Recently, I was in the emergency room to deal with my personal tragedy and my ankle. As I sat there, I listened to a very skilled and patient interpreter help an illegal woman and her children understand what was going to happen when her child was taken back for treatment.
The worry about INS agents coming to take them away for seeking treatment was obvious in this woman's eyes.
In my halting Spanish, I spoke to her little children and greeted them while I waited for my name to be called for my own treatment time.
I am free to be seen without fear of reprisal. They are not.
Because they are not in this country legally, they are looking over their shoulder 24-7 to keep one step ahead of deportation.
What kind of life must that be to live in abject fear that you will lose any advantage that you have gained by coming to America?
I feel for these Children of God. They have transgressed the laws of man by coming to this country without proper paperwork and proof of status for being here.
But a larger question is whether or not they have also defied the laws of God by not respecting the rule of law in a nation they say they wish to come to and live within the borders.
I struggle with this because everyone needs help in this life. We are, none of us, an island of self-sufficiency unto ourselves. But what if we are in violation of the very laws that are actually meant to protect us?
If I break the law, I know there will be consequences, whether they are the laws of God or of man. I don't expect to skip around freely without having any kind of reparations, repentance and restitution for what I have done.
But I can wake up in my home and not worry about someone kicking down the door to my home and taking me away.
We don't live in a Banana Republic where that is common even among the citizenry of the nation, nor do we live in a police state. I'm thankful that both of those are not the case.
But what will happen if more and more people get the idea that they don't have to obey the laws of our nation? Our borders have been as a permeable membrane allowing passage without let.
How do we convince people to come here the correct way?
How can we help and probably make compromise with those who are already here?
And most important of all, how can we show them that the blessings of truly being free are worth the hassle of the paperwork, the citizenship testing and the struggle to learn a passable version of the English language in order to get along in even the most basic situations?
I cannot imagine the fear that inhabits their hearts. To know that the work they have done isn't truly accepted because they aren't properly papered. To know that they are disposable to society in general. To know that those who are crying out for change are a mixed bag of personalities ranging from the seriously concerned seeking only what is right under the laws of the land and those who are fringe lunatics looking to bust some heads under a delusional belief that they are somehow 'better' because they were born within the borders instead of without. To know that each night in this nation might be the last if the federal agents of the rule of law can find and deport them at any moment.
We who have been blessed to be born here in this nation aren't given some special status that allows us to turn a deaf ear, a blind eye and a cold heart to our brothers and sisters who often come here fleeing oppression we can't even begin to imagine.
But we who have been blessed DO have a responsibility to help others be lawful by not only abiding by the laws ourselves, but enforcing our national and state laws and encouraging everyone else to do the same. Without that respect, we don't have a nation at all. We have a mess waiting to happen.
Volitility is growing.
I'm smart enough and observant enough to realize that without constructive and forward thinking means, we can't fix this problem. We will only be granted ringside seats while our nation destroys itself from within as people take sides to determine what is to be done.
We should help them see that doing so the right way is really the only way.
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