I recently met with a desperate #Venezuela family about to overstay tourist visa. Dad (professional), mom (professional) and kid. Staying w/ relatives & desperate to find a way not to return to political threats, hunger, utter lack of services, including medical care...

Why me? I have #HumanRights background, a university job & #LatinAmerica experience. Basically bupkus in the terrordome politics of desperate people in Trumpland. But I bought them coffee (and a snowman cookie for a young 'un) and listened...

What separates me from them? Increasingly little. They were upper middle class and now scrounge for off the books manual labor. Would they be killed if they returned? Not immediately -- but slowly: no work, no food, no medicine, no hope. They've become #Refugees ...

Without really understanding what this new world means. Basically like all people who flee and only gradually or through sudden tragedy realize they're suddenly on the awful side of the human curtain. #HannahArendt called this "a new kind of human being" medium.com/quote-of-the-w…

Superfluous persons, nobodies, people without rights: no country to advocate for them or protect them. And that child gingerly biting the cookie... I could be them - we all could. Yet we fool ourselves everyday that magical protection exists. And we turn our backs, as a nation...

All this to say that our immigration policy is nuts. Lethal (two kids so far and so many more dead at the border). Desperate parents, terrified kids. What do they want? So simple. Safety. A job (any job). The jobs citizens will never take, ever. School. A place to live. Security.

And we answer with stupid walls, guards, cages (GTH @AnnCoulter). We are not so far from 1937, folks. Maybe even past that. All the money wasted on a pointless wall could go to helping desperate people in the most magical way possible - we help them and (shazam!)...

They become beloved, productive, helpful, necessary citizens: doctors, teachers, engineers, cooks, gardeners, home health aides, bus drivers, nannies -- and they add to us, they enrich us, they ennoble in so many ways that actually demolish fear (GTH @DHSgov).

So what are you doing #Congress? Cashing paychecks while federal workers feel dread about mortgage payment, overdue credit cards, grocery bills? How about agreeing IN PUBLIC that this #Wall is about stupidest thing ever? Pass a CR, override the Chaos president's veto, and GOVERN!

Put money into sane immigration policy, support for quadrupling #refugee admissions (for a start) and granting #TPS to #Venezuelans #Nicaraguans and more? What say you @marcorubio @SenThomTillis ("co-chair" of #HumanRights Caucus)... besides cashing your paychecks????

This season our government ADDED to grief and terror. INCREASED it. FUELED it. We (yes we) made the world a worse place, out of raw politicking, fear-mongering, and corruption. Time for this to stop. TIME for this to stop. npr.org/2018/12/28/680…

And yes, the snowman cookie slaughtered me. Absolutely slaughtered. And this is just one of so, so many stories of needless suffering. NEEDLESS. End of 2018 rant (may 2019 bring sanity and humanity back). Vote the criminals out and let's do this, #2019