If you saw the title and thought we’d be discussing illegal immigration, you’re going to be sorely disappointed. If you thought I’d be telling you about my favorite casual family style Mexican restaurants you’re going to be even more disappointed.
Whether one political party in particular wants to admit it or not, there is a crisis at the American border with Mexico, actually many. But the biggest of them all isn’t the issue of immigration, which this country has been arguing over for my entire lifetime. The debate over who and how many should be allowed into America will continue endlessly and neither side will be right, nor get what they want. We can, and will, discuss it at another time.
The crisis on the border is actually about Americans and their rights; the right to pursue happiness, the right to assemble, the right to move freely between states, the right to be secure in our houses, and while not expressly written in the Constitution, the implied right to freely make our own decisions, ambitiously chase success, and choose, on our own, what risks we will take.
For the last year, we have been told, and in many cases, forced, to end our lives as we knew them, all in the name of stopping Covid. By May of 2020, just two months into this disaster, 100,000 American businesses had closed permanently. In September, the worthless pile of garbage that is Yelp reported that 60% of the businesses on its app were gone forever. A few weeks ago, a study reported that 9 million American small businesses currently still open don’t expect to survive the pandemic. 9 million! Meanwhile, dozens of larger corporations have either shut-down or declared bankruptcy. All of this resulted in more than 20 million jobs being lost. Keep in mind that at any time, regardless of a pandemic, only 60% of the American population even has a job…losing 22 million of them is beyond devastating, but it happened; all because we had to beat a virus. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-economy/u-s-economy-loses-jobs-as-covid-19-hammers-restaurants-bars-idUSKBN29D0J9
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/small-business-federal-aid-pandemic/
https://www.statista.com/statistics/192398/employment-rate-in-the-us-since-1990/
We are barely scratching the surface of what will ultimately be an unspeakable amount of damage we have done to our collective mental and physical health as a result of locking down the world for a year. Last month, researchers found that an increase in “hazardous” alcohol use went from 21% in April to 40.7% in September. Alcohol dependence rose from 7.9% to 29.1% in the same time span. In the first week of lockdown, between the weeks of March 22 and March 29, liquor sales shot up 204%, wine 200%, and beer 159%, And overall in 2020, U.S. alcohol sales increased by 54%. https://nypost.com/2021/02/18/alarming-alcohol-abuse-rising-under-covid-19-lockdown-study/
Domestic violence, child abuse, suicide, depression, and self-harm are all soaring. And of course, those hit hardest are the poor and the young. Self-harm claims have risen in the last year by 333% and overdoses are up 120% among 13 to 18-year-olds. https://www.ucdavis.edu/news/covid-19-isolation-linked-increased-domestic-violence-researchers-suggest
All of that horribleness barely scratches the surface of the collateral damage of how we’ve handled the Coronavirus. There are also the endless stories of people not being able to say goodbye to their dying loved ones, women giving birth while wearing a mask and vomiting into them, and everything that used to be an afterthought becoming miserable. Have you taken your pet to the veterinarian lately? How about youth sports, let alone school? Even the grocery store is now a miserable and sad experience.
But we did it all because of Covid. For the last year we have been told over and over again that Covid was all that mattered and everything about life had to change because of it.
And yet, as all of Europe locks down again and we’re told to brace for a 4th wave in America, hundreds of thousands of migrants from Latin America are coming to America and being released into the country…and most aren’t even being tested for the virus. Those that are, aren’t forced to quarantine, and when they do find out someone tests positive, they also don’t contact trace the other migrants they made the trip with.
https://apnews.com/article/is-us-mexico-border-in-crisis-explained-aea57dde734f5cccb920e0d5d6111e65
https://nypost.com/2021/03/18/dhs-admits-instances-where-migrants-let-into-us-with-no-covid-test/
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/psaki-child-migrants-denies-border-is-open
Additionally, you can have the virus and not test positive for up to 10 days. Testing negative is meaningless, especially if you’ve been exposed, and yet hundreds of thousands of people who are not citizens of the United States are being allowed to enter the country and potentially spread the virus. It’s the ultimate super-spreader event and it’s beyond criminal.
To be clear, this has nothing to do with the immigrants themselves, America’s immigration policy, or the merits of allowing people into the country. This is about us…the already established American citizens who, for the last year, has been wrecked and dismantled as a people and a society all in the name of the pandemic. Any objection was met with shouting the word SCIENCE and being told to care for other people. We’re all in this together, remember? Has anyone asked Dr. Fauci about the science behind allowing hundreds of thousands of untested people into the country as we all brace for a possible fourth wave?
And of course, the most maddening part of all of this is the same thing that has been the most maddening part of the past year…we the people.
For the last year of this pandemic, the overwhelming majority of Americans have been blindly compliant when none of what we’ve been told has made any sense. And now, pretty much no one is outraged over the irony of endless streams of potentially infected people being bussed into the United States. It isn’t about the old excuse of “well what can we do about it anyway,” it’s the lack of noticing, caring, connecting the dots, and becoming justifiably rageful. As a society, we are collectively dead inside…and quite stupid, too, I might add.
