2008. I had slowly become aware of the migrant problem in our country, but somehow I didn't get it at the time. My best friends - or so it seemed - were "illegals." Never bothered me at all, then.
And I was thinking much about North Korea in those days... This is what I wrote:
I really don't want to get into the whole illegal alien thing.
Whether they are justified or we are right and all that. Some of my best
friends fall into that category. Finest people I've ever met. Just wanted to
work. To earn money. To eat, etc. But I'll leave it there.
I was struck though by the very stark contrast between a Mexican "migrant" to America and one from, say, North Korea, going to China. Imagine a Mexican being not only sent back to Mexico, but being brutally tortured or even killed upon being sent back. Imagine a Mexican being charged with leaving his home village as though it were a criminal offense.
But in North Korea it is a criminal offense.
Imagine a Mexican being tried in court for not showing up at work.
Imagine the accusation of "leaving the country." Leaving the country
is an internationally guaranteed right, assuming of course that the other
country is willing to receive another citizen or tourist.
After being found guilty of all of the above, imagine a Mexican being sent
to a short-term (2-3 years?) labor camp where there is below subsistence-level
food rationing and high possibility of death and the hardest of labor. Imagine
grueling interrogations geared at determining the poor hungry soul's dedication
to the Mexican regime.
Hard to imagine in this hemisphere? But everyday stuff in Chosun (North Korea), aided by
China's supportive hands. Whenever possible the Chinese police, expecting a
bonus of some sort, send North Koreans back to their own land. Of course, it's
not always possible. As here, "illegals" are quite often assimilated
into the culture and the economy.
But part of that economy is slave trade "over there". Imagine
that. A Mexican risks his life to get to a place where there is food, and is
trapped at the border by a citizen of the host country. He or she is sold
into sexual slavery, or forced into a marriage to some desperate
American...
Maybe not so hard to imagine, but very common at the Chinese border.
Imagine local businesses in America being raided from time to time, as
illegals are swept out the back door like so much vermin and sent back to
Mexico (I know some have proposed this). Imagine Mexicans having been treated
so poorly here, and punished beyond words in their home land, actually
attempting to make the trip here again. Imagine that a trip to the United
States may mean the killing or imprisonment of all their family in Mexico. (In 2008, I didn't realize that was the possibility here)
Imagine that during interrogation at home in Mexico, the Mexican is asked if
he went to a Christian Church. Imagine that with a positive response to that
question he is executed. Imagine a Mexican begging the interrogator to kill her
so as to avoid any more punishment.
Imagine a Mexican who has become pregnant in the States being forced to
abort her child, or kill her already-born infant, so that the holy ethnicity of
the Mexicans can remain intact.
Can't do it, can you? Can't imagine such horrors in our part of the world?
But David Hawk in his Hidden Gulag (available free online)
documents that all these things and more have happened in Chosun.
I ask you once more to pray with me for North Korea. Fervently. Daily. God will hear us. God will change North Korea and the men responsible for damaging the Korean people.
Thanks for your visit! Go to https://www.icommittopray.com/ for
regular updates on the persecuted church. Check out my books at Amazon.com.
Send me a message at bobdiakonos7@gmail.com
No comments:
Post a Comment
Comments