Thank you America. It was your outspokenness that forced President Trump to retreat from his breaking up of families’ policy. It was your calls to your governors, legislators that forced the retreat. It was you demonstrations at Boston Commons and other places that checkmated this inhuman policy.
Thank you America. You have done more than the Germans and Europeans did by keeping silent which resulted in the killing of 5 million Jews. You have done more than Nigerians and African did by keeping quiet as 3 million Biafrans were starved to death in a cruel war. You have much more than Africans and Hutus did as 1 million Tutsi’s were murdered. The history of the last half of the 20th century is littered with the story of good men being silent thus enabling evil to triumph.
Thank you America.
But more needs to be done.
When President Trump abandoned his separation of kids from their parents, the underlining problem was not solved. Immigrants are still at the border trying to get into the US. It is a huge and imminent danger to us all. US soil is not large enough to accommodate all who want in. So we must find a way to really solve this problem. We must first understand why people are fleeing and why they MUST bring their children with them.
When a parent’s life is in danger, the parent must flee from the danger. A good parent CANNOT leave his kid behind. They are conjoined. So the first thing is to eliminate the threat. The threat for Africans, South Americans, and Middle Easterners are wars, hunger evil governments, and evil gangs.
In Nigeria for example hundreds of people are killed every week and the government is unable or unwilling to stem the constant massacres of people. The same for Venezuela, Palestinians, Libyans, Syrians, Honduras, etc. Whatever the cause of the wars, it is debilitating to mothers and their kids.
And forces them to flee.
Another cause of the flights is hunger coming from draughts, wars, instability, and lack of agricultural tools and lack of modern agricultural concepts and climate change.
What is needed is some kinds of Marshall Plan (European Recovery Plan). The plan is named for Secretary of State George C. Marshall, who announced it in a commencement speech at Harvard University on June 5, 1947. It would go on to cost US $13 billion (1951 dollars) but it has made both the quality and standard of life in Western Europe equal to that of US. A Trump Plan for Africa, Middle East and South America funded by US, and the G7/8 would have a similar effect on the areas where the migrants are fleeing from. The world has enough resources and enough technology to produce enough food to feed the 9 billion people in the world.
What is lacking is enough political will.
We must harken to Charles Darwin: “It is not the most intellectual of the species that survives; it is not the strongest that survives; but the species that survives is the one that is able to adapt to and to adjust best to the changing environment in which it finds itself…” ( Charles Darwin in his “Origin of Species.” )
The world is changing and we must adjust or perish.
Written by Benjamin Obiajulu Aduba, Massachusetts.
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