Transcript Essential Questions

Essential Questions:
Who belongs in America?
Who does not belong?
Who decides?
What responsibility do we have for others?
Children at the Border - NYTimes
August 7, 2014.
By HAEYOUN PARK UPDATED August 7, 2014
Nearly 63,000 children have been caught crossing the
United States border alone since October — double last
year’s number. President Obama has called the surge an
“urgent humanitarian situation,” and lawmakers have
called for hearings on the crisis.
Click here to read the entire article.
How might Sacks’ parables
of immigration by applied to
understand the situation of
the unaccompanied minors?
To Do:
Watch: Governor Deval Patrick’s Sheltering of
Unaccompanied Children Press Conference 7/18/14. You
don’t need to watch all the responses afterwards, but make
sure you watch Rabbi Bill Hamilton (skip ahead to 15:54)
● Record 3-2-1:
o 3 facts about the situation
o 2 key quotes.
o 1 question you want to ask
Sheltering of Unaccompanied Children
Press Conference 7/18/14
Sheltering of Unaccompanied Children
Governor Patrick Press Conference 7/18/14
Air - Pair - Share:
1. Everyone will read 1 quote they recorded.
2. Partner share of responses with a partner.
What did you notice that was similar or
different?
3. Class discussion.
“My faith teaches that if a stranger dwells in
your land, you shall not mistreat him, but rather
love him as yourself, for you were a stranger in
Egypt.”
Gov. Deval Patrick
Rabbi Bill Hamilton, Kehillat Israel
starts at 15:54
Journal entry: “Children at the Border”
If you were the rabbi, or other ‘person of faith’
who had the opportunity the respond after
Patrick’s speech, what would you say?
“My inclination is to remember what happened when a
shipful of Jewish children tried to come to the United States
in 1939 and the United States turned them away, and many
of them went to their deaths in Nazi concentration camps. I
think we are a bigger-hearted people than that as
Americans, and certainly as residents of Massachusetts.”
Gov. Deval Patrick
The Scenario
Ms. Rose Herrmann, a U.S. citizen and granddaughter of two
passengers on the ship MS St. Louis, has brought to the Jewish
Court of All Time (JCAT) a claim against the government of the
United States seeking reparations as recompense for the decision
by the United States government not to offer safe harbor to the
937 passengers who were aboard the ship when it entered
American waters in June of 1939.
In her suit, Ms. Herrmann, seeks:
●
a formal apology from the government of the United States
●
$75 million to be put into a fund (to “address the threats to humankind of the 21st
century”) to be administered by agents appointed by heirs of the passengers.
Officers of JCAT have agreed to gather great figures from across human history to
hear Ms. Herrmann’s case.