I see many migrants [a.k.a. ‘illegals’], new and old, in my home city, which comes close to bordering Washington State. I know that growing numbers of people, regardless of their origin, requiring housing only increases the market-value pressure on the rent rate I pay for my old one-bedroom apartment unit.
I also know there’s greater pressure on the publicly-funded health services here that were already stretched thin.
Still, it would be wrong, if not hypocritical, of me to criticize often-desperate people for doing what I [and many others] likely would do in their dreadful position and if brave enough.
Yet, many politicians continue playing political games with migrants — human beings, like the rest of us — while ignoring that they can feel, be hurt and suffer like the rest of us. [I hope those politicians don’t consider or call themselves Christian.]
I have a hard time believing that migrants and refugees in general willfully and contentedly become permanent financial/resource burdens on their host nation.
Quite likely they desire to pull their own weight via employment, even if only to prove their critics wrong. I know I’d much want to if I was in their unenviable position.
Many are rightfully despondent, perhaps enough so to work very hard in cashless exchange for basic food and shelter.
But all of that no longer matters when they die in their attempt at arriving. Like in January 2022, when a young family of four from India froze to death trying to access the U.S. via sub-zero southern Manitoba, Canada [near the US border].