Preliminary Information
You were all generous with the comments you left to my last post, and the thought that went into them. I haven’t written the full paper yet, that will be some time down the road. I thought I would share some information with you in the mean time in regards to the first statement.
"Illegal immigration is justified because the US has so much and other countries have so little."
This is a difficult question, admitedly, because compared to Mexico where most of the "illegal" immigrants come from—the US certainly does have soo much more. We really can’t blame Mexicans for wanting a better life for themselves and their families. Who among us would be any different?
On the other hand, how much can any country be expected to absorb [in terms of resources] on behalf of other countries? We have millions of homeless and jobless people who are American citizens. Should we really be expending those resources on others when we could be helping our own citizens?
Like any compassionate human being I don’t like to see anyone in any country homeless, starving, or both. However, the reality is that I feel America should help and support our own citizens first. If we can solve our own problems first, then we should extend our hand to others. We have starving children in our own cities every day. In a perfect world there would be no starving children, however, a starving child in any other country is no more important than a starving child in the United States.
"In 2004, the United States provided some form of foreign assistance to about 150 countries." If you can sift through the charts from the previous link, I think you’ll find that in the year 2004 the United States contributed about $30 - $40 billion in foreign aid [not including about another $10 - $15 billion to Iraq]. I wish I could be confident that all that money went to help the starving children, but I honestly don’t see the results of that. Admittedly, additional foreign aid isn’t always in the form of either food or money, but in the form of educating the people to learn how to feed themselves.
For example, Mexico received over $56 million in bilateral U.S. economic assistance between 1993 and 1998. That’s alot of money and or education. My question would be—why are people still immigrating to the US in even greater numbers, and who benefited from the aid they received from the US?
So, for myself anyway, it isn’t a matter of legality, or money really. It is a matter of taking care of our own family first and of spending our resources where they will do the most good. At least if we initiate a program in the US to feed starving children we can have some control and assurances that at least most of the children will actually get fed. I’m not sure that is the case when we throw money and resources at other countries.