My personal take on the refugees

I was going to sit quietly on this topic but as most of you know, I don't sit quietly about much.  There are many things being said lately.  "We need to offer a place for displaced refugees".  "We need to lock down our borders".  "We need to worry about our own."  "There are homeless and starving children in our country."

First, let me tell you that I am a huge advocate on taking care of our own.  That was how I was raised and unfortunately probably how I will always stay.   To me this mantra means, we take care of those in our house first. What it does not mean is that we overspend and don't give to charity.  In fact, we probably give more to charity than we can afford.  What it does mean when we give to charity however,  is that we give locally first.  We take care of our neighbors, our community, our city, our state and so on. 

An example of giving locally to charity is that I made a commitment to give some non perishable items to church for a Thanksgiving food bank for a apartment complex we adopted.  I was called off work today, wont get a huge paycheck but will follow through with my commitment because it's about giving.  I tend to believe that we should be part of the solution not part of the problem.

Now as for the refugees, my heart breaks for them.  I pray for peace, the end of world hunger, clean drinking water for all, homes for everyone, I want everyone to have a simple careful life.  However, I am not powerful enough alone in prayer or charitable gifting to do it alone.   Yes, I am very sorry for them and it makes my hurt heart for what happened, I am not sure I can support refugee placement right now. 

I did some research and a refugee when arriving in the US meets with one of the private resettlement agencies in America.  They will get cash, food and medical benefits within the first 30 to 90 days.  They are entitled to this for up to seven years while becoming a citizen and then they can apply on their own for more benefits once they are a citizen.  Refugees, can attend school just like citizens.  They can get employment benefits right away.  They can leave the US for up to one year at a time and come back without starting over.   Immediate family members are automatically part of the deal and will be brought over. 

How do we as a country handle all of these expenses?  I would like to do our countries budget for one year.  I would like to see our president eating ramen noodles for a week so that we could pay our bills and not live in a deficit.  I don't know about my readers, but in my family the bank doesn't allow us to live in a deficit.  That is called being overdrawn, you get your account closed and reported if we tried to do that. 

I would love for everyone to live in the US and be happy, fed, content and warm with a roof over their heads but I think we need to re evaluate.  My husband said last night that someone made the comment if people want things to happen they need to be a part of that solution.  Are you a part of the problem or a part of the solution?  Are you praying?  Giving to charity's, not just with dollars but with time and talent?  Are you advocating? 

We need to start educating ourselves, we need to start reading and asking questions.