An Email about Immigration

It’s funny how things will come to my attention. I received an email with a link from my father-in-law to a movie about immigration in which a gifted speaker (Roy Beck) illustrates how our current rate of immigration will affect the country. In this video he illustrates the past levels pointing toward the period before 1965 as the ‘Golden Era’ of immigration up to the current levels and what the picture will look like in 2030 if we continue on as we have been. He notes that Americans really like immigrants and view them as being hard working and family oriented, that immigrants and immigration are not the problem…that the numbers are the problem. He talks about what the population picture will be in 2030, how our resources are being taxed at the current level of population and to try to imagine what that will mean at the new projected levels. Then he moves on to ask what kind of life we want to leave for our children and grandchildren that are born and raised in this country. He also talks about how even when we take a million people per year from third world countries that this does not even begin to alleviate their problems and adds to ours such as California needing to build a new school every day of the year in order to keep up with its rising number of children. He suggests the way to help third world countries is where they live and that immigration used in that sense is a poor tool.

Playing with Reincarnation

Thinking about all this brought a thought to my mind. Leaving the world better than we found is a natural motivation when thinking of our children and grandchildren but most of our population believes that our personal problems will end when we die and that we will not live to see the end of our resources, many also think of this world as fallen…these viewpoints encourage us to take a more passive stance because there seems no sense of urgency or it seems beyond our ability to make a difference. Noticing how these beliefs shape our motivation to make changes I began to wonder how much more motivated we would be to take care of this world we live in if we thought that we ourselves would be coming back into the mess that we have created and that we just might be born in one of the third world nations that are already overpopulated…where people already don’t have enough? Could we then reach into the depths of our selflessness and see the interconnectedness that we share with our world and each other. Could we then give, trusting that we would reap the rewards of that work and effort, trusting that all life would benefit from our generosity? Could we then experience the growth as a society that comes from the inner knowledge that we are doing our part to uphold the sacred necessities of life itself…acting in accordance to what all can agree upon as needed and right?

Life is Sacred

Regardless of what ideas you hold about what happens after your physical dissolution I suggest that everyone look at their relationship with the environment and the resources of our world as something sacred that no one has a right to own or profit from and that all are deserving of. Protect these resources, love them, cherish, care for, nurture and revere them…because these are the very acts that preserve life.