This country already best on earth

It would be useless to add my voice to the protests against the unconscionable separating of parents and children at the U.S. border in the name of cracking down on illegal immigration.

With that sentence, of course, I have added a voice, but a more radical idea has been proposed by both conservative and liberal thinkers in recent months.

They are proposing that we ease up on immigration enforcement.

There are several reasons for this.

Some are humanitarian.

One is that currently, widening areas of Central American countries are ruled by murderously sadistic gangs like MS-13. Refugees from these areas are escaping as acts of both courage and desperation.

When East Germans broke their laws and escaped the cruelties of Communism by surmounting the Berlin Wall, we cheered. Maybe we should cheer those who are escaping ruthless, greedy crime gangs by making their way north.

There are many women and children at our border who are escaping domestic abuse in lands where even drunken or drug-addicted men are encouraged to use violence and physical threats to rule their roosts.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions, a relic of the old South, encourages us to overlook terrorism in neighboring countries while our military fights terror overseas.

Sessions’ boss, President Donald Trump, believes that most if not all poor people who don’t speak English are criminals.

The thinkers, however, have done some homework and have learned that the vast majority of immigrants, legal or otherwise, work hard, promote American values and encourage their children to work hard in school so their lives can be better.

Among American citizens we have near-record lows in unemployment, and our workforce participation rate among working-age Americans is also at a near-record low.

That means demand for workers is outrunning supply.

Farmers in California can’t get people to pick crops even at $20 an hour.

Our glut of restaurants is begging for entry-level workers.

If American citizens are unwilling to start at the bottom, maybe we should be welcoming those who are.

We do live in the greatest country on earth, not one that we have to make great again. Just ask the people who want to get here so desperately they’ll risk everything to cross over.

Do we have room to share it? For humanitarian and economic reasons, maybe we do.

It’s worth thinking about, anyway.

Steve Hansen writes about our life and times from his perspective of a retired Tucumcari journalist. Contact him at:

stevenmhansen

@plateautel.net