Let us not begrudge others who want to immigrant to America just as your forefathers did.

 

“Remain in me, and I will remain in you. For a branch cannot produce fruit if it is severed from the vine, and you cannot be fruitful unless you remain in me.” John 15:4 (NLT)

Have you ever felt you were adrift on a life raft out in the open sea wondering where you are where you're going? You sit there on that raft without a compass and with only a wooden spoon you use to swat at the baby sharks that occasionally make it close to your raft? You learned that the brothers and sisters who once encouraged you are now long gone. You remembered the special prayer times and hymn sing's you had with them and what a joyous time it was celebrating the Christian faith with them; until the contentious political season divided you to where you know longer experienced such joy. You knew that you could not express your political differences with anyone else in your fellowship for fear of being labeled a traitor, or worse shun as a outcast.


For me, that has been what 2020 has been like. Only as long as one accepted the majority opinion one would be considered safe, but the moment they expressed a dissenting opinion from anyone else was their the remote possibility that they would take potshots at you. It didn't matter if you had more experience than they did with people from other cultures, it is what it is because the majority says it is. I think this happened in the German churches when the pastors at the time who supported Hitler refused to speak out about the unspeakable crimes that sent Jewish, Gypsies, and those who physical and mental impairments to the gas chambers. Many of them at the time rationalized that it is better that a Jew die than to bring disease into the German culture. My fear is that this same mentality is flowing into the American way of life. There is this 'I'm superior to you mentality because I was born in America' mentality. When I hear this nonsensible utterance I often remind my friends that America was built on the backs of immigrants. Every time I travel up in Northwestern Minnesota I often see trucks on the side of the road. When I look further into the fields I noticed teams of hardworking Hispanic men, woman and children picking sugar beets. My wife mentioned that these laborers are crucial to the success of the sugar beet operation because they cannot get enough laborers to complete this dirty, hot task.


America was built on the back of Immigrants. On the statue of Liberty is a reminder of that reality with these words, ""Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore."


As I read those words I think of the long journeys each immigrant had to make to reach our shores, or the sickness and the occasional loss of family members. I think about the deep sense of bereavement and sorrow or their willingness to press on knowing that their decision to become American's would radically change the lifestyles of their future children and grandchildren.


I also reflect on the little known statistic that the vast majority of immigrants start the vast majority of new businesses- businesses that employed 100's, if not thousands of other people.


America is the land of opportunity, a horn of plenty for people who never had enough because of the socialist regimes they came out of.


As a country, It is now time to begin the healing process that has re-traumatized our immigrant people. Let's give them a break and watch them succeed just as the immigrants did in the previous years.