Illegal Immigration has no Age Limit

By Randy Alcorn
June 20, 2014

The latest complication in the smoldering, moldering, illegal immigration issue is the swarms of mostly Central American children suddenly showing up at and crossing the U.S. southern border. They claim to be fleeing the homicidal violence of their native countries. This migration of mendicant minors, already nearly 50,000, is expected to double by 2015. Some of these kids are hoping to reunite with relatives who are already in the U.S.—illegally. Others have been sent north by family members who fear for the kids’ safety, but just as likely want them to escape the grinding poverty in their troubled native lands.

The trek north to the U.S. is reportedly difficult and dangerous. Unaccompanied by adults, the migrating children can be easily robbed, raped, and murdered by the human predators who stalk the Mexican passageways to the Promised Land. This is yet another tragic episode of dire poverty, social unrest, and inhumanity that peppers the planet. 

While the word “crisis” has been regularly inflated and certainly worn-out by over use, nothing elicits greater compassion than the plight of deprived or mistreated children, and so some sympathetic Americans have labeled the plight of these juvenile trespassers a humanitarian crisis. Rather than just another wave of illegal immigrants, these children are being characterized as refugees who must be given asylum.

However, other Americans are growing increasingly fatigued and frustrated with being confronted with guilt over and obligation for so many of the world’s huddled masses. It seems that when Americans ask how much they should give, the answer is always more, more, more. The U.S. is already suffering a variety of social and economic ills perpetrated by decades of incessant invasions by millions of illegal immigrants seeking to escape the miserable conditions in their own countries. Giving them welfare benefits, education, healthcare, and even amnesty is never enough, because as long as the nations from which they are fleeing do not address their own problems, there will be more, more, more seeking continued charity from the U.S.

The growing U.S. national debt is now a staggering $17 trillion as the nation struggles to care for its own citizens, including its military veterans. The U.S. has a persistent unemployment and under employment problem, a crumbling infrastructure, a subpar public education system, a declining middle class, and a horde of homeless citizens. The overburdened ship of state is already lumbering low on the water line, yet there are those scolding us that we cannot neglect the growing numbers of needy foreign waifs clamoring to come on board.

There are those who feel guilty about the random fortune of being born an American citizen with opportunities for a level of affluence that the vagaries of chance have denied others. But no one should feel guilty about a providential accident of birth over which they had no influence. While sharing one’s good fortune with the less fortunate is commendable, it does not obligate one to unlimited generosity, especially to those who continually chose to aggravate their unfortunate conditions. 

If your neighbors have more children than they can feed and shelter, having their kids move in with you will not make your neighbors any less irresponsible. It will not compel them to address the reality of their limited resources or their reckless over-breeding. It will, however, make their problems yours. That is essentially what Mexico and some Central American countries have been doing for decades now—shifting their economic and population problems onto the U.S.

To the extent that illegal immigration by children is due to the savage violence suffered in Mexico and Central America in the futile, selfish, War on Drugs, the U.S. bears responsibility. However, the conditions of having more population than a nation can support forces that population to survive by whatever means available. People enlisting into the vicious cartels of the illegal drugs trade typically have few if any alternatives.

Overpopulation anywhere in the world breeds poverty, crime, corruption, and human misery. Offloading excess population onto America will not solve that problem. But, because for so long official America has been conveniently negligent in enforcing the nation’s immigration laws—so that various greedy Americans can gorge on cheap labor—the U.S. now suffers chronic negative consequences from a huge problem of its own making.

Illegal immigration has become a contentious national issue that seems to defy resolution only because venal politics, greed, and emotion have obstructed objective reason and the rule of law. It is a problem that has lingered far too long. Every home has its capacity limits and America has had enough of illegal immigration. The U.S. simply cannot house the world’s teeming masses of impoverished and war-plagued peoples. Illegal immigrants of any age must be sent back to their own homes. 

Randy Alcorn is a Writing Fellow for Californians for Population Stabilization (CAPS) and can be reached at [email protected]