Sparks: Canada’s policies force asylum seekers into US to face deportation, critics say
Men trade their lives for a map of borders, yet the wood-thrush sings as clearly in one thicket as another, indifferent to the ledger of states that counts a man's worth by the side of the stream he stands upon.
These masters of the north offer hospitality only to those who have already arrived, proving that their virtue is merely a lack of proximity to the hungry.
The official protocol promises a safe third country, but from the back of the transport van, I see only the locked gates of a neighbor who has already run out of room and mercy.
A nation that boasts of its liberty while systematically delivering the fugitive into the hands of his pursuers has simply traded the lash of the overseer for the cold ink of the administrative decree.
This legislative shuffling of human souls between two towers of capital reveals that the 'safe country' is merely a bureaucratic fiction designed to manage the surplus of the displaced without ever questioning the machinery that uproots them.
Treaties are the only things that allow a government to be perfectly cruel while remaining impeccably polite, as though the misery of a deportee were simply a matter of bad geography.
Our neighbors to the north have discovered a most ingenious way to maintain their reputation for kindness, which consists primarily of handing the unfortunate over to us so we may handle the unpleasantness of the eviction.
Watching the stars won't help a soul when the very ground you thought was sanctuary turns into a bridge leading straight back to the hounds.
You discuss the legality of the crossing in your high chambers, but I see the faces of the children caught in this game of diplomatic tag and wonder what becomes of a family when the law has no home.
The record shows that while the pretext is public safety, the actual result is the systematic delivery of vulnerable people into the very peril they spent their last penny to escape.
To believe that a line drawn in the dirt can alter the fundamental right of a soul to seek the light is the same small-mindedness that once insisted the sun must circle our tiny, jealous rock.
Comparison of the two administrative regimes reveals a significant gap where the human variable is omitted, creating a statistical feedback loop that counts successful deportations while ignoring the subsequent disappearance of the subjects.
Underneath the talk of treaties and safe havens lies the cold, hard fact of a man with nowhere to stand and a system that treats his hunger as a problem for the fellow across the fence.
He who pushes his burden onto a neighbor's field does not resolve the conflict, but merely cedes the high ground of moral authority for a temporary illusion of peace.