A Safer Place

How might we handle the flood of refugees?  Today, perhaps only 1 percent of the world’s refugees are resettled.  Most spend years in temporary accommodations, waiting for a solution; i.e., repatriation, resettlement or local integration.

Then there are the thousands of Somali refugees welcomed in Djibouti.

Somalis have been refugees the longest, as decades of violence and instability have prevented them from safely returning home.  Somalis in the Ali Addeh refugee settlement in Djibouti were born and lived there to adulthood.  It is now their home in every way.

Djibouti presents an alternative to isolationism: hospitality and protection as an intentional response to regional insecurity.  The country is poor and has perhaps little to offer, but it is a safe place for the refugees, a great step up from where they were.  There's help for them there and perhaps some hope for their children.
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Djibouti was established as a host country for persons seeking refuge.  It won independence from France in 1977, just three weeks after war began between Ethiopia and Somalia.  Tens of thousands of refugees flooded across the border, seeking safety, food and water.  All were welcomed.  Eight years later, when famine and conflicts in the Horn of Africa intensified, tens of thousands more refugees came.

Government officials in Djibouti proudly cite their history, a national ethic of hospitality, and the economic advantages of population movement and diversity as all central to the country’s handling of refugees.  Their law ensures refugees, asylum-seekers, and Djiboutian citizens equal rights to education, health care, work, and movement outside refugee camps.

Today, migrants in Djibouti include Yemeni refugees fleeing war, Somalis fleeing political insecurity and drought, and Ethiopians escaping political persecution and deadly poverty.

This is the Loyada checkpoint on Djibouti's eastern border; about 250 meters farther, a Somali guard station.  It was quiet when we were there.  It's just a few miles away from where my friends live.
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I met a gracious fellow in eastern Africa, just a few kilometers from the Somali border.  He has a large family; his wife and children plus a widow and her children who they'd taken in.  He didn't have much, some goats and a camel and a house he'd built from scavenged wood and sheet metal, but he'd accepted them and made a safe place for them.  It's a long and incredible story; they came as refugees.

Waving goodbye, the last time.

His kids dragged me home to meet the family, and we became comfortable friends.  They welcomed me every time I was in country, and they never asked for anything.  They work hard to survive and the kids work hard to help. 

It took me a long time to grasp the depth and breadth of his grace as a man and their nobility as people.  As I remember the smiling faces of his children, I lament what he might think of my country today and how he and his family might have been treated had they come to our border.

Before we move on ...

Central American immigrants await transportation to a U.S. Border Patrol processing center after crossing 

the Rio Grande near Mission, Texas. Tens of thousands of undocumented immigrants, many of them 

families or unaccompanied minors, have crossed illegally into the United States this year and presented 

themselves to federal agents, causing a humanitarian crisis.   (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images/2014)

The immigration problems remain unchanged, the process remains opaque, and the refugee crisis continues as it has in recent years.  It  is unlikely to end until the causes are resolved.

The recent response to family separation has opened border management and crisis response to public inquiry, but little has been uncovered regarding record keeping and a process for reunification.  Will focus on the abused individuals continue until solutions are provided?  Or will we relegate the concern to others and move on?

U.S. Border Patrol - Southwest 
Border Apprehensions FY2018

Numbers below reflect Fiscal Years 2013-2017, FYTD 2018 (October 1, 2017 - May 31, 2018)

Unaccompanied Alien Children Apprehensions by Country of Origin
Country	FY 2013	FY 2014		FY 2015	FY 2016	FY 2017	FYTD 2018
El Salvador	5,990		16,404	9,389	17,512	9,143	2,690
Guatemala	8,068		17,057	13,589	18,913	14,827	16,480
Honduras	6,747		18,244	5,409	10,468	7,784	6,350
Mexico	17,240		15,634	11,012	11,926	8,877	6,690

Family Unit* Apprehensions by Country

Numbers below reflect Fiscal Year 2016 and 2017, FYTD 2018 (October 1, 2017 - May 31, 2018)

Family Units* Apprehensions by Country of Origin
Country	FY 2016	FY 2017	FYTD 2018
El Salvador	27,114	24,122	7,167
Guatemala	23,067	24,657	29,278
Honduras	20,226	22,366	20,675
Mexico	3,481	2,217	1,461

*Note: (Family Unit represents the number of individuals (either a child under 18 years old, parent
or legal guardian) apprehended with a family member by the U.S. Border Patrol.) 

Note: 24 JUN 18, we still don't know where the girls are.

A refuge in time of trouble - Update

Fleeing gang threats of death
against her young son, a mother 
brought her three children from
El Salvador to the U.S.   After 
3000 miles and 3 borders, 
her children were forcibly
taken from her.  It was three
months before they were finally
reunited in Houston. [ref]

Others aren't so lucky.

