Two posts by a former Facebook friend of my wife’s caught her attention this evening. I was up in bed reading and about to fall asleep, when Megan came upstairs hopping mad. What she had to say was interesting and important enough that I thought I should share it all with you:
Megan wrote…
It is interesting that you “liked” “don’t judge…you never know what a person’s story is…leave that up to God,” and then you put this up. I feel for this woman and all of the other women, men and children that live in a place we can not even comprehend. I would do everything in my power for my child and I not to be sent back to a horrific situation. If I ever even began to have a rotten attitude about an immigrant, illegal or not, I would quickly ask myself if I would live in the country they are so desperately trying to escape. I guarantee that answer would be “NO”. Do I have the answer for how the US should handle illegal immigrants and the financial issues that come along with the situation? No. But I do know that if God were to one day ask me how I treated people who were trying to come into a free, blessed, wealthy country only to leave a country of heartache, poverty and dead-ends, I would want to be able to say that I showed sympathy and did not turn them away.
Bill Torgerson 
2 responses to “Mrs. T Sounds off on Immigration”
Christ’s words inspire us to lift consciousness and render love into action to the greatest extent possible, but do not require us to abolish our rights to our own bodies and selves. Put another way, someone else’s suffering does not entitle them to drain away your life; compassion should not be self-immolation.
Luckily for humanity, the founding fathers of the United States set up a system of government and economy that would promote something better than such a zero-sum game. And they succeeded in spectacular fashion, as their institutions and philosophy as rooted in the English Enlightenment period created the fertile ground for the richest, free-est, and most powerful nation on Earth to rise up and defend free peoples everywhere from tyranny.
It is this beacon of freedom, our government of, by, and for the people, and our culture of opportunity based on self-reliance and anglo-saxon ethics, that attracts people from all over the world to come and make a life here.
For most of the nation’s history, the myth of ethnic diversity has been just that: a myth. Assimilation has been ruthless and effective, and has preserved the unique brand of culture and philosophy that buttresses our great success. Though there are ethnic flavors in the tapestry of America, they are transmogrified into trace elements of mild potency.
In this way, our nation renews itself, without losing itself.
No nation – not even the United States of America – can survive a balkanization of its people. Without a unifying philosophy, a unifying language, a unifying set of principles and ideals, a nation will depart the renaissance, enter the baroque, and then finally lose all form as its fissures and fractures are left untended by a population unable to even know whether its body is blighted.
Which brings us to the present moment in America. The accommodation, for myriad reasons, first of three million illegals from Mexico granted amnesty in 1986, and now 12 – 20 million illegals of the same provenance, has been an abandonment of American heritage and an abandonment of the American ideal.
This non-assimilating population came here through illegal means and without regard to our sovereignty and with no intention whatsoever of being anglicized as have all previous (legal) immigrant groups. Therefore their presence here must be resisted and ultimately ended, and any notion that this is not possible is a lie.
Our nation has been and remains the last best hope of Earth, and we must preserve and defend it so that free peoples the world over may always live in the secure knowledge that the greatest nation to ever grace the face of the Earth will remain the sword and shield of freedom down through the ages of man.
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I’m with you on what you describe as a “zero sum game.” I told my wife this morning that if I was a doctor and there was an endless line of women who needed my help to give birth to their child, it does seem at some point I would have to walk away. There would be a time when I would want to see my family and spend time with my own children. There is a point when helping others erases the life that is helping and then everyone is left with no help. I can see that some of those features of helping would be true for the United States. I think this also connects to your idea of loving, in the form of helping, to the greatest extent possible.
As for your observation that the United States contains “ethnic flavors” in its tapestry, I think that you live in a far different United States that I experience each day. In the classrooms I inhabit, diversity is one of its greatest strengths, and I believe that this is also one of the greatest strengths of the United States that can be developed.
I do think our current economic situation–especially related to health care–is unsustainable, and I’m very glad that you’ve taken so much time to comment here and participate in the conversation. As more and more people do so, I feel confident that I’ll learn a lot and find my way into a more sophisticated understanding of the situation.
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