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his month’s theme is working together and highlights compassionate activism, which seems extremely relevant in light of the European migrant issue with Syrians and others trying to escape their war-torn home- lands. It was heart-wrenching to look at the photo of 3-year- old Aylan Kurdi’s body lying on a beach as a result of the lifeboat on which he and his family were traveling capsizing and killing him, his 5-year-old brother and their mother. The haunting image was a reminder that we’re all in this togeth- er and impelled me to write this letter with my thoughts. In this bountiful country we have so many communities that need people. In my previous work, I traveled across
Iowa, Nebraska, the Dakotas and Minnesota, and each state had vacant houses that wouldn’t take much work to become dwellings. Each state has jobs to offer and more would organically blossom with the influx of people—teachers, grocers, builders, and so on. If each state pitched in a little, that would spread the workload and lighten the burden. No one can do it all, but we can all do something. How about empty army bases with barracks and housing that could accommodate an influx of people into a community? There are people and organizations adept at managing, helping and guiding those people who just want to live their lives and raise their families in peace—without war, death and upheaval. It’s easy to say, “Let the Europeans deal with it.” We certainly don’t want to bur-
den our already overloaded welfare system with even more people, but who says all who come here will go on welfare? Don’t we have programs in place to guide people through the system? It seems that the main argument I hear against allowing immigrants into our country is that U.S. workers don’t want to support even more people on wel- fare. However, I think the majority of immigrants would be glad to earn their way. It’s easy to say, “It’s not our problem.” But that’s not true. Much like fighting Nazism
in World War II, we have to overcome our resistance and our comfort level and take a stand for all of humanity. If all immigration into this country is stopped, then the aging population of the U.S.
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will not have enough youth to sustain Social Security. I heard that over 70 percent of the population counts on Social Security to support themselves in their post-work years, and that the only way for Social Security to survive is with large amounts of immigrants becoming working citizens. I often don’t voice strong opinions, feeling that I don’t know all there is to know about the situation and/or that the other person feels as strongly as I do and we’re not going to change each other’s minds anyway. But the image of Aylan is still with me, calling me to action. Working together, from heart-centered consciousness, we can do amazing things
in this lifetime.
Jackie Flaherty, Publisher
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