Headlines for June 2018 - Infants and children are being taken from their parents.  

The problem grows.  Forced separation of children from parents has irreversible impact, of course. Traumatic severity increases with the length of separation and has greater effect on younger children.

Desperate families fleeing for their lives, who've struggle for weeks just to survive, are being harmed further by current policy and practices.  Around 500 children have been forcibly taken from their parents in the last two weeks alone.  

     As of May 2018, DHS reports there are 10,773 unaccompanied children in U.S. detention centers. Even those families arriving legally and requesting asylum have been similarly abused though there are no legal grounds for separating them from their children.  Once separated, children are transferred from DOJ to DHS and processed separately.  There is no organizational support for reunification.
     DOJ reports there are now 76,634 backlogged cases for separated and unaccompanied children.  The numbers are a problem, and understandably, the Border Patrol, ICE, DOJ, and DHS are overwhelmed.  A former Walmart center has been converted to house 1500 boys, tent cities are planned, ....

It's about more than numbers, though; it's about people, children, and unusual cruelty.  
This must change.

And an interesting perspective, there's the problem we see at the border, and then there's the cause ... What are they running from? Is there some way to change things?  

Behind the increasing numbers of refugees:

• Conflicts that cause large refugee outflows, like Somalia and Afghanistan – now in their third and fourth decade respectively, are lasting longer.
• Dramatic new or reignited conflicts and situations of insecurity are occurring more frequently. While today’s largest is Syria, wars have broken out in the past five years in South Sudan, Yemen, Burundi, Ukraine, and the Central African Republic.  Hundreds of thousands have fled widespread gang violence in Central America, from the world’s most murderous countries.
• The rate at which solutions are being found for refugees and internally displaced people has trended downward since the end of the Cold War, leaving a growing number with no place to turn.

18 JUN:  Children arriving at our border are already traumatized by having to flee their homes and the life they knew. Now, they've endured the dangerous 2000+ mile journey, and they've faced things no child should see. They come to us to beg for help. For those then forcibly taken from their parents, the trauma continues and deepens. I cannot imagine so abusing a child, or a parent for that matter. Let's not treat them like pawns in a political contest.

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham called on the president last week to use his executive authority to end the policy, emphasizing that no legislative action was needed.

"President Trump could stop this policy with a phone call," Graham said on Friday. "I'll go tell him. If you don't like families' being separated, you can tell DHS: 'Stop doing it.'"

20 JUN:  An executive order has ended the forcible separation of children from parents, but 'zero tolerance' remains in effect.  Refugees are still being treated as criminals.

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Part I

You can contribute to the work.  WorldVision.Org accomplishes more than most in providing assistance and addressing underlying causes at the community level.

Synthetic Attraction

             Years ago, someone had the clever idea to establish an amazing new silk industry in the United States, so they brought in gypsy moths to create it.  ~ Dr. Judith Reisman

Instead, they ate our trees. The effects were disastrous. It was time to destroy the moths before they destroyed our forests, but pesticide after pesticide didn’t do the job.

“Finally, somebody came up with the very creative erotic concept… to have synthetic but intense smells of the female moths put into little pellets.” said Reisman.

At mating time, the male gypsy moths would seek after the smell of the female gypsy moths. All around them females were fluttering, waiting to be chosen, but the male gypsy moths would continue to float all around, looking for that perfect mate… and finding no one.

“She’s all over the place, but he is not finding her,” said Reisman.

He didn’t find her, because the natural female scent couldn’t compete with the synthetic lab-created smell they had been exposed to.

Eventually, they couldn’t mate and they died, because that synthetic smell completely obscured the natural scent of females, concluded Reisman. “In essence, that is exactly what has been happening with pornography.”

Dr. Judith Reisman, author, historian and activist, likens the impact of pornography to that of the synthetic scent in that 1960s gypsy moth extermination.

Pornography is a brain-changer; it changes the neurological categorization of sexual stimulation to an independent pursuit of physical pleasure rather than a subordinate part of healthy relationship.
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Note: In 1994, Playboy sued Dutch tv broadcaster EO to demand the retraction of statements by Dr. Reisman. On air, Reisman essentially accused Playboy, Penthouse, and Hustler magazines of producing child pornography, based on the study of three decades of their publications. Playboy lost the lawsuit. In the ruling, Reisman's findings are referred to as: "the uncontested factual findings of Dr. Reisman"

From an introduction to the ConquerSeries 

Living life wrong ...

Things that backfire aren't always understood before the consequences start showing up.

