Before railing against foreigners I think we all must look carefully at each of our own families’ travels across the planet and stop seeing differences and start seeing brothers and sisters.  Depending on which sides of my family history I look at I am either 3^rd or 4^th generation on this continent. There are many whose families came here before mine. Does that make me a foreigner to this place? I think so, in the sense of nationalistic boundaries. However I don’t think of myself as anything more than a human being  and this planet  is where humanity originates so far as I can tell, therefore none of us are foreigners, are we?   But more importantly what difference does it make? Yes there have been injustices. Yes there have been many things people have done to each other under many flags and under many beliefs that are based upon perceptions of difference and ignorance that have caused divisions. We as a planet are no longer ignorant unless we want to be or are made so by others. Information is available unless we are deprived the ability to find it and learn. Hate and fear are born of ignorance and compassion comes with understanding.  Everybody is different in some way, when people move from one place to another for economic or political reasons they tend to do it when they are in dire need to do so... Others are wanting for reasons of circumstance or misfortune what place is it of ours to judge our brethren?

Mark 14:7 “For you have the poor with you always, and whenever you will you may do them good: but me you have not always.” Matthew 26:11” For ye have the poor with you always, and whensoever ye will ye may do them good; by feeding them when hungry, clothing them when naked, and supplying them with the necessaries of life. ..“

We have the understanding that there will always be a need to lend help to some portion of our population and that it is something moral, necessary, and humane. Weather it is a function of government depends on your view of the term “welfare”.  As a rule government holds several keys to maintaining civil society, those being, to provide for general health, safety, and welfare of the society over which it governs. It is well known that the welfare of a society reaches to every member so to ignore the poorest in society (which also in many human societies is the most numerous group) would be done at risk of insurrection. Here in this country the amount in dollars given to keep the peace among the destitute is far less than the amount needed to rebuild a nation. It is also a minute amount as compared to the cost of policing the entire world,which we seem to be intent on as some righteous or upstanding gesture. We should consider our morality closely when we offer the world charity to help in times of need, billions of dollars, and yet many of our children are hungry at school. Is it any wonder that the rest of the world cringes when we as a nation send our Billions in aid abroad with a benevolent smile while our armies stand ready to sweep in and “keep the peace”  with trillions in arms to back them up?

After all - with family (both our direct family and our globally extended family) 

 ” If we fail to look after others when they need help, who will look after us?” ― Siddhārtha Gautama

shouldn't we look after others without threats, without malice or disrespect?    

 This is indeed the land of opportunity and as a species we have taken every opportunity we could. Now look carefully at where we are and what the future looks like for our brothers and sisters. I think we are blinded by chauvinism of a perception that the “American way of life” is somehow eternal.  The admonition of Siddhartha Gautama that “nothing is forever except change” should be paid some great attention by those people who are not willing to see that they live in a world of change.  We also live in a world where we are constantly moving to survive. We have been migrating across our big blue marble for as long as humanity's existence.

Some paleoanthropologists have suggested that the early ancestors of North Americas first peoples  may have been responsible for a more rapid extinction of many species of large game (paleomegafauna) when they were beginning to expand into the new world many thousands of years ago.  People have been changing the planet like other life has changed it before us and will change it after we go. To say our existence does not change the planet is put simply – ignorant. We as a species are not that much different today from the first peoples of the major land masses in the northern hemisphere as we migrated from the southern hemisphere of this planet after the glaciers began to recede.  We gobble up resources and destroy the cycles of life to suit our desires. This is and has been and may be both a wildly successful survival strategy, and our inevitable down fall. The more successful we become, the more rapid the resource consumption. Sooner or later there must be a limit unless we discover an escape hatch to the stars and there we find more resources to consume to feed our continued growth…

Have we changed the planet?  – I think the evidence is clear indeed we have.  Good, bad, indifferent? We have yet to tell, because in the time span of the planet we are nothing more than a recent blemish on the surface of a very slowly changing system. Weather we have made a scratch in the skin of the environment that will heal in time or we have punctured an artery and it will cause our inevitable demise is still a future we must wait to see. Either way we are all children of the same mother and are fighting as siblings do. But we must at some point grow up to see that the squabbling is about nothing and the real task of living on our little rock is to do it well with some small amount of comfort and security.  Together we can have that comfort and security through compassion and understanding. Fighting and separation by economic or other types of warfare simply provide discord and distress that further alienate and segregate the peoples of the planet, the siblings of us all. Mohandas Gandhi use a simple idea of personal industry to help raise the standard of living in India and that idea of personal industry is at work around the globe. But industry no matter how small takes investment. Investment by both the society and the individual is critical to starting a self sustaining human enterprise no matter the size.  

 The few bucks we spend on helping those who need it in our own nation are so minute as compared to the amounts spent on other things I wonder if those people who are opposed to the expense are simply angry and mean spirited because they have been treated badly, dealt a bad hand, or have never wondered where the next meal is going to come from. Perhaps they are just sociopathic fascists with no conscience. It makes me wonder what leader they would follow when the global distribution chains we have built are broken again and the world becomes a very uncomfortable place. We all will migrate to food and resources and struggle to simply survive as immigrants and foreigners in what may become more than a hostile political landscape………