I want to paint you a mental picture. Just imagine this scenario with me. Let’s say you work hard, save money, and establish good credit. After many years, the day comes to build your dream home. It’s a beautiful house on a little patch of land near the water, surrounded by other beautiful homes. You come in from a day’s work and enjoy just sitting and watching the sun go down on your house.
You realize that you have been given so much. You extend hospitality to guests, host missionaries, and friends come over to grill on the deck. You’re proud to share. You are generous because you remember where you came from.
Every detail is something you planned for, worked for, and helped design. This is your castle. You feel safe there. You are comfortable. You feel blessed by it.
Next, imagine that you come home from work one day and notice lights on inside. The back door is standing open, and you see movement through the windows. Something is not right, and cautiously you walk in the door to find strangers sitting on your couch, watching your TV, their feet on your coffee table. Someone you don’t know is in the kitchen fixing a meal from your pantry. Who are these people?!
You hear someone in your bathroom running the shower. A young man you’ve never seen comes downstairs wearing your favorite shirt. The strangers acknowledge you with blank stares, but act as though they are entitled to your house as their own.
Out the kitchen window you see tents being set up in your backyard, your flower beds are being trampled, and folks are picking the tomatoes growing in your garden. All that you have tended meticulously is now being destroyed by a hundred people you’ve never seen before.
A rising panic in you asks, “What in God’s name is happening?!”
One of the interlopers finally says, in broken English, “We came from somewhere else. We will just be here a little while,” and then he stares at you like that should say it all.
You call the police, but they tell you they are overwhelmed with similar calls, and you’re just going to have to entertain your new “guests” as best you can. Guests?! Guests is a word that means they were invited.
As you hear a dish breaking in your kitchen, someone else’s kids running through your house, and strangers arguing over your TV remote, you realize you no longer feel peaceful in your own home, and you question whether life will ever be the same.
Let the feelings of that drama sink in. That surreal storyline seems like one of those weird, disjointed dreams that leave you unsettled even after you awake. How would you feel? What would you do?
What I just described for you is a micro version of life at our southern border right now.
What if the “house” represented a whole community, or a state? What if the house in my story is an analogy for our country? That open back door? Well, that’s our southern border. Uninvited strangers making use of our home, wearing our clothes, and eating our food? That’s the analogous portrayal of what is happening to American resources as mass migration takes on a new and dangerous level.
Just in the last few days, new records were set by the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP). Several days of over 10,000 illegal migrants crossing into the US culminated in over 82,000 known illegal crossings in one week. The CBP’s latest statistics show that in the month of February alone, 10,870 unaccompanied minors were encountered at the southern border. The city of El Paso recently reported that it had spent over $20 million just in general aid, representing a massive increase in currently unreimbursed spending for that one city. CBP drug interdictions in March alone seized 13,600 pounds of methamphetamine, 2,800 pounds of fentanyl, and 3,700 pounds of cocaine. Multiple sex offenders, gang members, and convicted felons were taken into custody as they crossed the border. With the cessation of Title 42, every statistic I just named is expected to get worse.
Our house is in disarray.
But recall another part of the story I told. The main character was a generous homeowner who shared his home with others, fed his guests, and opened his doors to those he could serve. That generous spirit is another micro-analogy of the United States.
We have built our home on the world stage and have never been exclusive of others. This is the most generous country in all of world history. We provide massive aid, we host many, we bring them into our hospitality, and we do so willingly because that is part of who we are. American generosity is something to be proud of.
But our generosity is being abused. In the story I told you, the homeowner’s generosity was no longer able to extend to others because it was abusively consumed by those who snatched it.
This is our house, and we must protect it. We must restore order so that we can continue to be a blessing to others. We must do this so we can know the peace that comes from having a home. A home we have worked hard for. A home from which we can provide so much for others. But not a home that can be stolen from us.
We must protect this house.