The only good thing to come out of this past week’s series of horrific images of refugee children being taken away from their parents and caged by American immigration officials is that it’s shoved the situation in our faces in a way that is impossible to ignore. What may get lost in the moment is that the situation at the Mexican border is the tip of the iceberg – an iceberg that humanity’s ship is steaming for at full speed.
It’s public information, though not being paid much attention to, that immigration from Mexico by Mexican citizens has been on a steady decline, while immigration from refugees from Guatemala and points south who are using Mexico as a conduit to the US is on a steady increase, especially among those attempting illegal entry – slightly more than half at this point. The reasons are also public knowledge – unstable or corrupt governments, civil wars, massive unemployment, mass starvation or near-starvation, total breakdown of fragile infrastructures. People risk sending their children north unaccompanied at the risk of their getting caught, killed or sold into modern slavery for one reason – to give them a fighting chance to survive. At least in their cages, they’re eating.
Take the situation global - over 200 million people displaced by Middle Eastern and African civil wars, crashed economies and “disrupted food chains” looking for someplace to go. Europe is being flooded. Italy is getting heat from the rest of the E.U. for turning away a shipload of refugees. America isn’t the only bad guy this week - small comfort.
The real issue, the big picture, like it or not, is that the world is simply getting too small to sustain the human race or, to put it more correctly, we’re getting to big for it to keep feeding us. The developed world, who are using most of the planet’s resources (that would be us) have finally begun to level off their population growth. The rest of the world, especially the poorest, don’t have access to a drug store full of birth control options and couldn’t afford them if they did. They also don’t have access to a lot of things we take for granted, like toilets. If they did, the Ebola virus wouldn’t exist. We’ve got most of the food, they’ve got most of the people. Do the math.
What the situation at the Texas/Mexico border tells us is simply that there’s no way we can shut this situation out. And if Ebola solves somebody else’s population crisis, they’ll take us with them. There’s no wall high enough. The rest of the world isn’t going to sit there and starve while we check our Facebook pages. The entire human race will make it though this or none of us will.
Anyone who wants to fact check any of the above is free to use Google. Like I said, nobody’s trying to hide it. The answer isn’t in the stats and never will be. The answer is right in front of us, where it’s always been - in the part of the human soul that looks at a refugee child crying and sees their own son or daughter.
We’ve got a lot of work to do.
Take the situation global - over 200 million people displaced by Middle Eastern and African civil wars, crashed economies and “disrupted food chains” looking for someplace to go. Europe is being flooded. Italy is getting heat from the rest of the E.U. for turning away a shipload of refugees. America isn’t the only bad guy this week - small comfort.
The real issue, the big picture, like it or not, is that the world is simply getting too small to sustain the human race or, to put it more correctly, we’re getting to big for it to keep feeding us. The developed world, who are using most of the planet’s resources (that would be us) have finally begun to level off their population growth. The rest of the world, especially the poorest, don’t have access to a drug store full of birth control options and couldn’t afford them if they did. They also don’t have access to a lot of things we take for granted, like toilets. If they did, the Ebola virus wouldn’t exist. We’ve got most of the food, they’ve got most of the people. Do the math.
What the situation at the Texas/Mexico border tells us is simply that there’s no way we can shut this situation out. And if Ebola solves somebody else’s population crisis, they’ll take us with them. There’s no wall high enough. The rest of the world isn’t going to sit there and starve while we check our Facebook pages. The entire human race will make it though this or none of us will.
Anyone who wants to fact check any of the above is free to use Google. Like I said, nobody’s trying to hide it. The answer isn’t in the stats and never will be. The answer is right in front of us, where it’s always been - in the part of the human soul that looks at a refugee child crying and sees their own son or daughter.
We’ve got a lot of work to do.
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