I was reading an interesting article in the newspaper on Sunday. It was about a woman from another country, who is now living in Minnesota, who was taking another woman to court to prove that this other woman used Voodoo to lure her husband away from her.
How do you prove that someone used Voodoo on you?
Is our court system prepared to take on things like this?
These sort of things are commonplace in several other countries. In Jamaica, they have what is called "Family Court". This is a secondary court system that deals with all of the problems that people have with each other. As with everything else in Jamaica, it is a first come first served basis. So on the days that the local family courts are being held you will see people lining up from 5am to be among the first to be helped. There are hundreds of people in line by the time the doors open up. They usually end up being there all day. There is a judge who makes decisions between people who have grievances with each other similar to what takes place in the Old Testament. I think we would be wise to begin something like this for all of the immigrants who have come here and now call the USA home.
What do you think?
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I'm pretty sure the other woman was using something other than Voodoo to lure the husband away :) But hey: call it whatever you want, right?
ReplyDeleteBut people in 3rd world countries believe in Voodoo and lots of other things and they believe their issues are valid. If we have these people living in this country we need to be prepared to help them deal with these sort of things.
ReplyDeleteAt the risk of sounding like a total asshole, I'll just say this:
ReplyDeleteWhen you go to Ukraine, for instance, you assimilate. You still retain your North American (or whatever) ideologies, beliefs, and ideals, but you expect to be held accountable to Ukrainian laws and standards--not United States laws and standards. While I agree that we should "be prepared to help [these people with other beliefs] deal with these sort of things," we should not and CANNOT accomodate every inevitable nuanced opinion of the way the world works--especially, as in this case, in our judicial system.
YEAH! You do not sound like anything, this is just a good debate.
ReplyDeleteThe article went on to say that there is an attorney who is helping these people find attorneys to help them (most of these cases are pro se). So these people will continue to solve their problems within our Federal Judicial system. (to me it seems crazy that they would not create some form of lower court system for these type of things rather than tie up time in our already overcroweded system)
We as a country have opened our doors to masses of people who have attained political assylum from their countries, and they come here and live in close proximity to each other. They in essence, create their own "country" right here. Since they are living within the same area, they still hold all of their culture/language etc. They also have their own cultural laws that they live by because they have brought with them. If they are caught breaking one of our laws, then they find themselves within our system.
Since we as a country have opened our doors to these masses will need to be prepared for the issues that will come with all of the people we are allowing in.