Can Denver live up to its reputation of being a ‘sanctuary city’?
The city’s response to migrant ‘surges’ endangers both newcomers and its long-standing unhoused population.
Raksha Vasudevan
PERSPECTIVEMay 22, 2023
Some years ago, when I was an aid worker, I lived in Uganda, a landlocked country in East Africa. On paper, the nation was decidedly poor, with an average annual income of only $884 per person. Still, it showed surprising generosity towards those in need, including people who were not technically its own. Refugees in Uganda not only had the right to work, they were given plots of land to live on and farm. In my first month there, I met a Rwandan refugee; I don’t remember her name, but I do remember her dress was the color of a freshly cracked yolk. We stood on her small farm in the shadow of the Kiyebe Mountains, surrounded by rows of onion, corn, heads of cabbage. The 1994 genocide had laid waste to her life, but Uganda’s asylum policies made it possible for her to grow something from the wreckage — something humble, but nourishing nonetheless.
Maybe it comes as no surprise that this small sub-Saharan nation treats its migrants better than America does — though it hasn’t always been that way, nor is it that way across the entire country. As media coverage focuses on migrant detention and deportation, it’s easy to overlook other news: California, for example, has become the first state to make Medicaid available to all low-income residents, including undocumented folks. Colorado, the state I now call home, has passed multiple bills restricting how its agencies, including police, cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcment (ICE). As an immigrant twice over — from India to Canada as a child, Canada to Uganda as an adult, and Uganda to America as a slightly older adult — I felt proud to call Denver my home when those bills passed. But times have changed.
https://www.hcn.org/articles/ideas-immigration-can-denver-live-up-to-its-reputation-of-being-a-sanctuary-city
