8/31/2023 0 Comments Aj this american life![]() ![]() As early as fourth grade, I remember my teacher going on about the legend of robber baron Andrew Carnegie while I was likely daydreaming about making myself a fried bologna sandwich when I went home for lunch. It is a lie I have heard my whole life living in the US. Those who are lucky enough to “make it” often end up selling this same narcissistic untruth. It is a lie that attracts desperate migrants and asylum seekers to the US like honey attracts insects, only to entrap, envelope and kill. Given the history of social mobility in the US, the idea of “Only in America” is a straight-up lie. One of the great US mantras stemming from its golden age of immigration often begins with “Only in America can a person start with nothing and achieve the American Dream”. Emma Lazarus and her 1883 sonnet “The New Colossus”, with the words “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free”, engraved on the Statue of Liberty, are empty promises in this dystopian age. The xenophobia, anti-Latinx racism, and Islamophobia that have guided US immigration policies since 1986 make anyone singing Neil Diamond’s lyrics “Got a dream to take them there, they’re coming to America” likely to choke on the sheer hypocrisy of it all. A week earlier, 17-year-old Honduran migrant Ángel Eduardo Maradiaga Espinoza died five days after entering a detention facility in Florida, with the actual cause of death still unknown. She never received the help she needed from US Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) to survive, even though her family made at least three requests for help. In May, yet another young migrant died after spending a week in detention near the United States-Mexico border, courtesy of the US Border Patrol.Įight-year-old Panamanian migrant Anadith Tanay Reyes Alvarez had sickle cell anaemia and heart issues, and had recently caught flu.
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