Immigration & the Cost of Compassion: Guest MINDSETTER™ Girouard
Monday, November 19, 2018
I have been reading the headlines of late regarding multiple caravans, representing thousands of undocumented immigrants, heading toward our southern border through Mexico, and it raises a great concern.
There is no doubt that many of these immigrants seek a better life for themselves and their families. That said, is there a point when too many is too much?
The Constitution, created nearly 250 years ago, remains one of the most venerable documents in the history of mankind. Our Founding Fathers risked their lives and fortunes by fleeing England in order to form a new nation, thereby declaring war on their mother country. Why would these prominent citizens flee their homeland emboldened with such a noble vision? Simply put, to escape tyranny.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTBenjamin Franklin delivered a speech at the close of the constitutional convention on September 17, 1787, where he stated in part:
“..... when you assemble a number of men to have the advantage of their joint wisdom, you inevitably assemble with those men, all their prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, their local interests, and their selfish views.
From such an assembly can a perfect production be expected?
It, therefore, astonishes me, Sir, to find this system approaching so near to perfection as it does; and I think it will astonish our enemies, who are waiting with confidence to hear that our councils are confounded like those of the Builders of Babel; and that our States are on the point of separation, only to meet hereafter for the purpose of cutting one another's throats .....”
Franklin, when queried about the kind of government that had been created as he left the convention in 1787, simply stated - “A republic, if you can keep it.”
While their wisdom still resonates strongly today, I fear that our republic and the personal freedoms associated with it are being severely threatened. One cannot look at immigration as a stand-alone issue, mutually exclusive from the whole. I am reminded of New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina when the levies were breached. The water poured into the below sea level city, and one thing you knew for sure was that this was not going to be good.
The Statue of Liberty presents Emma Lazarus’ sonnet, which states in part:
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
This does not, and can never, mean that immigrants can flood into our country unchecked. If the lifeboat is overcrowded, it will sink. As much compassion as we might have for those that are suffering around the world, if we do not have jobs for them, they will become the economic responsibility of all of us that pay taxes by default. Again, how many is too many?
Even void of the significant immigration numbers which these caravans represent, our country’s ability to sustain her economy has been challenged over the last 20-30 years. As we lose much of our manufacturing base, become more dependent on foreign oil, and threaten many of our small farms, our overall value-added job sectors are becoming compromised.
Whether you like Trump or abhor him, his policies on manufacturing (tariffs and regulations), energy independence (coal, gas and oil), and farming (to protect the small farms) has started to rejuvenate our economy, resulting in the creation of many new jobs. With unemployment now at historic lows there seems to be opportunities for some additional immigrants to fill some job voids, along with our own black and Hispanic communities.
That said, it is not possible to take care of a high volume of immigrants unless we are ready to put most to work. If not, they become “wards of the state”, and the price of compassion goes way up, resulting in an economic model that is clearly not sustainable. Compassion must have its limits regarding the level of immigration our country brings into her bosom.
When I bring up compassion, many chastise this administration regarding its policy of separating families, or children from accompanying adults, at the border. The fact that this has been a practice by past administrations does not deter detractors from saying “how can they have so little compassion?” regarding the “huddled masses yearning to breathe free”.
I do not know any of my friends, or associates, that are against immigration, but it all comes down to a matter of scale. There is most certainly a high monetary price to pay for unbridled immigration which, if left without limits, will bring our economy to its knees.
Also, a country with no borders is not a country, and the vision of “a republic, if you can keep it” will vanish from this earth, and along with it, the freedoms envisioned by our Founding Fathers, as outlined in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
Our country must protect her physical borders. To not do so represents a cost that goes way beyond any monetary measures. It represents a huge risk to the very preservation of the “republic for which it stands”, and hence, the future lives of our children, grandchildren, and beyond!
It threatens the very soul of our country -- freedom! That is a cost that you cannot bounce back from!
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