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Governor Deval Patrick said Wednesday he was trying to find ways for Massachusetts to host immigrant children who recently crossed the US Southwest border illegally, responding to urgent requests from the Obama administration to find places to house them.
Patrick said his immediate challenge was identifying suitable locations, and he emphasized that the federal government would foot costs of housing the children, most of whom have left Central American countries. Estimates on how many youngsters Massachusetts could be asked to shelter, he said, had not yet been determined.
Deval Patrick has decided to be front and center on this issue. I don't like illegal immigration any more than the next guy, but at the same time, America is not a barbarian nation. These are children, for Christ's sake, who have fled a nation where 1 out of every 13 children is murdered before he or she turns 18, and who generally live in constant fear for their lives. These kids should be considered refugees, and in that light, America has always had a tradition of taking in refugees, from Cambodians who fled Pol Pot all the way back to the Irish, when the came here to escape starving to death. The only time America has ever turned refugees away was in 1939, when we turned the a ship called the St. Louis away, which was carrying Jewish refugees, most of which died in the Holocaust after they were deported back to Germany. This we should never forget, and should be the light that guides us to do the right thing, as we have almost always done.
Again, we are not a nation of barbarians, so I applaud the leadership of Governor Patrick on this issue. However, I also applaud Governor Rick Perry here in Texas for sending the National Guard to the border. While the reason Perry is sending troops to the border is obvious, this can also be considered a humanitarian move in that kids won't be dying attempting to cross the wasteland.
It's all about balance, folks. Not everyone who enters the US is coming to take our jobs. Some come here so they can just stay alive. And in that vein, I would never turn away a child. Those who do, and profess to believe in a just God, should realize that justice just might be waiting for them in the afterlife as well. Jesus' quote of "suffer the little children" did not mean that it was OK to make them suffer, but to do as Jesus himself would have done. But some Bible thumping hypocrites just don't get that, and never will until it is too late and they are themselves judged, when all of us, both great and small, stand before God, and are asked to account for what we did during our short stay on this planet. Some will wake to eternal life, others to eternal shame.
Article is here.
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