Recently, I volunteered at a church for a charity called Compassion International. I took children from the church’s school through an exhibit called the Compassion Journey. They watched a video of a man telling them about a 10 year old boy named Jack from Kenya, Africa. We saw a table with an example of his diet,a cake of grain just a little bigger than a half dollar, which he only had once a day and this only two or three times a week. Next we went into a tent which symbolized the grass roofed hut Jack and his family lived and slept in. All they had inside was a few cooking pots and a mat to sleep on the dirt ground. We learned how unsafe Jack felt with no doors or locks to keep robbers or wild animals out. Jacks mom died of breast cancer, and he was left to take care of his younger siblings in the midst of his grief. You see his dad rarely came around at all much less helped the family in any way. It was hard for the students to imagine how Jack coped with all of these burdens at such a young age.  Jack would surely be considered a victim, but before his mom died, she gave him and her other children hope by enrolling them in a Compassion International program.

I am sharing this story because I am an advocate for building a wall on the southern border of the U.S. but have been struggling with how to help the poor that will be kept from coming into America illegally. Participating in the Compassion Journey reminded me that charity does provide one solution. There are reasons why open borders are not the answer.

Every one who has an apartment or house locks the doors at night or even during the day. We naturally screen people before we let them in. This has nothing to do with racism. Most would certainly feel threatened by a stranger coming on their property and through their front door uninvited. We would consider this trespassing no matter who they are. It is understandable that everyone would want to keep others with infectious diseases or criminals out of their homes. Not having a wall on the border is like letting these people into our homes. The amount of illegal crossings is not a manufactured crisis. I have seen interviews with border patrol agents who deal with this everyday and confirm that tens of thousands, some of them criminals, overwhelm the border every day. And this doesn’t include the many who sneak into the country without being detected. Thousands of crimes have been documented as being committed by illegal immigrants. You can check out what has happened in Texas over the last few years, for example. I have seen interviews with parents whose kids have been murdered by immigrants who should have never been here in the first place. I’ve heard some commentators say that illegal immigrants commit less crimes than legal immigrants or U.S. citizens do. I tend to doubt this is true, but even if it is, what are they trying to say? That it is okay to let them in to commit crimes or not deport them when they do? Just one crime that could have been prevented by a wall or revised immigration policy is one too many.

The flood of legal and illegal immigrants pouring into the U.S. in the last 40 years has put a serious strain on our education system. Per a February 2019 article by Christopher J. Daly, of the Negative Population Growth Organization called “The Impact of Immigrant Children on Americas Public Schools,” many schools are now so over-crowded with legal and illegal immigrants that very stressful learning environments have been created for both students and teachers. Average school enrollment for immigrant children has risen from under 10% in 1980 to 25% to 40% today. The federal government is not giving the resources needed to educate these students. The money has to come from state and local budgets that are already in the red. Resources for all students, whether citizens or not, are in short supply, including teachers. How can they really teach when there are several different languages other than English being spoken at once. And teachers as well as students have to deal with unfamiliar cultures in the classroom. This overcrowding makes it harder for everyone to learn.

Many illegal immigrants end up living in poverty in our country. Most employers that offer manual labor and low skilled jobs want to employ these people because they are willing to work for less than minimum wage. Employers also don’t have to provide benefits and are not charged payroll taxes for these workers. Actually, they are being taken advantaged of by these companies. I have heard some politicians quote from the words on the Statue of Liberty that mention we should take in the poor, but this does not mean they should stay that way. Not all, but most of the people who immigrated to America in the past were able to eventually elevate themselves financially into the middle class or higher, even when they started with nothing. This is the real American dream, not to depend on government assistance.

According to an article by Wayne Allyn Root of the Las Vegas Review-Journal from 4/7/2018 entitled “Illegal Immigrants Have Turned California into the American Nightmare,” this state as the highest poverty rate in the U.S. Much of this has to do with the 10 million or more legal and illegal immigrants living there. One third of the nations welfare payments go to California. Twenty-two percent of the nation’s homeless population live there. How could this not be when a lot of people outside of Silicon valley do not work or have a job that pays a living wage.

Paying the medical costs of the uninsured, which include illegal immigrants, is becoming unsustainable for the American Taxpayer according to Rob Tenery, M.D. from a Lifezette.com article  entitled “What Illegal Immigrants Cost Our HealthCare System,”. The article written in 2016 states that these medical costs totaled $4.3 billion per year for emergency room and free clinic visits. Many more billions of unpaid charges were incurred from impatient care. Who knows what these costs are today?

So what do we do about these issues? This brings me back to Jack and Compassion International. Their mission is to get kids out of poverty. People pay only $38.00 a month to sponsor a child. But this small amount covers food, education, medical care, clothing, and other necessities. Most importantly, they are taught about Jesus. It is a wonder how they do so much for so little, but probably a big reason is that the children stay in their home countries where the standard of living is much cheaper. It also helps that they don’t have to learn a new language or adapt to a new culture either. They probably don’t get most of the extras that we in the U.S. take for granted. But I could tell by listening to Jack and others in the program that they don’t care. They are just so grateful for what they receive instead of being jealous of what they don’t. Knowing Jesus helps them be grateful and content. He gives them encouragement and hope to pursue their God given talents in order to lift themselves out of poverty. They don’t have to just settle for a low wage job in a different country of abundance. For instance, Jack went on to college and now has a degree in Information Technology. He can seek to come to America or stay in his own country to help its economy. I sponsor a 14 year old boy. It is my way to hopefully help him stay out of a gang and live a prosperous life. Maybe Compassion could expand its reach to whole families and other adults. Let’s pray for a solution through the church and charity.