The United States Government was about to enter a partial shutdown in December 2018 because agreement could not be reached in the Senate to fund five billion dollars to build a wall on the border between the United States and Mexico. The insistence by former President Trump on border security is projected by some as racist, insensitive to the poor, and other things. Here it is September 30, 2023, and we are again facing a partial government shutdown. Although part of the wall at the Mexican border has been built, we have a far worse problem there than in 2018. Although five billion dollars to build it is not cited as part of the cause of the budget impasse, other aspects of border security are. The things that I wrote then are more true now than ever. There is a book of the Bible that is all about building a wall: Nehemiah. I found this book instrumental, as a young Christian decades ago, in understanding certain essential spiritual principles. They are actually important principles at all levels of life, but I found them important at the personal level. Growing up in the 1960's, when open-mindedness was promoted as being good in and of itself, I had embraced that idea and found my mind unwilling to simply believe that Scripture was God's Word, divinely inspired, and flawless. The more I read of it, however, the Word had a good effect on my mind. The Bible study I joined on the book of Nehemiah would help me to understand that there was a controlled middle ground between letting everything in and excluding all but one mindset. The references, over and over, to building the gates and erecting the doors as the people of Israel worked on rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem at Nehemiah's direction, made clear the need to have gates in the wall to control what comes in, with a door that can be shut and defended. We have people, not just in the House and Senate but also employed by the media, who represent the desire to have a wall at our border as either malevolent or idiotic, or both. It is neither. It is common sense. As former President Trump has said, if you have no control over who comes in, you don't have a country. We need a wall, but that wall will have legitimate border crossing points as we do now. It will not reduce the influx to zero but it will allow us to measure how many come in. Many years ago, a mathematician known as Malthus demonstrated that populations grow geometrically, (by multiplication), while food supplies increase arithmetically, meaning by addition. Populations of animals or people can outstrip their food supplies. Likewise, it's far easier for migrants to add themselves to our population - when we allow them to cross our border unrestricted - than it is to maintain and upgrade the equipment of our municipal utilities for bringing clean water to us and removing our waste products. There are other aspects of uncontrolled population increase that I could mention, but this is a simple point which should be ob vious because everyone who enters the United States will, for the rest of their life, reside somewhere and there they will consume water and produce waste which will have to be removed. I allow the idealistic assumption that all will use toilet facilities; we know that in certain countries people don't have them and aren't in the habit, therefore, of using them; how many will learn to comply with our ways when they come here is open to argument. The even more idealistic assumption that we will be infinitely able to maintain and upgrade the water and sewage capacity in tens of thousands of cities and townships and municipalities so that they never become overburdened and break down, I do not allow. It would seem that some people do. The United States is not alone in facing unbridled immigration problems. Europe has its own influx of Africans, Arabs, and others from adjoining landmasses. We have a long border with Mexico which has the countries of Central America to its south. (There is a bridge across the Panama Canal. Its height is published as one of the limits on the size of ships using the canal.) There are of course always additional people who enter by air and sea. We do not have to be selfishly nationalistic to recognize the need to control immigration at our borders. The simple fact is that if we do not keep some control of the number of people who come here to seek a better life, at some point there will no longer be a better life for them to find. Our municipal utilities will, in the face of unbridled increase of population, eventually break down. Our ability to keep stores supplied with food - and keep hungry people from breaking in and stealing it - will be overwhelmed. This is no good for us and it will be no good for them either. Our future depends upon having control of our borders. All nations throughout history have recognzed that principle and the Word of God, in the book of Nehemiah and elsewhere, supports it. As long as we leave that idea open to argument, we leave ourselves open to many, many other things. We should not always shut our doors to the rest of the world - but without doors and gates we have no choice. Doors and gates presuppose a wall to support them. We need a wall.
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