Illegal immigration is humanitarian crisis

3/8/2016 12:58:00 AM
Illegal immigration is humanitarian crisis

The horrific reports coming out of Washington about unaccompanied immigrant children, as we report in today's paper, should underscore a very important but often overlooked point about illegal immigration: The injustices brought about by allowing illegal immigration to take place affect not just Americans but the immigrants themselves.

Liberals would have us believe that open borders help the impoverished escape to America, achieve the American Dream, and live happily ever after. Nothing could be further from the truth.

It's a nightmare from beginning to end.

First, the American government entices poor people from Mexico and Central America to make the trip by promising not to enforce laws of deportation. So here they come - with visions of riches and Hollywood floating in their heads - and often the nightmare begins before they ever get here.

People thirst to death on the journey. They starve to death. Women and children are captured and trafficked as slaves. They are beaten and murdered.

When they get here, the nightmare isn't over; it's just beginning. Children are housed in almost prison-styled dorms while they wait for "sponsors," and, as we report, the care is dubious and unverifiable.

The children also run into cultural barriers in addition to economic ones. Life is such a crisis that one out of two of them need mental-health services, and more often than not they don't qualify for such services and can't practically access them anyway.

For those who do find their way into the labor market, life doesn't suddenly become idyllic. After all, they are only here because big business wanted them here as part of a low-wage labor pool, so low wages is what they get.

And low wages is what they will continue to get.

Meanwhile, they strain the pocketbooks of their legal American hosts. In Wisconsin alone, one estimate puts the price tag to taxpayers at $697 million dollars, far outstripping any taxes paid or other fiscal contributions these people may make.

Like other welfare recipients, illegal immigrants become dependent for life, and illegitimate for life no matter their legal status, and they earn the ire of an increasingly divided culture.

Anyone who believes this anger and division is not real should just look at the election returns. Donald Trump's rise within the Republican Party is due in large part to the anger of Americans at illegal immigration and to the grave threats that immigration represents.

It's not the only reasons American voters are incensed at political insiders and want an outsider, but it is a huge concern of Americans who are afraid for their fiscal health and for their physical well-being.

It is amazing to us that the very people who wear the labels of human compassion and sympathy on their political shirtsleeves are the ones who promote what is in reality a humanitarian crisis of massive proportions.

The only humanitarian and compassionate political response is to secure the borders and return as many of the illegal population as possible to their home countries. That will reduce human trafficking and starvation; it will ensure that we do not allow the atrocities that afflict the illegal population to be perpetrated upon them on our soil.

That makes us complicit.

True, we cannot prevent poverty in Central America and in Mexico, and we must stand ready to help these nations develop their economies in any fiscally responsible way that we can.

But the first step in stopping poverty is to contain it. Allowing it to migrate to our soil not only does not eradicate that poverty, it exacerbates it and extends it to our own people. It becomes the red tide of the economic sea, and we willingly allow it to invade and sicken us.

That is an immoral option, and one we should never abide, not only for our own good but for the good of those who would become illegal immigrants. It is why voters are speaking so loudly in this critically important election year.

Theirs is the true voice of compassion, not of hatred, and we, as a nation, should listen closely.

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