What Shall We Do With All These Ilegal Wetbacks That Have Invaded Our Country?

Today, on my daily prayer and power walk—at this age I must walk and pray, because if I kneel I fall asleep!— I passed one of the men that routinely keep the lawns on public property trimmed and mowed in our neighborhood. Without hesitation I said, “Hace frio!” (It is cold) And, not surprisingly he answered me in Spanish.

I though, “Probably an illegal alien.” And, you know what? I was most probably right! Heaven only knows how many are in this country. Not only from Mexico or Latin America, but from around the world. Anyway, to get to the point, I immediately thought of presidential contender Herman Cain who suggested (in humor, he said) that we not only build a fence on our southern border but we should also electrify it and put a coiled string of sharp barbed wire along the top.

Sounds like the man is serious, doesn’t it?

Well, excuse me, because I would listen a whole lot closer if someone would come up with a plan to bring all of our jobs back home. Geography is not the problem. A foreign labor force is.

Let’s imagine for one minute, what would happen if suddenly we shipped all the illegals back to where they came from. Well, most probably most of them eventually would take the same type of jobs they already have here and ship the produce back to us.

Why?

I hope you are ready for this. The answer is that the average out of work American will not work on our farmland; and, furthermore, those illegals holding choice jobs would simply shift geographically back to their homelands to do the same thing and our mega corporations would just lease more super tankers to ship the stuff back to America. And, of course, not only would we lose the tax base, but we would allow the goods through our borders at nominal (if any) tariff rate.

Alabama is a case in point. Last week one small time tomato farmer had already lost 20% of his crop and expected to lose the rest by week’s end. Why? The answer is not hard to find. Alabamians don’t want to pick tomatoes. They had rather join the unemployment lines than do that. Or if they could muster up enough energy, perhaps they would join the Occupy Wall Street crowd, I don’t know.

Paul said, if you are not willing to work, you don’t have a right to eat. Now, that’s Bible.

So, I said all of that to say this: If we are serious about this illegal stuff, then first of all we must get serious about not shipping all of our jobs overseas—that alone would bring back jobs and revenue that would be enough to turn this country around; furthermore, we should put the fence up but leave the doors open until we have enough men and women who are willing to work in these jobs. Otherwise, tomatoes will rot. Lawns will not get mowed. And on and on it goes.

Now, for the history buff, it may interest you to know (if you don’t already) that Spain faced a similar situation when their gentry class refused to dirty their hands following the loss of cheap domestic laborers. What began the downhill spiral that eventually turned Spain into a Third World County was not the defeat of the Spanish Armada (although, that helped) it was the gentry class’s refusal to work. Anybody that was somebody had a title. Sometimes everybody in whole provinces were declared gentry, as in the case of Biscay.

The results? Need I say? Crops were not planted. Roads were not built. Even castles began to fall apart around the super rich. And, for those of us who are missionaries, it should be noted that the Church went begging. Wealth is created by work, and work is created by the people’s desire to acquire something. Think about if for a moment.

Gold left in the ground has absolutely no value whatsoever until it is put to use, or someone is willing to work hard enough to either mine it and sell it or simply buy it. Somewhere along the line, work is required.

As a nation we must keep this in focus. Manna fell only once. And, that was a longtime ago. I don’t expect it will fall on America anytime in the near future, either.