Compassion is a good thing. It’s right and proper to have compassion for the downtrodden and the sick and the oppressed. But what happens when compassion is not properly thought through? It’s quite possible that badly thought out and primarily emotionally driven compassion could be the handmaiden of some quite nasty stuff.

John Cassara from the American Roman Catholic magazine ‘Crisis’ has produced an excellent and thought provoking article on the subject of poorly thought through compassion in relation to the US border control crisis. He starts his piece with remarks from some American Catholics on why the US should open its border to ‘refugees’.

The problem is this compassion didn’t work out that well for some of those who were the objects of compassion. Thousands of minors were waved through into America during the Biden Administration with no thought about who was looking after these children or where they were staying or what they were doing or what was being done to them.

Mr Cassara said:

“With the perspective of time, what is the reality of the Church hierarchy’s self-described “compassion” for “migrants”? 

Let’s start with something we should all be able to agree on—the tragedy and heartbreak of the most vulnerable: missing and exploited children.

During the four years of the Biden presidency, the United States faced an overwhelming border crisis. Estimates of illegals crossing our borders vary widely. However, it is generally accepted that at least 11 million crossed. (Note: I am not going to use the politically correct term “undocumented migrants” favored by the USCCB and others in Church leadership. In United States federal law, the statutory term defined in the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) is “illegal alien.”)

Included in the illegal aliens crossing the border during the Biden administration were roughly 480,000 unaccompanied minors. In many cases, these helpless children were released to sponsors without proper vetting. In its rush to get illegal aliens into the country, the Biden administration, including then U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services and current California gubernatorial Democratic candidate Xavier Becerra, lowered the guardrails.”

Mr Cassara added:

“Subsequent investigations during the later Trump administration revealed some of the “sponsors” were paying smugglers to bring the children into the country. There were also cases where “sponsors” fraudulently claimed familial relationships. As a result, these victim children were subjected to physical and sexual abuse and labor exploitation.

Investigations by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) showed that many of the unaccompanied minors were often placed in horrid living conditions or in situations that constituted neglect. In some cases, young unaccompanied girls became pregnant with children fathered by their alleged sponsors. ICE discovered numerous sponsors who committed serious crimes, including offenses of hit-and-run, aggravated assault, larceny, substance abuse, counterfeiting, drug trafficking, prostitution, and attempted murder.”

The situation that Mr Cassara is describing is truly horrible. The scattergun and poorly thought out ‘compassion’ of the Biden era has had terrible results for the children who were trafficked across the US border. It appears that those American politicians who wanted to prevent children being trafficked across the US border were not heartless but realistic and it’s quite possible that many children could have been saved from exploitation by taking a more robust view of border control.

Compassion is good but without coupling it up with critical thinking we end up with the terrible situation that Mr Cassara has described.

Please read the rest of Mr Cassara’s excellent article via the link below:

https://crisismagazine.com/opinion/consequences-of-compassion