QOTD -- They Died As Americans

 

Will Bunch at the Philadelphia Inquirer ($$) writes movingly about immigration, immigrants, demagogues, and the lives lost on the Francis Scott Key bridge in Baltimore, concluding:

When the Dali cargo shipdemolished that bridge support on Tuesday, it also obliterated all the ridiculous lies and myths our demagogues have been spreading around immigration. There were no sex traffickers aboard the Key Bridge that night. Nobody was dealing fentanyl. They were not “animals,” but fathers and husbands like [Maynor Yassir] Suazo [Sandoval] and [Miguel] Luna, whose wife occasionally showed up in her food truck to bring the men tacos and pupusas. They were filling potholes so their children could have an even better life.

These six workers who perished were not “poisoning the blood of our country,” they were replenishing it. This is a moment of clarity when we need to reject the national disease of xenophobia and restore our faith in the United States as a beacon for the best people like Suazo. They may have been born all over the continent, but when these men plunged into our waters on Tuesday, they died as Americans. 

CNN has profiles of some the immigrant men who lost their lives on the bridge on Tuesday. In addition to Suazo Sandoval and Luna, there's Jose Mynor Lopez and Dorlian Castillo Cabrera, who are also profiled, and Alejandro Hernandez Fuentes and Dorlian Ronial Castillo Cabrera.  The profiles are worth the time to read and to remember the next time some Malignant Loser opens his evil, hateful, bigoted mouth.