by El Zorro Viejo (aka; Jim)

Recently, I have come across a couple of our current realities which make me almost have to believe in an afterlife where we get "what's coming to us"(i.e judgement by an all just God)There are people here who think that they are nice people, yet they have jobs which require them to do truly horrible things to other people. Take, for instance, this story (Warning: Link connects to NY Times which requires membership to read the article. Membership is free, and the Times doesn't send lots of advertising. End disclaimer) about Children Alone and Scared, Fighting Deportation. I was especially caught by the following:

Mr. Bentley, the spokesman for the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services in Washington, said employees were simply being diligent. "Where there is an age-out, we have no discretion," Mr. Bentley said, referring to cases in which applicants are rejected when they turn 21. "Is it unfortunate that some people are indeed caught up in that process? Yes. We empathize. At the same time, we can't apologize for that process."

This is all part of a larger problem, of course. America is seen as the "promised land" by billions of our fellow humans simply because where they live sucks. So I have a challenge for all those who would limit emigration (even though that's how their ancestors got here): let's work to make the rest of the world as nice a place to live as this country tries to be. Only let's do it as residents of the planet and not "Americans". That means making the UN the instrument of change. Only when we remove the gross political, economic, religious and social reasons for emigration will we reduce the flood tide of humanity clamoring to get into the US.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. ©El Zorro Viejo 2002-2005