Sex, for example ... moving sexual intimacy outside the boundaries of a healthy relationship is like moving sugar outside of a healthy diet plan.  Imagine hours of consuming just sugar.  It affects you immediately and will eventually ruin your health.
Sexual intimacy in a healthy relationship is a joy, but outside that context, it's just a gratification much like an addictive drug.  It will reshape your behavior, your thought-life, and your future.
Who pays the cost?  You, your family, your children, and your ability to relate to others will suffer.

Do the research yourself.
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Gratification, quick satisfaction of a desire with little regard for cost or consequence ....

E.g., a budget plan puts things in place and priority; food and shelter, health and development, and later years.
Spending outside the plan may be fun, but it's unwise, just gratification.
Spending what you don't have now ... will cost more and will shape your future.
Who pays the cost?  You, your family, your children ....

E.g., a healthy life-plan prioritizes relationships and family, recreation and work, eating and exercise, and future goals.
Binge living, whether consumption or luxury or intoxicants, may be fun, but it's unwise, just gratification.
Spending life on the wrong things ... will have a high cost and will shape your future.
Who pays the cost?  You, your family, your children ....
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Addiction - At some point, repeated behavior focused on pleasure, on quick gratification, becomes compelling, even compulsive like an addiction.   The brain changes, as we now know; it's physically reshaped to focus on progressively more pleasure.  It's a ferocious life-changer.
Who pays the cost?  You, your family, your children ....
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This is from a recent tv ad about  ...  toenail fungus   
...   on multiple  networks, daytime and primetime, 
perhaps the best example recently of 'sex sells'.

Our culture tends to push us off balance.  Sensually framed advertising, sexualized story-lines in popular media, and pornography, all have increased dramatically in recent decades.  Kinsey and Hefner gave us the sexual revolution, commercialized sex, and today's burgeoning porn industry.  The increase in sex trafficking and trafficking children we've seen is perhaps a by-product.  The cost is high and will be higher in years to come.
Moving sex outside the context of a healthy relationship has a price.
Who pays the cost?  You, your family, your children, your culture ....

Do the research yourself.  That's the world we live in; it's an active battleground.   So how do we equip ourselves and fight, and how do we lead our children?

Executive summary: “If we understand sexuality as being first about intimacy, then viewing pornography becomes a voyeuristic invasion of the sacred space of another. Instead of being life-giving, it becomes destructive for the viewer as well as the one involved in its production. It provides a false, or counterfeit, way of feeding the need for intimacy. On a cultural and social level, men and women are portrayed as objects for our consumption. The undeniable message here is that people are pieces of meat for our consuming pleasure and entertainment. If that is how the brain is being forced to respond to these images, the objectification and commoditization of people will seep into other parts of the viewer’s mind. It will affect the way he views people when he is not watching porn. The regular consumer of porn will begin to find that he fantasizes throughout the day about sex. Each woman he sees will be seen through a pornographic lens. People become an object of consumption or a competitor against whom they compare themselves. They will be evaluated as to their stimulating ability. It should come as no surprise that that these consequences can destroy a marriage, family, ministry, or career. While it offers the promise of intimacy and connection, pornography only delivers isolation, disconnectedness, and depravity.”   ~The Conquer Series (coming soon)

Reality vs. Rhetoric

The president admitted he hates taking in refugees. "I guarantee you they are bad." He added, "They are not going to be wonderful people who go on to work for the local milk people."

Actually, refugees are a benefit to America.  A report released in April this year suggests that the dire warnings about those who seek asylum in the United States may be unfounded. In fact, the report indicates, they're helping make America great.  They fill in the gaps in the work force, they get educated, pay taxes, buy homes, make progress, and become part of the American way.  In 2015, for example, refugee income nationwide totaled $77.2 billion and refugees paid $20 billion in taxes, according to the report. 

While vetting all incoming foreign nationals is appropriate, discrimination by race or origin in general has no supportable rationale.  Is racism involved in the decision making we seen?  Of course.  Is there unfounded prejudice?  Absolutely.  "Rapists" from "sh**hole countries", "they're not sending us their best."  Many among us think similarly, unfortunately.

"The US has become a dumping ground for everybody else's problems. Thank you. It's true, and these are the best and the finest. When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. .... They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people." Objective review and analysis suggest the statement is inaccurate.

These are folks fleeing for their lives; they're not sent by Mexico or anyone else.  Refugee admission limits have been reduced to their lowest level in thirty years.  Families and children are caught in the turmoil.   Is this our best national response, one of conscience and reason?

Photojournalist Steve McCurry commented , "In seeing this current global refugee crisis, it's almost like people in Europe and the US are scared of refugees. Or they simply don't want the burden of hosting them. But we forget none are actually more scared than the refugees themselves. They are forced from their country, their homes."