Rutland Herald (Vt.), Sept. 3:
The debate about immigration reached an Alice-in-Wonderland type of lunacy recently when Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin said that a border wall separating the United States from Canada was worthy of consideration.
It may have escaped our notice, but maybe a secret army of Canadians has been smuggling Molson and Labatt’s across the border in their hockey bags. If the person in line next to you at the supermarket is acting with unusual courtesy, he may be an illegal Canadian. Left unanswered is Walker’s solution for the waters of the Great Lakes and Lake Champlain. The Floating Wall of Vermont?
It seems obvious that Walker is reacting, not to an actual peril du nord, but to the bigotry of Donald Trump, whose anti-immigrant bluster has spread fear and loathing within the Republican Party. Fear of immigrants is widespread – from the hustings of Iowa to the borders of Hungary to the Parliament of Great Britain. The Walkers and Trumps of the world are behaving as if all of these people – these desperate, uneducated, dangerous, swarthy masses – have nothing to do with us.
In fact, hysteria in America about immigrants from the south seems to be increasingly detached from reality. It turns out the number of unauthorized immigrants in the United States is actually going down, not up. There are several reasons. One is that the lure of the United States grew weaker when the U.S. economy crumbled in 2008. Another is that the number of Mexicans in the demographic category most likely to immigrate – young men – is shrinking. The pressure to leave and the appeal of the United States have both diminished. Thus, the number of Mexicans living in the United States without proper documents fell by 1.1 million between 2007 and 2012.
There have been new waves of immigrants from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador in recent years, but it is preposterous for Americans to pretend their arrival has nothing to do with us. Central America has been plagued by violence that is directly linked to the unrelenting hunger of Americans for drugs. The gang warfare wracking Mexico and Central America would not exist were it not for irresponsible and self-indulgent American behavior. The cycle of violence that young men are fleeing is intimately connected to the United States. We are in it together, and we reap what we sow.
Politicians in Britain and continental Europe are trying to fashion justifications for turning their backs on the millions of refugees fleeing to their shores as they seek to escape the wars in Syria and elsewhere. Thus, the open border policy of the European Union appears to be threatened by the need of fearful peoples to close doors against new arrivals.
But can the British really say that they have nothing to do with Syria, Iraq or Afghanistan? For one thing, the international boundaries defining the untenable nations of Syria and Iraq were drawn by the British among others about a century ago. Since then Britain has been among those nations that have invaded Iraq and Afghanistan. Now that the consequences are actually threatening to touch Britain itself, Conservative politicians are saying, “Who, me?” and washing their hands of it.
Among European nations Germany has been the most welcoming of international refugees. Turkey has been shouldering an even more significant share of the number. There is no standing against the effects of cataclysmic change and human tragedy; there is only dealing with it.
If your idea of dealing with it is to build a wall, then you may be inclined, like Scott Walker, to see the need for walls at every border, even the border with Canada. Maybe Walker’s problem is that Wisconsin, though a northern state, does not actually share a border with Canada. Canada is there across the water of Lake Superior, but Wisconsin’s northern land borders are with Minnesota and Michigan. A land border with Canada might have shown him that a border can join two peoples, rather than divide them, the way that Vermonters are joined with their Quebecois neighbors, enhancing each, opening the doors for each to the other. We are the richer for it.
The Providence Journal (R.I.), Sept. 1:
Ten years ago, the nation was transfixed by the unfolding disaster that was Hurricane Katrina. Though the Category Five storm did not hit New Orleans directly, it weakened a poorly maintained system of levees, causing flooding that submerged four-fifths of the city. Several Mississippi Gulf Coast communities also met with destruction.
Few Americans will forget the thousands of people seen stranded at New Orleans’s Superdome, and the many more who survived in attics and on rooftops. Although the numbers remain uncertain, conservative estimates place the death toll from the storm at more than 900.
The disaster laid bare already existing problems in New Orleans, including incompetent local officials, a federal response that was initially less than dynamic, and a racial and social divide that, to an extent, still survives. Yet, amid all the finger pointing, thousands of volunteers streamed into New Orleans, doing what they could to lend a hand. It was a heartening demonstration of what Americans can accomplish, given the right inspiration.
In the decade since, the federal government and numerous private entities have poured billions of dollars into rebuilding. New Orleans became a laboratory for rethinking urban problems, and scored notable improvements as a result. The school system was extensively overhauled, and now consists largely of a network of charter schools; a modern medical complex was erected; public housing projects were replaced with attractive mixed-income units.
More than 100,000 people were able to rebuild dwellings through the Road Home program, cumbersome and ill-designed though it proved to be. And a vibrant new entrepreneurial class has brought a fresh can-do spirit to the city.
Yet, while New Orleans is in a much better position to address longstanding problems, it remains a work in progress. Poverty rates, previously high, remain about the same, and violent crime is a persistent problem. For many people, housing is unaffordable; sizable income disparities remain alive and well. Blacks, on average, continue to struggle much more than whites. By 2013, the city contained about 100,000 fewer black residents than it did before Katrina. The white population has declined slightly but is much wealthier than before.
The challenges ahead are much like those that face other medium-sized cities, including Providence. Among them are shifting away from a history of political corruption, reducing unemployment and diversifying an economy too reliant on tourism and other low-wage industries. Ten years from now, it would be nice to be able to say that New Orleans has not just survived; it has shown other cities how to thrive.
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