At NMCIR, we mourn alongside El Paso and reaffirm our commitment to fighting policies that breed such hate-based violence.
We are often asked to pinpoint the harmful impacts of increasingly restrictive, incredibly inhumane immigration policies—among them are hate and fear. Our hearts go out to families who lost loved ones and those who await news in fear. It’s heartbreaking to learn that some are dealing with the added fear of seeking help at the designated reunification site due to their immigration status
Violence fueled by anti-immigrant, white supremacists’ beliefs is not new, as the various massacres targeting our Jewish, Muslim, and LGBTQ brothers and sisters show. The massacre at El Paso targeted Latino immigrants and Mexican nationals who cross the border to shop at that Walmart but like others has devastated the community at large. To stop these massacres, we must acknowledge their historical roots in racist rhetoric and dismantle its present-day distribution.
Our current immigration policies have been built by a series of racially motivated, exclusionary laws—from the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 to the National Origins Law of 1924, which capped new immigrants at two percent of the nationalities present in the United States in 1890, the year before an influx of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe started seeking refuge in the United States, to the Trump era policies that criminalize and ostracize Latino, Muslim and Southeast Asian immigrants.
Every day we serve brave, resilient individuals who albeit their fearlessness in their respective immigration journeys report the chilling effect of current anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies. We stand with them and all the families in El Paso, and will continue to fight for paths and policies that promote inclusion, not violence and exclusion.
Weak gun laws and strong anti-immigrant rhetoric make for a terrifying recipe for racism fueled violence. Hate breeds hate; it affects all of us and it is all of our job to stop it.