NY Times 2023 photographs - v

A couple years ago on a visit to Honduras, we couldn't help but learn that aid to developing nations was vital to stemming the kind of migration that's we're experiencing in this country, but also throughout the world. What the Times photographer caught here was a group of young moms involved a program that attempts to help young women stay in school and, eventually perhaps, have fewer babies. 

"More than a third of the world’s young people will live in Africa by 2050. The implications of this 'youthquake,' as some call it, are immense yet uncertain," according to Hannah Reyes Morales in The New York Times. Some results may be uncertain, but others aren't: those numbers will lead to more "migration," the word experts might use when speaking of our own immigration problems. Almost certainly, economic disparities will lead to millions upon millions of men, women, and children to adopt unsafe measures in order to scramble to the borders of countries where standards of living vastly surpass that of their countries of origin. 

Simply using different language--migration instead of immigration--doesn't stem the tide of poor people at our door, but it does provide a wider context: our problems aren't just ours. Free-world countries are being besieged by people who want little more than to feed their children.

I sat in a similar room with approximately as many women--older women--when we were in Honduras. It was a program designed to help grandmothers who were locked into motherhood once more, some of them sixty or seventy years old. They were taking care of little kids who would have had nothing if their grandparents hadn't offered room and love. Their parents had left Honduras for America. 

But, as this grandpa couldn't help but note, being a dad again wouldn't be for me. Do I love my grandchildren?--of course, tons of love. But would I--no could I--care for them 24/7? Undoubtedly, I would--whether or not I could is a different question. 

Sitting there in the middle of all those Honduran grandmas made very clear how important foreign aid is, not simply because giving is "the right thing to do," but also because foreign aid builds up national cultures that disintegrate when hundreds of thousands of moms and dads--and kids--up and leave to places where grocery store shelves hold a half-dozen different kinds of Cheerios.

If we want to fight migration, an essential component is foreign aid. 

Tell that to the MAGA hoards, some of whom descended on Sioux Center last week. "America First" is hateful when it's just another way of saying "me first." Yes, hateful and, maybe worse, downright stupid. 

What is happening on our southern border is part of a worldwide phenomenon that shows no signs of abating. These young Nigerian mothers and their children are participating in a program titled "'Center for Girls' Education," a program your tax dollars are paying for. 

And that's a good thing.