Imagine not having a country to call home and your life being in limbo because of decisions you didn’t even make. It sounds like a bad dream, but that’s living for Rufino and a lot of other people who are being let down by the U.S.’s weirdly anti-immigrant policies.
I say “weirdly” because it is. It’s weird that a country built by immigrants has become one that turns them away by the millions. It’s especially weird when you consider that the U.S. plays a big role in foreign policy that makes people come here in the first place.
Something we can all do to help is to stop viewing immigration as a political issue — it makes politicians act like idiots. Immigration policy is a matter of human rights. Despite their own complicity in human rights abuses — *ahem* slavery — even the founding fathers of the U.S. seemed to know that.
And for folks like Rufino, the faster we recapture that idea, the better.
