Salvation Army Changes Its View On Immigrant Children

I have to admit that I was horrified to see the article in the Houston Chronicle the other day that detailed how several charities, including the Salvation Army, were checking the immigration status of poor parents before giving them some christmas presents for their children. These "charities" had decided that the children of undocumented immigrants don't deserve to have a nice christmas with a present.

Obviously, the grinch is living in Houston now and is in charge of some of the city's "charities" (I put that word in quotes because I don't think these organizations are living up to the spirit and meaning of the word -- or the season). The excuses for this inexcusable behavior ranged from a shortage of toys to needing a social security number to prevent fraud.

I'm not buying those excuses. The excuses sound like thinly veiled reasons to exhibit racist and political behavior -- the kind of behavior that charities are supposed to be above. By the way, don't a lot of these toys come from the U.S. Marines' Toys for Tots program? Guess what. The Marines have quite a few undocumented immigrants in their ranks, and in fact, one of the first Marines killed in Iraq was an undocumented immigrant. What would he have thought of this policy?

Fortunately, there are good people in this world. After hearing about this, a few dozen demonstrators picketed the Salvation Army in Los Angeles. I haven't heard of any, but I hope there was some picketing going on in Houston also. And it worked.

The Salvation Army has now reversed its decision to require a social security number to get any toys for children. They have decided to stop discriminating against poor brown children (even though they continue to discriminate against gays and lesbians).

I'd like to think the Salvation Army did this out of the goodness of their hearts, but I suspect they just couldn't stand the bad publicity during the season when they get the majority of their cash donations (see picture above).