America's shame
If you have a strong stomach, read the account in the New York Times today about how federal immigration officials and their camp guards in state and local prisons let a Chinese immigrant, Hiu Lui Ng, 34, die horribly of bone cancer. Indeed, they went out of their way to make it difficult for him to get treatment and actively frustrated his efforts to meet with lawyers who might have helped him.
The Bush Administration's persecution of non-citizens--they have succeeded gays as the main target of the hard right's group hate (in part because they were increasingly hating themselves)--shames everything America stands for. I don't care that Ng didn't have legal status. He overstayed a legal tourist visa at age 19 and had made a good life for himself in America. He had a wife and two young children and a good job providing computer services to a firm in the Empire State Building.
What was done to him in our names is little different than what Hitler did to the Jews or the Argentine dictatorship in the 1970s did to political dissidents. It appears to be murder, and lawyers for the family have asked that a criminal investigation be opened.
That's the difference between America in 2008 and Nazi Germany in 1944. The rule of law can still trump the politics of hate. Not that it's a slam dunk: Attorney General Michael Mukasey yesterday told the American Bar Association he had no intention of prosecuting midstate native Monica Goodling and others who broke the law by using political criteria to hire career Justice Department employees. That case cries out for the appointment of a special prosecutor immune from the influence of Bush and Cheney.
Yesterday I happened to call a plumber in the Harrisburg area. I was taken aback when the receptionist answered the phone, "We're proud to be Americans. [name deleted] Plumbing and Heating." I'm glad they are, but increasingly Americans can make statements like that only with their eyes firmly shut and their ears plugged.
Did you know that the York County Prison and the Snyder County Prison are both immigration prisons under contract to the Federal government? What happened to Ng could be happening right in our own backyards.