Below, how the immigration question is shaping up in the United States:
Rather suddenly, children come flooding into the U.S. , fleeing poverty and violence in Central America and because the law governing them is not the same as that of children coming from Mexico, another snafu arises with the immigration hearings..
Suddenly, too,we have mass demonstrations by people in California towns who don't want these immigrant chidren sent to facilities in THEIR neck of the woods...
Immigration itself is such a hot button issue now-- further complicated by putting politicians on the spot as to how they will react to new Hispanic immigrants or would be immigrants, doing
a precarious balancing act between pleasing American Hispanics ( who often act like anyone who wants to come to the U.S. has the immediate right to do so and have social services given to them immediately) and people on the right, who are fed up with the influx of illegal ( oops, undocumented) newcomers and scream bloody murder how they will all put a massive strain on the American taxpayer.
( Oddly, the question of immigrants, in this case mostly legal ones under EU rules has become a hot potato in the UK, with the UKIP yelling about it as an issue of Britain being overwhelmed by foreigners...
The French have already had a similar reaction and in the last elections there, right wing parties did extremely well. Of course, the French have always had a thing about how everyone in France who entered the country had just damn well better adopt themselves to French ways..
For the United States, it has always been different, as this is after all a Nation of Immigrants. ( Except, of course, for the Native Americans, who were royally screwed, starting with the Pilgrims and their smallpox infected blankets handed over as a great gifts to the Indians and following through with the hideous behavior of Andrew Jackson and subsequent American Great White Fathers).
Until some time after the Civil War, immigrants just came charging into the U.S. " undocumented" (though the advent of the Irish in huddled masses had provoked a huge anti-immigrant sentiment and the growth of the Know Nothing party).
In the midst of all this, I would like to note the United States has always presented two faces to Central America-- one as an invader and backer of American vested interests ( and coups to protect these) and the other as missionaries and benefactors.
(I remember all those ads for years for Save the Children which often focused on Central America. We had friends of ours who backed a child down there who, unfortunately, and much to the misery of his "adoptive" American parents, grew up to be a violent left wing anti-American agitator).
Let me end this by focusing on some of the good work that has been done by Americans in Central America as personified by Nevin Scrimshaw, who died just a few years after ages in Guatemala fighting malnutrition especially in chidlren:
Nevin S. Scrimshaw, Pioneer Nutritionist, Dies at 95
By DOUGLAS MARTIN
Published: February 12, 2013
Dr. Nevin S. Scrimshaw, a nutritionist who improved the health of
millions of children in developing countries by creating low-cost
vegetable-based foods for weaning infants, died on Friday in Plymouth,
N.H. He was 95.
Cornell Capa/Time Life Pictures--Getty Images
Dr. Nevin S. Scrimshaw examined children in Guatemala
in 1953 for goiter, a condition he helped to eliminate there.
The cause was congestive heart failure, his daughter, Dr. Susan C. Scrimshaw, said.
To help protein-starved children in Central America, Dr. Scrimshaw
created a gruel made of corn, sorghum and cottonseed flour that was
nutritionally equivalent to milk. In India, he adapted the same
principle to peanut flour and wheat. He then brought both products to
market, where they sold for only pennies.
Working in Central America, Dr. Scrimshaw also helped eliminate endemic goiter in children — a swelling of the thyroid gland that can lead to mental retardation, deafness and dwarfism. The ailment is caused by a mother’s iodine deficiency.
Dr. Scrimshaw found that European and American techniques to iodize salt
were ineffective with the crude, moist salt of Central America, so he
came up with a new iodine compound that proved effective there. He then
worked with governments in the region to require iodation of all salt
for human consumption.
Dr. Scrimshaw was a leader in research that helped prove that malnutrition
and infection interact to produce far greater consequences than if only
one or the other condition were present. He amassed evidence to
demonstrate that chronic undernutrition was a greater threat to the
third world than famine. And in his work in developing nations he
emphasized the importance of iron and Vitamin A to the diet and helped start initiatives to distribute supplements.
“The bottom line is that he is probably unchallenged as the most
important nutrition scientist and nutrition leader in the world,” said
Irwin Rosenberg, chairman of the Nevin Scrimshaw International Nutrition Foundation at Tufts University.
The foundation was just one organization that Dr. Scrimshaw helped build
and run to address nutrition issues. In 1949 he founded the Institute of Nutrition of Central America and Panama,
based in Guatemala City, and did much of his research there. He also
started a world hunger program at the United Nations University in New
York and a nutrition department at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology.
The World Food Prize Foundation honored him with its award in 1991, saying his “revolutionary accomplishments” had improved “the lives of millions.”
Nevin Stewart Scrimshaw was born on Jan. 20, 1918, in Milwaukee, where
his father, Stewart, was an economics professor at Marquette University.
He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in biology from Ohio Wesleyan
University in 1938 and earned a Ph.D. from Harvard in physiology in
1941.
He entered the University of Rochester’s medical school while
participating in an Army medical corps training program. As part of his
Army service he did his internship at Gorgas Hospital in the Canal Zone
in 1945-46. He earned a master’s in public health from Harvard in 1959.
Years later he said his medical school professors in Rochester had
thought he was throwing away a promising career by concentrating on
something as marginal, to them, as nutrition.
He was working in Central America in the 1950s when he witnessed an ailment known as kwashiorkor,
a form of post-weaning protein malnutrition that plagued infants and
children in developing countries. When he encouraged mothers to give
their children milk, he found that they could afford to put only a
teaspoon of milk in a glass of water.
Dr. Scrimshaw knew he had found his mission, but it took him seven years
to complete it. He started with the realization that protein-rich
soybeans do not grow in the tropics, and that sesame seeds and peanuts
were too expensive. But cotton was abundant in Central America, and
cottonseed meal was being exported for animal feed.
The meal, however, had a pigment that was toxic to humans. Dr. Scrimshaw
and his colleagues found a way to eliminate the poisonous effect, and
added vitamins and other nutrients.
Cooks were instructed to add water to the gruel, cook it for 15 minutes
and flavor it with sugar, cinnamon, vanilla or chocolate. Called
Incaparina — the name was taken from Incap, the acronym for his
institute, and the Spanish word for flour, harina — it cost a penny a
glass and spread throughout Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and
Nicaragua.
During a famine in India in 1967, Dr. Scrimshaw made a similar food from
peanut flour and wheat to combat kwashiorkor. That led to his research
showing the synergistic relationship between malnutrition and infection.
In 1941 Dr. Scrimshaw married Mary Ware Goodrich, a nutritional
anthropologist, with whom he worked closely throughout his career. She
and his daughter survive him, as do his sons Norman, Nevin B., Steven
and Nathaniel; eight grandchildren; four step-grandchildren; and one
great-grandchild.
As a prominent nutritionist, Dr. Scrimshaw, who continued to ski and
hike into his 90s, was often asked his views on issues ranging from
snacking on chocolate to substituting two pieces of pie for lunch. He
said he was gratified to learn that chocolate is actually good for you
in limited amounts. As for the pie, he advised taking it easy the next
day.
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