Monday, October 04, 2010

soap box: immigration

i hate the way illegal immigrants are treated. For some reason every country seems to think that lurking just outside their borders are hordes of people who want nothing more than to take the jobs of the countries citizens, rob the tax payers blind, and sit around and laugh at how easy they have it in their new 'gullible' country.

This isn't true. No one leaves their home country, travels in secrecy to another country then sits back and thinks "wow, that was easy!". Changing countries is expensive and gut-wrenchingly difficult; even if you do so legally.

Emotionally you must leave family, friends, and places you love behind. You leave favourite foods, music, and cultural events behind. You strip yourself of everything you have and prepare yourself for the biggest fight of your life.

To travel to another country is expensive. Flights, accommodation, and visas can cut a huge hole in your annual budget. If you want to stay in a new country, you can easily double your expenses, because your new country is going to have a huge stack of paper work for you to go through and in your new country, each sheet of paper can cost upwards of $100 per page.

So why would anyone choose to leave behind themselves and embark on such a journey? How about reasons of personal safety? What about reasons of religious freedom? Maybe the idea that THIS country will be more tolerate, less filled with hate? Maybe this country will provide resources so their children won't have to starve to death.

It saddens me that countries are so willing to treat those who are desprate as criminals. My heart aches even more when those leading the call to "secure our borders" are Christians who push Christian ideology. They go to church and listen to sermons called 'turning the other cheek' and 'what would Jesus do?'. Yet they can not practice these concepts are the needyist of the needy. Perhaps churches could solve the issue by focusing on less 'practical' concepts of faith, like prophecy.

Immigration is hard. Illegal immigration is an act of desperation...