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Did You Make Someone Smile Today?
Smiling is infectious and reminds us of each other’s humanity
This election season, the migrant crisis has emerged as a dominant issue in both local and presidential races. Candidates of both political parties vowed to adopt a tougher stance on immigration, as their teams created emotionally charged campaign ads that often confound this with other hot topics, such as affordability and crime.
In the weeks leading up to Election Day 2024, my kids and I were bombarded by this trope during commercial breaks on TV and scrolling through social media. My third-generation American children wondered aloud why they don’t see ads touting the contributions of law-abiding, tax-paying immigrants, since our great nation was founded as and continues to be a country of, by, and for immigrants as well as their descendants.
Now that the day of voting is behind us, some people in our community begin to worry about their future. These are the thousands of refugee and migrant families that our state has accommodated under a right-to-shelter law. A large number of them were bussed here from the southern border states last year, and are still finding their ways in the new country.
The state converted a historic building in our neighborhood into a shelter for these families, and enrolled their…