Robert Azzi is a photographer and writer who lives in Exeter. His columns are archived at theotherazzi.wordpress.com.
“In Los Angeles, [migrant] children stitch “Made in America” tags into J. Crew shirts,” the New York Timesreports. “They bake dinner rolls sold at Walmart and Target, process milk used in Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and help debone chicken sold at Whole Foods. As recently as the fall, middle-schoolers made Fruit of the Loom socks in Alabama. In Michigan, children make auto parts used by Ford and General Motors.”
No one chooses to be a migrant, a refugee, an undocumented person with no rights whose life at every moment hangs by a fragile thread. No one wants to beg for asylum in unknown lands if their own homeland appears secure.
No one in Central America spends a lifetime of earnings to send alone a 12-year-old child whom they love on a trek of over 2,000 miles that could take three or four months if they could safely feed and shelter their family at home.
No one sends their oldest child, as my father was sent, if life in their homeland is safe and secure, with opportunities for education and employment for their children.
When my father, as the oldest son, was sent by his family at age 9, to America, he was alone and spoke no English. He traveled from Beirut, Syria (as it was known at the time) to Lawrence, Mass., via Ellis Island, arriving in 1910 to join the large Arab community there. He immediately went to work in one of the textile mills and shoe...
This story is the second in an ongoing series on the Cost of Fraud, as Open the Books tallies the hidden fees on American tax returns. Click here to read the first story on fraudulent autism billi...