ICE/Border Control

While crossing the 205 this morning I saw a US Customs and Border Control van pulling a trailer. Probably coming from the port in Portland and heading up north, there have been sightings of ICE trucks in Seattle. Mass deportation is a very real threat, even all the way up here.

I think we all need to be reminded that this is no longer about which side butters your political bread. Immigrants are your neighbors, your friends, your coworkers, your farmers, your employees.

Farmers in Central WA are already facing a labor shortage because of the declining labor pool, a mass deportation will have a devastating impact on agriculture throughout the entire state; prices will skyrocket, crops will go to ruin, produce will go to waste.

Do we remember the Centralia Tragedy? Do we remember what happened with the Wobblies? Can we recall the history of xenophobia here in the Pacific Northwest? It wasn’t too long ago now that the land we presently use as fairgrounds were used as internment camps for the Japanese.

Do your own research, have compassion for human beings, protect your neighbors. When the fear of immigrants dominates politics, violence and repression soon follow. No one would put their child on a boat and send them across the ocean unless they knew that the water was safer than the land.