Migrants

Every week during the Trump administration, thousands of dehydrated, exhausted people showed up at our borders, trying to enter the United States. They were hungry, thirsty, homeless, desperate, tired, and poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse, as it were, of war-torn Central America's teeming shores.

Also during that time, the Bahamas were essentially destroyed by Hurricane Dorian. The people there had no food, no water, no electricity, no homes, no public buildings, no governmental or civil infrastructure. They did, however, have access to American ships that could take them to the nearest refuge, the United States of America. Unfortunately for them, only those with "totally proper paperwork" were allowed to make the trip. The fact that most such records and their repositories had been totally blown away seems not to have made any difference.

The fact is, we invited all of them here. The invitation has stood cast in bronze on Liberty Island in New York Harbor since before any of them were even born. All of them had come a long way, often over a thousand miles, on foot, with nothing more than the clothes on their backs and what they could carry, which were often their babies. Just by showing up to the "Golden Door" which is the United States of America, they proved that they were strong and determined enough to work for a living. We can use them all, and they had nowhere else to go.

Like groups of other Americans, some of them were children. Some of them were criminals and outlaws. Some of them were turned away. Some of them were allowed in temporarily, and then sent away. Some of them were able to sneak in. Some of them were put in overcrowded cages. Some of them were separated from their loved ones. Some of them were sick or dying, or in need of basic sanitation. Some of them didn't get what they desperately needed. As a result, some of them died!

They were refused legal entry by people lucky enough to have been born here who claimed that they didn't do enough in their home countries or that they were murderers or rapists, or that they couldn't or didn't want to work, or that they were looking for a handout, or that they were the wrong religion or the wrong color or the wrong nationality, or that they spoke the wrong native language.

One of these was a man who preferred to spend taxpayer money on military displays and parades and fireworks and bleachers at the Lincoln Memorial. That money could have bought food and bottled water and medicine and sleeping cots and changes of clothing and clean diapers and soap and toothbrushes and real blankets for people who had none of these things.

With a stroke of his pen, this man could have let these destitute people in and given them and their children a chance at a new life. He could have found them needed jobs and helped them to become good citizens and productive taxpayers. He personally had more wealth than all of them together, so rich that he owned a home with golden toilets that he didn't even use because he was living in free taxpayer-furnished housing!

Hopefully, things are changing for the better!

This is what Jesus had to say about it:

Matthew 25:31-45

John Lindorfer