The world has, of late, been grappling with the worst kind
of humanitarian crisis. As a part of its ‘zero tolerance’ approach to illegal
immigration, the United States of America, had, in May, allowed the filing of
criminal charges against undocumented immigrants. This led to separation of
nearly 2000 children of these immigrants from their parents in a matter of just
six weeks. (https://scroll.in/latest/883477/united-states-president-donald-trump-signs-executive-order-to-keep-migrant-families-together).
Horrified by the implementation of these completely inhumane
orders, there has been a wave of protests throughout the world. The protests
intensified further after an investigative news website, ProPublica, released
an audio recording on Monday, of the separated immigrant children crying
inconsolably for their parents, at a detention centre on the US-Mexico border.
President Trump’s wife and daughter joined in the protests to end this
humanitarian crisis. President Trump has now signed an executive order to not
separate the detained immigrant families. Although this comes as a major
immediate relief in the present circumstances, however it still leaves many
questions unanswered. The status of the children who have already been
separated is still unclear. Further, it is still not known that for how long these
immigrants can be held up and detained pending the ongoing proceedings against
them.
The United States has recently also withdrawn from the
United Nations Human Rights Council charging the organization of hypocrisy,
since it had condemned the abovementioned US policy and charged it of gross human
rights abuses because of this policy of separating the children of immigrant
parents from them. As ludicrous as this denunciation of the UN Human Rights
Council sounds, coming from the United States, whose human rights records have
never been a matter of pride, it remains to be seen how the accountability of
the human rights excesses that have already been committed in this matter, will
be fixed and by whom.
However, looking at the macro issue of illegal immigrants
throughout the world, it will be beneficial to all if a framework is arrived at
through mutual discussions and negotiations among the world community on how to
approach this issue in a humanistic manner. Illegal immigration is not a
country specific problem and cannot be seen in isolation, by removing it from
its context and completely overlooking the reasons for it. The root cause here
is again the growing inequalities in the world which lead to such dire living
conditions for substantial population of the world that they resort to any and
every means possible to simply be able to continue to survive. This issue is
not simply a mathematical issue of numbers, wherein nations start to drive out
excess number of people from their soils without paying any heed to the social
realities that force these people to resort to such practices in the first
place.
Illegal immigration is a systemic as also a system and
policy driven issue. The victims of the system are portrayed as criminals and
punished harshly for their alleged crimes. Such harsh measures as adopted by
the United States of America may appear to be a solution in the short term but
are completely unsustainable on a long-term basis in view of the humanitarian
concerns. Whenever one faces a dilemma of a choice between humanity and
maintenance of the boundaries of the nation-state, or in other words, a dilemma
between what the choice should be – humanity or patriotism (one’s commitment
towards maintenance of the sacrosanct nature of one’s nation), it will not be
difficult to arrive at the right decision if Rabindranath Tagore’s words are
kept in mind:
“Patriotism cannot be our final spiritual shelter; my refuge
is humanity. I will not buy glass for the price of diamonds, and I will never
allow patriotism to triumph over humanity as long as I live.”
However, this is an adage which has been long forgotten. In
today’s world, patriotism trumps humanity by a huge margin.
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