Let U.N. Handle Refugees at Southern Border

The U.S. donates $3.3 billion to the U.N. annually, 22% of the U.N.’s annual budget. The U.N. in turn, spent $7.7 billion in 2017 on 25.4 million refugees. Refugees are not to be confused with the 68.5 million people forced from their homes who are not refugees. They should also not be confused with immigrants. Africa, Asia and the Middle East are the primary beneficiaries of U.N. refugee funding and resettlement programs.

Refugees are generally defined as displaced persons who have been forced to cross national boundaries and who cannot return home safely. Such persons may also be called asylum seekers until granted refugee status if they formally make a claim for asylum — not to be confused with those forced from their homes who eventually return — or immigrants!

Immigrants are people who go voluntarily to a destination country of which they are not natives, or where they do not possess citizenship, to find employment and settle there.

The human caravans of people coming from Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico and other parts of South and Central America are refugees. They are not people forced from their homes or immigrants. Granted, some immigrants join these caravans under the guise of being refugees.

Why not have the U.N. fund and manage the refugee caravans of only a few thousand people at the U.S. southern border in Mexico?

The caravan camps of refugees on the Mexican side of the U.S.-Mexico border — referred to locally as illegal immigrants — are pathetic squalor camps compared to the neat refugee camps around the world. All these refugees around the world, including those camped out in Mexico trying to get into the U.S., are fleeing political, religious or economic persecution. They are seeking a better, safer life elsewhere for themselves and their children. They are refugees.

Why is the U.S. shouldering the burden of funding the refugees camped at its border in Mexico when the U.N. is being paid to do so with U.S. tax dollars? Isn’t this part of the U.N.’s mandate?

The time to hand over the refugee crisis at the U.S. southern border to the U.N. is long overdue!