Children take part in a protest against U.S. immigration policies outside the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City on June 26, 2018. Three undocumented migrant mothers filed a lawsuit Tuesday against President Donald Trump's administration, demanding to be reunited with the daughters they were forcibly separated from after crossing the Mexican border to seek asylum.RODRIGO ARANGUA/Getty Images
Letters to the Editor should be exclusive to The Globe and Mail. Include your name, address and daytime phone number. Try to keep letters to fewer than 150 words. Letters may be edited for length and clarity. To submit a letter by e-mail, click here: letters@globeandmail.com
..................................................................................................................................
Small world, big window
Re The Migration Crisis Will Shatter Europe (June 25): Margaret Wente did hit the nail on the head with one point in her pessimistic column: “Hundreds of millions of people in the most decrepit and dysfunctional places on Earth are now equipped with cellphones that allow them to see how the First World lives.”
We flaunt our wealth, our “righteousness” and our freedoms, then are hypocritically shocked when those shackled in poverty risk life and limb for a better life.
The globalized world has become a small world with a big window. With nearly half of the Earth’s population living in some degree of poverty, the tenuous grip on wealth some countries enjoy is being challenged.
Either a huge redistribution of wealth needs to occur, or right-wing populists will continue to emerge, maintaining their privilege through brute force. If history is any indication of human nature, God help us all.
Jodine Ducs, West Kelowna, B.C.
Welcome to America
Re Migrants Released From Custody Plead To Be Reunited With Children (June 26): A sobbing four-year-old taken away from his mother in the middle of the night; 32 parents released and only three able to speak to their children. What does this say about the more than 2,500 kids separated from their parents by the Trump administration? What parent can read this and not shudder?
To deflect criticism from the barbarism of what has happened, the Trump camp focuses on the fact that a crying two-year-old in a widely circulated picture on a Time cover was not in fact in the end taken away from her mom, as if that somehow makes the fate of all the other kids who were somehow less horrible.
How can anyone – anyone! – defend anything about what has happened to these children? Welcome to America’s ever-deeper descent into the barbarism of the Trump era.
Phyllis Nguyen, Victoria
..............................................
Many of us have seen the widely shared photo of the little Honduran girl crying during the interrogation of her mother at the hands of American border authorities in Texas. Nothing can deprive that photo of its power. It will become etched in our minds, like the napalm girl or the boy washed up on the Mediterranean beach.
So why has it become an issue that, as fate would have it, the toddler did not end up separated from her mother? Neither the photographer, the toddler, or her mother could have known in that moment that the infant would not be taken away, like so many other hapless babies or children. No doubt the treatment of other detainees in their midst could have pointed in that direction.
That’s why, at marches and demonstrations, we will wave that photo in the faces of the media and politicians. We will demand that families fleeing horrifying danger in their homelands not be treated as suspects and not be held in cages and prisons, no matter where they’re from or how they arrived.
Anne Hansen, Victoria
..............................................
How is the detention of a Honduran mother and daughter at the U.S. border more reprehensible than the original actions of the mother in leaving her other children behind, and dragging her two-year old daughter on a long, dangerous trek to try to enter the U.S. without telling her husband of her plans?
Does the mother have any responsibilities here at all? For me, this entire debate has plunged into total incomprehensibility.
Herb Schultz, Edmonton
Civil service culture
Re Can The Federal Public Service Fix Its Culture Problem? (Opinion, June 23): After a 35-year career as a federal public servant, including in the Privy Council Office, I appreciate the author’s reasoning supporting the conflicting views of both the Clerk of the Privy Council, who is also the head of the federal public service, and the Auditor-General that there is a values/cultural crisis around truth-telling in the public service.
However, I disagree with the suggested remedy of implementing “an arm’s length” outside process for appointing the clerk and deputy ministers.
The Prime Minister’s department, the Privy Council Office, “steers” the vast bureaucratic machinery which carries out government’s decisions, and is headed by the clerk. The “fit” or match between a PM and the clerk in their daily, complex and demanding working relationship, often within huge constraints, cannot be achieved by an outside body.
No private sector CEO would hire a direct report solely on the recommendation of an outside recruiting firm, without at least one direct interview to determine if that “fit” exists, a key step in the hiring decision.
For deputy ministers, the accountability chain in our system is ultimately to the prime minister, via the clerk, and not to their specific minister. There already exists an elaborate system of evaluating their performance, which includes ministers, Treasury Board, and senior managers of the Privy Council Office. An outside selection committee would never approach the collective hands-on experience of these individuals.
Julianna Ovens, Ottawa
Appropriate response
Re TDSB Investigates Principal Over Profiling Complaints (June 26): This article raises troubling questions. A high school principal compiles a list of black students and shares it with teachers to examine opportunity and achievement gaps. Her stated objective was to support student success for students whose access to opportunity may be impeded.
Result: the filing of a human rights complaint, the principal will not preside over the graduation ceremony, and the Toronto District School Board’s director of education says the “incident” should never have happened and issues an apology.
Is disciplining the teacher and pursuing legal avenues before a rights tribunal the appropriate response?
How can schools combat racism and remove barriers without statistics about racial groups? Is the mere collection of statistics by the top official in the school and sharing it with teachers a violation of human rights? How can we measure success without knowing the numbers?
At most, the principal made mistakes in approach which should be addressed in a collaborative manner by a group of individuals all engaged in the common goal of combating discrimination. Perhaps those engaged in the struggle for equality need to do better at distinguishing their allies from their adversaries.
Michael Kanter, Toronto
Tariffs and tantrums
Re Facing EU Tariffs, Harley-Davidson To Shift Some Production Out Of The United States (Report on Business, June 26): Trade wars have consequences – mostly negative. In the case of the big Harley-Davidson motorcycles, jobs are shifting out of the U.S. because of retaliatory EU tariffs, leaving Donald Trump Hog-tied. Someone should send the White House a copy of Sean Masaki Flynn’s book – Economics for Dummies.
Vic Bornell, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont.