When you add it all up – serfdom, indentured servitude, slavery, the Holocaust, genocide, ethnic cleansing, earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, dust bowls, pandemics, epidemics, famine, wars, human trafficking and every day skirmishes – it’s evident that a significant portion of the population has experienced, or has ancestors who have experienced horrendous times, conditions, or upbringings.

No Let Up

As we proceed towards eight billion people in the world, humankind doesn’t appear to progressing, en masse, toward some more hallowed state, wherein we learn to share the planet effectively. Ancient rivalries and hatreds, some lasting thousands of years, seem to be as molten today as they were in antiquity: the Sunnis versus the Shias, Irish Protestants and Irish Catholics, Albanians and Serbs, Armenians and Turks, Tutsis and Hutus, Jews and Palestinians, Japanese and Chinese, Indian and Chinese, everybody and Chinese, Indonesians and Malaysians, and Assamese and Bengalis, among dozens of others.

Today, persecution of Jews is occurring in unprecedented ways, on many levels, particularly in France, but alarmingly in Great Britain, Germany, and other supposedly enlightened nations, largely fomented by Muslims. Muslim attacks on Christians are occurring worldwide. Christians are not the instigators.

Statue of Limitations

With so many people here and abroad descending from ravaged lineages, how much acknowledgment are surviving members supposed to receive? Is anyone to be entitled because of what happened 100, 500 or 1000 years ago? What is the expiration date on special status?

When does engendering a “protected class” impinge upon the rights of everyone else? How long should the state be responsible for the income and livelihoods of those who are downtrodden, perhaps legitimately so? Where is the sunset clause that says after so many years of welfare, it's time to get going on your own?

What about our immigration policies? Socialism, extreme poverty, and corruption in South America and particularly Latin America leads to untold masses who want to escape to America. What do you do with the actual family at the border? The situation is like the ship Exodus – which countries are willing to take in the poor and persecuted? 

This is Not Oz

Those who, to this day, have experienced indentured servitude or slavery; genocide, earthquakes, other natural disasters; pandemics and epidemics; and man-made hostilities and skirmishes, cannot come to U.S. shores or our southern border en masse, where we will accommodate them in such numbers that our sovereignty will eventually be lost.

In America, we cannot open our doors to every refugee on earth, even in our own hemisphere. Nor can any one nation. It is time for a global response and the shared burden of responsibility.