Date: Thu, 20 Apr 2000 08:50:42 -0700
From: apfanning@psn.net ("Alan Fanning")
Subject: [lpaz-repost] Slamming the Golden Door
To: DragonWyr@aol.com ("*Leah Fanning")
Cc: lpaz-repost@egroups.com ("lpaz-repost")
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/bluesky_metaksa/20000420_xctme_slamming_g.shtml
Thursday, April 20, 2000
Slamming the golden door
by Tanya K. Metaksa
In 1939 Hitler was threatening to conquer Europe.; Many families,
including many Jewish families, living in Europe at the time looked for
refuge outside that continent. In May of that year an ocean liner named
the "St. Louis" left Germany with a cargo of 907 Jews who were fleeing
with only passports and the clothes on their backs. They sailed across
the Atlantic to seek safe haven..
When they arrived in Cuba they were denied entry even though they
threatened mass suicide. Every other Latin American country also denied
them entry. They then turned to the United States. Our country ordered
the U.S. Coast Guard to "keep the 'St. Louis' far from shore." Their
last chance was Canada, which also refused them entry. The ship then
returned to Germany where all the passengers were condemned to the gas
chambers.
In that same year an American woman, her British husband, and their
2-year-old child born in London, England set sail for America from
France. During the trip across the Atlantic the child became ill. The
father fearing that they would be denied entr into the United States
kept the child's illness a secret from everyone on the ship as well as
from U.S. Immigration authorities. As a result the family entered the
United States legally. The child was later diagnosed with tuberculosis
of the lymph gland, which fortunately was successfully cured.
A week ago as the U.S. Senate was trying to adjourn, Senator Bob Smith,
R-N.H., was on the Senate floor trying to get his fellow senators to
focus on the Elian Gonzalez case. It didn't matter that the media had
been camped in Miami for months, every talk show was covering the saga
of Elian, and almost everyone else in the country had an opinion as to
what to do with the Cuban boy, the U.S. Senate wasn't about to vote on
Smith's bill.
In the United States Senate it really takes 60 votes, not 51, to pass
controversial legislation. When 60 votes cannot be achieved, Senate
protocol can keep the bill from "coming to the floor" to be voted upon.
Last week very few Senators were willing to vote on a bill that would
grant Elian Gonzalez and his family permanent residency status, allowing
a Florida custody court to decide where Elian should reside permanently.
There are, of course, over 40 Democrats in the U.S. Senate, who have
demonstrated their lack of backbone on controversial subjects. After all
they chose to vote in favor of Bill Clinton in 1999 during his
impeachment trial. Thus we will never know which ones of those senators,
who often proclaim their support for oppressed people around the world,
would have voted to keep Elian free in America or send him back to a
country, whose residents are still desperately attempting to leave by
any means they can to cross the 90 treacherous miles north to freedom.
As Senator Smith so eloquently said, "This should not be an immigration
matter. Elian Gonzalez did not get on a yacht and cruise into Miami
Harbor. He and two other people almost drowned while everybody else on
the boat--10 or 12 other people -- lost their lives. And his mother's
dying wish was to `please get my son to Amrican soil.' If Elian's
mother had lived, there would be no controversy; she and Elian would
have remained in this country. Janet Reno would not have been required
to get involved and exercise her discretion in this case.
Janet Reno's discretion has been very poor when it comes to children.
After all she is the one who proclaimed herself the final arbiter in the
matter of allowing men, women, and children to be attacked and killed by
the U.S. government at the Branch Davidian complex in Waco, Texas seven
years ago yesterday. She took full responsibility when she stated, "the
buck stops here."
Her manner of being in charge condoned the use of CS gas, which put
small children at risk. Forty-eight Branch Davidian autopsies indicated
possible lethal doses of cyanide gas, a byproduct of burning CS gas.
Her way of being in charge was to allow the FBI to demolish the complex
killing children as well as adults with falling debris or trapping them
inside with no escape routes available. Even the "New York Times" inan
Oct. 12, 1993 editorial: "The Waco Whitewash," stated, "the report is
silent on the most glaring deficiency of the tragic episode: the lack of
judgment at the top and the reasons for it."
Janet Reno's judgment has been rather poor throughout the seven years
that she has served as Attorney General. As an Attorney General she has
been more concerned with making decisions that are politically helpful
to this Administration -- especially to Bill Clinton, than enforcing U.
S. law independent of politics. Shehas used her discretionary powers to
make it more difficult, if not impossible, to determine whether Clinton
and Gore have committed crimes, while now she is sentencing a
six-year-old boy to life in a dictatorship. .
In 1986 we celebrated the100th anniversary of the Statue of Liberty,
"one of the most universal symbols of political freedom," according the
official government website on the statue. The inscription on the statue
reads:
"Give me your tired, your poor...Your huddled masses yearning to breathe
free...The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the
homeless, tempest-tossed to me...I lift my lamp beside the golden door."
Yesterday, April 19, has much in common with the meaning of the Statue
of Liberty. April 19, 1775, was the day of the "shot heard round the
world" when colonial militiamen kept King George's redcoats from seizing
their firearms and ammunition. April 19, 1943, the first day of Passover
that year, was the day the remaining Jews using illegal firearms rose
against the Nazis and kept them at bay for 42 days: the Warsaw Ghetto
Revolt. April 19,1993, was also the day Janet Reno signed the death
warrant for 76 men, women, children, and two unborn children. April 19,
1996, too was the date of the tragedy of Oklahoma City, where 168
innocent men, women, and children were murdered. Let's hope that April
19, 2000 is not the date when the golden door to freedom for Elian
Gonzalez begins closing.
Janet Reno still has the discretion to allow Elian, whose mother died
yearning to be free, to remain in the country that welcomed over 12
million immigrants in the early years of the twentieth century. Janet
Reno should remember the 907 passengers of the "St. Louis" who "yearned
to breathe free;" she should remember the Jews in that ghetto in Warsaw.
I thank God that Janet Reno did not have discretionary authority over
that family with the tubercular child who successfully immigrated some
59 years ago, because I was that child.
Your high school sweetheart-where is he now? With 4.4 million alumni
already registered at Classmates.com, there's a good chance you'll
find her here. Visit your online high school class reunion at:
http://click.egroups.com/1/3139/0/_/651531/_/956245914/
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