Mothering / sistering
Migrants: now / in waiting
Top: A migrant dairy farm worker lives in Vermont with her daughter. Life is hard for migrants, but can be an investment that will lift people here and help their families back home. Savings that migrants bring with them when they return home or send back can pay for education, healthcare, housing, and even safety for a whole family and spread out to benefit a village. For all undocumented immigrants, insecurity is a daily stress, many face workplace mistreatment without redress and fear of deportation. Migrant Justice in Vermont works to protect the lives and rights of migrant workers.
Below: Sisters—waiting in the main hospital in Baghdad shortly before the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq—may join the 1 in 25 Iraqis displaced from their homes. The war decimated healthcare as medicines became scarce, hospitals were destroyed, and about half of all doctors fled the country. As of March 2023, 1.1 million Iraqis are still internally displaced or refugees abroad.
It makes me ponder what happened to those girls in Iraq, all grown up now.
It is so hard to know of people desperate for a decent chance at life, something the poor can view daily on a simple iPhone. The longing for a "normal" life is so great there are two basic problems at the root. The greatest is the heartless and corrupt leaders of countries who deny their citizens a decent living. The other is people in advanced countries that look away or have become overwhelmed with helping those in need. Where does one begin to correct either situation?