Immigration story
Jul 21, 2014, 12:00 PM | Updated: 12:00 pm
Well, it looks like the United States is not the only country that has to make somewhat urgent immigration decisions. While our government is trying to figure out what to do with the thousands of Latin American children who suddenly showed up on our borders in the last few weeks, another country has had a similar — albeit smaller — surprise.
Not everyone who arrived in Brazil during the World Cup is going home. Several hundred Africans from Ghana and Nigeria are seeking asylum in Brazil because of the ever-mounting violence in their countries. Brazil, which is the geographical size of the United States, has an economy that has slowed but because of far less rigid immigration laws, it is already expediting a method by which the visitors can stay.
You can imagine how welcomed they would be here. The story caused me to wonder, in some Bizarro world, if Canada was the center of murder and terror instead of Honduras and El Salvador and the kids streaming across that border were white, English-speaking Canadians. Would there still be so much difficulty figuring out what to do?
I’m Pat McMahon.
