Migrant Migraine
Our current illegal-immigrant problem — our refugee problem — is complex and harrowing and difficult to square, because it exists in a modern world of interminable complexities.
There was a time, not long ago on the human timeline, when mapped borders were invisible and Trumpian walls weren’t yet imagined: when human beings could come and go as they pleased, without restraint. But that was before immigration laws — and before our bloated numbers necessitated these laws.
We’re squeezed, folks; we’re running out of space. (“The U.S. is full of space; just look at the National Parks,” my detractors say. To which I respond, “Our rapacious hunger for development paves over hundreds of thousands of acres of open land every year, and our National Parks are so overcrowded now that they look more like human zoos than wildlife sanctuaries of natural beauty.”)
Frustration over the immigrant flux has less to do today, than just 20 years ago, with fear of aliens taking our jobs. Today’s frustration stems more so from deep anxiety about how to manage, and live comfortably with, untoward numbers — millions — of migrating people, with no tapering-off in sight.
Besides suffocating us, the probably endless migrant flow across our southern border, combined with disinterest in managing our sovereign numbers, is threatening to make null and void our once manageable immigration laws — and our ability to care.