To the Editor:

The U.S. is a country of asylum seekers and their children. Every immigrant to the U.S. arrived at our borders looking to escape from either government tyranny, economic hardship or criminal violence.

U.S. law and international law requires that asylum seekers who present themselves to our immigration personnel be given the opportunity to prove their reasons for seeking asylum. A new policy recently implemented requires that asylum seekers be turned away at the border; federal agents are actually standing at the borderline at established border crossings to physically prevent an asylum seekers from stepping foot on U.S. soil. A person must be actually standing on U.S. soil in order to request asylum; preventing these people from stepping across the painted borderline means there is no opportunity for them to plea their case to an immigration judge. 

These asylum seekers are not choosing to present themselves to U.S. immigration courts because they plan to live off U.S. government largess. These people are escaping from the government and gang-related torture and murder common in their country of origin. The deadly trek these asylum seekers take across thousands of miles of inhospitable landscape is a dangerous but necessary risk to take, a risk that keeps their children out of the hands of murdering gang members and corrupt government policies in their native countries.

Most Americans learned something about the history of asylum seekers coming to America. In particular, we have all seen the images of thousands of Irish, German, Polish and other European refugees, escaping starvation from crop failures and political pogroms, standing in line waiting to have their asylum request processed on Ellis Island in New York Harbor.

The people did not come to America simply to live off the largess of the American. They came to escape the certain death awaiting them and their families if they did not flee their native lands. The asylum seekers coming from South and Central America are facing the same kinds of threats of death and unlawful imprisonment as did the European asylum seekers who came to America in the late 19th century and early 20th century.  

The moral, ethical and lawful imperative to offer these modern-day asylum seekers refuge is no different than it was 100 years ago. The color of their skin and their native language may be different then that of their predecessors from Europe 100 years ago, but their plights are no less compelling. These people are no less a member of the family of man as were the asylum-seeking people who came before them.

John Barry

Franklin