Top of the Wall
Everywhere I look these days, I am seeing articles about one of two issues: homelessness in America and the crisis and the U.S. border with Mexico. It is sometimes hard to reconcile the two issues. On the one hand people from all over the world, especially Central America are finding the conditions in their countries intolerable and abuse for risking life and limb to get to the U.S. border to seek asylum. I say seek asylum because the word hits at the centrality of my conundrum. Applied to the issue at the border, the word means to seek protection as a political refugee from a country of origin that is unable or unwilling to provide the fundamentals of life, liberty and the ability to pursue happiness. But asylum is also a word that means a place that offers people support and shelter when they need it most, which is when they are not compos mentis or in complete control of their mental state and their own actions.
If you are focused on the issue of homelessness, California is the place to start since it has a reported 161,548 homeless souls compared to the next closest state, New York, with 91,271. That means that California has 20% of the American homeless population. After California and New York, no other states have what would be deemed as meaningful homeless populations (Florida is third at 27,487). It is impossible to say how much of this locational phenomenon is due to weather and how much is due to liberal mindset of the local governance, but there are arguments for both. The one thing that is obvious from looking at the data, and that is that the border states of California, Arizona and Texas all have big homelessness issues.
It is said that over 2 million migrants have crossed the U.S./Mexico border in 2022, only about 10% of those did so legally with the rest risking illegal alien status and INS encounters and potential incarceration to get into a country where the very states where they are entering are overwhelmed with people without shelter. That is a enough of a head-scratcher to make you wonder where the craziness is greatest. Some would say that the homelessness problem is a problem of mental illness. Others would say that homelessness is a marginalization problem that finds older and older Americans vulnerable to homelessness as their lack of pension income security dwindles and the cost of living rises. It is easy to see those two problems blending into a indiscernible mix of hopelessness. And of course, the urge to cross cartel-infested and relatively lawless and opportunistic Mexico to get to a better place is nothing if not a sign of the hopelessness of the migrant past and hopefulness of some unknown future they see before them.
I just watched a morning report from the city of El Paso, perhaps the most impacted city in America by the congested migrant situation and, by extension, a homelessness crisis that has them spending over $300,000 per day to provide life-sustaining aid to the people there forced to sleep on the street as they transit to a better place (figuratively). I am proud of El Paso for standing up to the problem with compassion, which is the only way to address such a meaningful humanitarian crisis. People who have everything are compelled by natural law to help those who have nothing. That used to be the symbol of America as emblazoned on the base of the Statue of Liberty in Emma Lazarus’ The New Colossus poem that is so often referenced on the topics of immigration and diversity. Those of us who admire that poem’s sentiment, applaud its sense of extreme hospitality and humanity and welcome the impact of diversity on our national cultural mix. Some note that the poem was attached to the base of the statue while the U.S. was restricting Chinese immigration and while the European powers were busy divvying up the undeveloped world into colonial fiefdoms.
There was an interview with a man who had walked for four months from Venezuela, leaving his family temporarily in the safety of his home country so that he could brave the dangers of the Central American road to get to the north land. He had been a documented member of the Venezuelan military who had disagreed with his superiors and had been tortured as a result. His asylum application into the U.S. had been recently granted and he was helping the El Paso community in giving aid and assistance to those migrants still waiting, literally, on the street. When asked about his plans, he said without hesitation that he wanted to work here in the United States long enough to get enough money together to then move on up to Canada. When asked what his dreams were, he said to live in peace.
That story makes me both very happy and very sad. It is sad to see the country where I spent my first four years in such autocratic turmoil that it has become a major source of migrants seeking asylum. It is nice to see a man able to trek for 3,000 miles to get to a better place and take such risks for his family. It is even nicer to see that the U.S. immigration system, which is legally mandated to give political asylum to those refugees who are worthy, honor that pledge and be on the verge of no longer “hiding” behind the Title 42 COVID exemption to that obligation. It is especially nice to see a man who has been through so much lend a hand to the good people of El Paso to help those who are trying to come in behind him. It is all too often that immigrants want the door closed behind them, but not so this man, apparently. But in the final analysis, it is sad that the word is out about the United States and that is that it is a less perfect, less peaceful, less humanitarian place than offered by our neighbors to the north. Canada has no more resources or capitalistic drive than we have. They are an independent and resilient breed that prizes freedom. But for as long as I have closely watched Canada over the past forty years, they are simply more humane, more generous and more sympathetic to the needs of their fellow man than we as Americans (taken as whole) have been able to muster. There is no reason for that. Canada has all the same burdens and obligations that we do. Their economy is a virtual mirror image of ours, so we cannot claim more hardship at any moment than they can. But they have handled everything from healthcare to pension management to their borders in a more progressive and enlightened way than we have.
I know just from my two years living in Canada, that they have not reached Nirvana by any means. In fact the internal strife between Québécois, Maritimes, Ontario residents and Western Provinces, including the heavily Asianized British Colombia, at times, flares up in very aggravated manner. But despite all of that and very similar energy versus climate debates that characterize our circumstances, Canada seems to be doing a better job of handling BOTH the migrant and the homelessness problems.
Recent studies show that homelessness is a problem of housing more than anything else. Migrants are often happy to work jobs in construction and senior healthcare. At the margin, there seems to be a fine solution in this which may be very cost-effective for those of us with the means and ultimately the NEED to support humanity as we can and keep it all from coming over the wall into our lives in unwanted ways. The pragmatic solution would seem to be to marshal migrant labor like we did in the Great Depression with the CCC, and deploy it to help the aging population and to build more public housing. I have always said that you can’t build your walls high enough to keep out an 8 billion person world…especially one that is demographically aging. We seem now to be at the top of that wall and now is the moment when we must find solutions rather than to try to build the walls higher, which will all end badly at one point or another and in one way or another.