02
Jul

Randy Alcorn: Illegal Immigration Has No Age Limit

Published on July 2nd, 2014

Randy Alcorn
June 22, 2014
As seen in:
Noozhawk

The latest complication in the smoldering, moldering, illegal immigration issue is the sudden swarms of mostly Central American children flooding over the southern U.S. border. They claim to be fleeing the homicidal violence of their native countries.

The latest complication in the smoldering, moldering, illegal immigration issue is the sudden swarms of mostly Central American children flooding over the southern U.S. border. They claim to be fleeing the homicidal violence of their native countries.

This migration of mendicant minors, already nearly 50,000, is expected to double soon. Some of these kids are hoping to reunite with relatives who are already in the United States — illegally. Others have been sent north by family members who fear for the kids’ safety, but just as likely want them to escape the grinding poverty in their troubled native lands.

The trek north to the United States is difficult and dangerous. Unaccompanied by adults, the migrating children can be easily robbed, raped and murdered by the human predators who stalk the Mexican passageways to the Promised Land. This is yet another tragic episode of dire poverty, social unrest and inhumanity that peppers the planet.

While the word “crisis” has been regularly inflated and certainly worn-out by overuse, nothing elicits greater compassion than the plight of deprived or mistreated children, and so some sympathetic Americans have labeled the plight of these juvenile trespassers a humanitarian crisis. Rather than just another wave of illegal immigrants, these children are being characterized as refugees who must be given asylum.

However, other Americans are growing increasingly fatigued and frustrated with being confronted with guilt over and obligation for so many of the world’s huddled masses. It seems that when Americans ask how much they should give, the answer is always more, more, more.

The United States is already suffering a variety of social and economic ills perpetrated by decades of incessant invasions by millions of illegal immigrants seeking to escape the miserable conditions in their own countries. Giving them welfare benefits, education, health care and even amnesty is never enough, because as long as the nations from which they are fleeing do not address their own problems, there will be more, more, more seeking continued charity from the United States.

The growing U.S. national debt is now a staggering $17 trillion as the nation struggles to care for its own citizens, including its military veterans. The United States has a persistent unemployment and underemployment problem, a crumbling infrastructure, a subpar public education system, a declining middle class and a horde of homeless citizens. The overburdened ship of state is already lumbering low on the water line, yet there are those scolding us that we cannot neglect the growing numbers of needy foreign waifs clamoring to come on board.

There are those who feel guilty about the random fortune of being born an American citizen with opportunities for a level of affluence that the vagaries of chance have denied others. But no one should feel guilty about a providential accident of birth over which they had no influence. While sharing one’s good fortune with the less fortunate is commendable, it does not obligate one to unlimited generosity, especially to those who continually choose to aggravate their unfortunate conditions.

If your neighbors have more children than they can feed and shelter, having their kids move in with you will not make your neighbors any less irresponsible. It will not compel them to address the reality of their limited resources or their reckless over-breeding. It will, however, make their problems yours. That is essentially what Mexico and some Central American countries have been doing for decades now — shifting their economic and population problems onto the United States.

To the extent that illegal immigration by children is due to the savage violence suffered in Mexico and Central America in the futile, insane War on Drugs, the United States bears responsibility. However, the conditions of having more population than a nation can support forces that population to survive by whatever means available. People enlisting into the vicious cartels of the illegal drugs trade typically have few if any alternatives.

Overpopulation anywhere in the world breeds poverty, crime, corruption and human misery. Offloading excess population onto America will not solve that problem. But, because for so long official America has been conveniently negligent in enforcing the nation’s immigration laws — so that various greedy Americans can gorge on cheap labor — the United States now suffers chronic negative consequences from a huge problem of its own making.

Illegal immigration has become a contentious national issue that seems to defy resolution only because venal politics, greed and emotion have obstructed objective reason and the rule of law. It is a problem that has lingered far too long. Every home has its capacity limits, and America has had enough of illegal immigration. The United States simply cannot house the world’s teeming masses of impoverished and war-plagued peoples. Illegal immigrants of any age must be sent back to their own homes.

— Randy Alcorn is a Santa Barbara political observer. Contact him at [email protected], or click here to read previous columns. The opinions expressed are his own.

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