Open Borders: Is This What Compassion Looks Like?

We’ve all known, or at least heard about, those amazing, compassionate, selfless families who open their homes to foster children.  These families offer a new start, sometimes a whole new life, to these precious children who’ve endured horrible beginnings. They truly make the world a better place.

Now imagine what would happen if CPS decided these families should be required to take in more and more children.  The families would no doubt do all they could, but wouldn’t they eventually exhaust their resources, diminishing their capacity to provide for the needs of their growing families?  How many beds could be squeezed into a house built for one family before the growing number of inhabitants were living in unhealthy and unsanitary conditions?  And, what if, among the new foster children, some needed special care, putting additional strain on family finances or stability? Or, what if these families were forced to take in children who were abusive to the other children?  Chaos would ensue. Poverty would befall the household.  Not only would the family be incapable of properly caring for its growing number of foster children, but it would have been stripped of the ability to take care of its own.  

A foster care system like this would make no logical sense. But this is what Americans are required to do every day by our current administration, as it forcefully advances a policy of open borders.  Americans, like benevolent foster parents, have always embraced the opportunity to receive and to help those who are suffering. Our very laws are designed to give those experiencing political or religious persecution an escape from abuse.  But our current administration is opening our borders to essentially anyone who wants to enter, and for virtually any reason.  Compassion, we are told, requires that we accept all who come, with very few exceptions.  But this is a fallacy.  This approach not only threatens the well-being of our citizens, but also of the very people seeking entry.  Many innocent and vulnerable migrants crossing our borders are being victimized in the process.  Consider, for example, the following: 

• Research has indicated that 1 in 3 women is sexually assaulted and up to 80% of young girls are raped on the journey across the southern border. 
• 11,000 to 15,000 unaccompanied minors are currently being held in abhorrent conditions, with up to 80 people in each 24- x 30-foot cell (approximately 9 square feet per person). There are not enough beds in these holding cells, which are separated by plastic or fabric.  It is reported that the smell of urine and vomit is overpowering, that fights break out, and that scabies, lice, the flu, and COVID-19 run rampant. 
• Sexual assaults, according to at least one border patrol agent, go unreported, as the agents (who are working in ratios of 1 to 2 agents for every 300 to 500 immigrants) are overwhelmed, outnumbered, and fear being held responsible for what happens during their shifts. Adults and teenagers, according to this agent, will brag of raping multiple girls and even kicking them off the train that is transporting them to the U.S.
• Children under the age of 5 regularly arrive without any adults, carrying a written address, giving our agents no other viable option but to deliver these children into the U.S.to the addresses provided. (Understand, we’re dealing with different cultures, some of which are willing to send very young children alone, despite knowing the realities of what they may endure.)
• Family units are given priority treatment, which provides an incentive to kidnap children (and for impoverished and desperate families from some cultures to “sell” children) for the journey across the border, and even to “recycle” the children for others who need them in order to more easily cross the border.

As for the effect on Americans, including legal immigrants, the toll is immense:

• Unlimited numbers of migrants are being allowed entry without COVID-19 testing, even while Americans are suffering economic and other hardship due to extreme lockdown measures intended to eradicate or control the virus. 
• Over 80 million of our tax dollars (and counting!) are earmarked for hotels to accommodate the mass numbers of illegal immigrants, while half a million citizens are homeless on our own streets, and while we have required our own National Guard to sleep in a parking lot (refer to incident at U.S. Capitol in January). Note that American citizens will pay approximately $72,000 per illegal immigrant over 6 months under this new policy.
• Last month 100,000 illegal immigrants arrived at the border, for whom mass amnesty will alter the demographics of our country at a level never yet experienced.  This will, among other things, diminish citizens’ voting power (particularly for minority voting blocs in swing states), increase competition for jobs, reduce wages, raise the costs of medical care, affect teacher-student ratios, and increase numbers in poverty, leading to more drug use and criminal activity—all during an already existing economic and political crisis.

The reality is that wide-open borders are harmful to everyone. We, as a people, need to understand and embrace the concept that, before we can care for an unlimited number of “foster children” arriving in our country, we need to have our own house and our own budget in order, making sure our own “family” is healthy and strong.  

Scripture tells us that “[T]hose who won’t care for their relatives, especially those in their own household, have denied the truth faith.”  (1 Tim. 5:8a) Even believers are required to care for their own relatives rather than relying on the church. The rationale is that this protects the health of the church and, thus, its ability to care for others who truly need it and have no other options. (See 1 Tim. 5:16.) This response does not lack compassion. Just the opposite: It expands its reach.

Our government has drifted from this model at an increasingly rapid pace, heavily relying on loans and other resources from other countries, willingly undertaking excessive and debilitating debt.  In fact, many believe America is on the brink of financial disaster or worse. Without sufficient resources to care properly for our own citizens, we are simply incapable of properly caring for others, much less, an unlimited number of others.  

A truly compassionate response to the border crisis requires that we position ourselves to help the greatest number of people with the greatest needs.  This means we must get our own house in order, and we must require our elected officials to enact (and enforce!) sensible immigration laws designed to identify those who truly need our help, turn away or deport those who do not, or who do harm, and eliminate incentives to exploit the system. From this position of strength and stability, we will be able to share our home and our resources with those who come here with a genuine need for refuge.