidentified “bad guys”, and no one else.
By the way Mike, the view that the the unidentified “bad guys” are a potential threat to the security of the United States is share by an extraordinary number of law enforcement officials at both the Federal and State levels, as well as a similar number of US citizens cognizant of the matter.
Mr. Claypoole is engaging in the kind of hyperbole that is not helpful, i.e. the word “pouring’ and “by the millions” for example is misleading. The vast majority of the nationalities on Hannity’s list arrive at an official border crossing seeking asylum. They are not simply walking through, rather they go through an established process. Are there possible terrorists and assorted criminals among them, yes, but per my article, the vast majority are seeking a better way of life. Many of them have endured a hazardous trip through the Darian Gap in Panama, and I venture to say that few terrorists would undertake that journey. But if Mr. Claypoole fears a terrorist attack from one of them, I suggest he worry more about an attack from one of our own citizens. Just today, the latest mass shooting, which took place in Washington state, broke the annual record for mass shootings in America. His time would be better spent working to prevent the tsunami of gun violence that is overwhelming our country, beginning with common sense gun laws.
Knowing Mr. Claypoole as I do, I can assure you that were he to have been by my side during the journey I outlined in my article, he would have come away a changed man. He is man with a good heart. That was the point of the article, that too few Americans are willing to take that journey, if only in their own minds, and instead rely on the Sean Hannitys of the world to form their opinions. Having been to many Save the Children impact areas around the world, I am confident that he would feel the same sense of pride I have felt watching American donations at work. Financing a school for women, for example, in the remote mountains of Nepal, where mothers travel through the night after their kids are in bed in order to learn how to start a business in order to earn a pittance to buy school uniforms so their kids can attend an area school. What he would see is the planting of seeds to enable the most basic form of capitalism: to earn the means to a better way of life. Imagine what people with that kind of determination can contribute to American society.
The vast majority of those seeking asylum in our country have the same goal, and we would be better for it if we found a way to further that process, instead of weaponizing it to win political points.