I was sickened when I saw the photograph of the protest against child immigration on the front page of last week’s Malibu Times.
The best quote of the article says, “There is a long, sad and shameful tradition in the United States in using fear of disease, contagion and contamination to stigmatize immigrants and foreigners.”
I only feel compassion for these refugee children, especially the sick ones, because I know of the hardships and strife and fear they are facing in their home countries.
Maybe it is because of my father’s story of escaping the revolution in Russian as an eight-year-old boy by walking across China for five years with his mother and two brothers, only to be unrecognizable because of starvation when he did reach America.
Remember, “A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame is the imprisoned lightning and her name Mother of Exiles. From her beacon hand glows world-wide welcome.”
Valerie Sklarevsky