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| A caravan of illegal immigrants coming to America in 2018 (The Atlantic) |
They are mostly running away from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador in order to escape the constant violence they experience there. In most cases all they want is the ability to live without the constant fear of indiscriminate violence and/or death. Especially for their young children.
The parental instinct to protect their children is very strong. Often so strong that parents are willing to part with their children order to save them. Even if it means sending them to an uncertain future in a foreign land – nevertheless believing they will be better off.
This is what’s happening now. Many of these would be migrants are sending or even smuggling their children into the US despite the horrid condition they might at first encounter. for them it is still an improvement over what they were escaping. It’s difficult to watch a parent explain this to a reporter in the mainstream media.
As a child of Holocaust survivors their story resonates with me. We are no strangers to the phenomenon of trying to escape life threatening danger in our country of origin. In May 1939 - shortly before the outbreak of World War II before the impact of the Holocaust was fully realized the following incident happened. A ship named the St. Louis left Germany with 937 passengers, almost all of whom were Jewish. The US denied them entry. They returned to Europe where 254 of them ended up dying in the Holocaust!
Nor are we strangers to separating with our children in order to save them. That is what the Kindertransport was about. 9 months before the war, a humanitarian effort in the UK was created that eventually saved 10,000 children who escaped by train from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia - to England. Their parents willingly gave them up to save them from the looming fate. One those parents eventually realized.
Now it’s true that the current illegal aliens streaming across our Southern border are nowhere near suffering what the Jews of Europe suffered during the Holocaust. There are no concentration camps or death camps in their home countries. But how much danger must there be before we exercise compassion for people that are literally running for their lives? Can we morally lock them out? I keep thinking about the inability of so many of our brethren perishing because the US locked them out.
The obvious problem is that we can’t just open up our borders and let everyone in. That would create a humanitarian crisis of epic proportion. One that we are experiencing now at a far lower level. The evening news is filled with images of young children crowded into cages sleeping with aluminum foil blankets.
This crisis is not a partisan issue despite attempts by both Democrats and Republicans to blame each other for it. It is a humanitarian issue. And yet neither the former President nor the current one wants to open up the borders. They both want to stop the flow.
The only difference is in how they have each gone about it. The previous administration used inhumane tactics to discourage migrants from coming in. As disgusting and unacceptable as they were, they worked. Illegal crossings were sharply reduced. The current administrations more compassionate approach has projected a welcoming attitude to them. That spurred the current unprecedented surge. Many young children are crossing the border alone. Making it difficult if not impossible to return them to their parents.
The question is, what do we do? What CAN we do? Is locking desperate people out - who in many cases running for their lives - the answer? I don’t think so.
The real solution is for the people living in those South American countries to fix the problems. Surely the chaos, criminality, violence and virtual anarchy that exists there should be fought by their own people. There has to be a way for them to do that. There has to be a way for the good guys to win. And there ought to be a way we can help them do it. Until then I think we must do what we can to help the people escaping the violence in those coutries survive.
There is a lesson we can learn from all this. Which is the reason that these migrants are by-passing Mexico. They want to live here. People that constantly complain how terrible things are here should realize that despite our flaws we live in a wonderful country. And we should be grateful for that. Because for illegal aliens - that’s why they’re coming to America.
