It’s what happened to Jews in Germany in 1938 when their passports were declared invalid. That is what is beginning to happen here, now, to Hispanic citizens along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Oh, is it bad to compare the GOP to Nazis? Well, if members of the GOP do not like being compared to Nazis, they should consider not behaving exactly like Nazis.
Hispanic U.S. citizens, some of whom were in the U.S. military, are not being allowed to renew their passports. This is reportedly happening to “hundreds, even thousands” of Latinos, according to a report in the Washington Post. They’re getting letters from the State Department saying it does not believe they are citizens. The government claims their citizenships are fraudulent. “I’ve had probably 20 people who have been sent to the detention center—U.S. citizens,” Jaime Diez, an attorney in Brownsville, told The Washington Post.
The Washington Post also reports on ICE officials coming to citizens’ homes and taking their passports away. This is an escalation from a few months ago, when Americans were detained by ICE officials just for speaking Spanish to one another.
The administration is currently launching an effort to take citizenship from people who they suspect of fraud in obtaining it. Fraud in these cases is exceedingly rare. The last time the government tried to strip people of their citizenship was, according to Columbia Professor Mae Ngai, during The Red Scare of the 1950s. As Ngai remarks, McCarthyism is not typically remembered as a good period in American history.
There is good reason to believe that this could portend still worse things to come for the U.S. Hispanic population, unless people begin to speak out loudly, and fast.
First, they came for the Hispanics and I did nothing.
Then they came for (fill in the blanks) and I did nothing.
Then, when they came for me, there was no one to do nothing.
GUYS.
SILENCE IS COMPLICITY.
IT WILL HAUNT NOT ONLY YOU BUT YOUR CHILDRENS CHILDREN.
DONT BE SILENT. PASS THIS AROUND. Let everyone know it’s happening!
Maybe this isn’t something to be celebrated, guys. This is much less a “you go girl! Get it!” story and more a reminder that many women are in fucked up situations like this. Why should a woman feel like she has to stay in a relationship in order to be financially stable? Why should a woman have to share a bed, have a child (!) with a man she hates and treats her like this? If leaving a relationship would make your living situation unclear or unsafe, you’re not really free to leave that relationship. It’s coerced. It’s not consensual. Think about how, when free housing was provided in Canada, divorce rates in the region spiked. The free housing gave women the opportunity to get out of marriages like this one. This is not fun; this is bad.
I don’t often see abuse posts about the opposite spectrum of post-abuse behavior, and it’s. Kind of a bummer bc those are still things people experience.
So shout out to :
people who feel like they have to aggressively defend the things that are important to them because they’re so used to it being torn down and taken from them – even if a friend was just kidding, it’s so hard to see it as just kidding.
People who are constantly on high alert for a fight and had to learn to treat everything like a debate because it was the only way they could stand up for themselves. People who have a hard time rationalizing not everything is an attack because everything used to be an attack.
People who are mad and furious over what happened and get completely consumed by rage no matter how hard they try to let it go. And who have to deal with people telling them they’re making it bigger than it was.
People who have to constantly front as being a badass or aloof because they can’t be seen as vulnerable in any way.
People who constantly fear they’re just like their abuser because they lash out at a moment’s notice to defend themselves
There’s a ton more things but I’m on my break and these are just things I experience that I know a lot more people relate to omg. It’s hard to unlearn aggressive means of self preservation and it hurts to hurt people after you’ve had to experience that hurt and it seems impossible to get over or unlearn those things but you’ll do alright it just needs time and patience and there’s nothing wrong with being angry.