By Evelyn Pyburn

So reports are that migrants who have come to the US illegally are disappointed and want to return home. They are saying “the American dream is dead.”

As one Venezuelan illegal was quoted, “The American Dream doesn’t exist anymore. There’s nothing here for us… We just want to be home. If we’re going to be sleeping in the street here, we’d rather be sleeping in the streets over there.”

If they thought the “American dream” was handouts, freebees and socialized care from cradle to the grave, then double good riddance to them.

The “American dream” was never about those things – the American dream is, and will always be, about the freedom of individuals to work hard, to create and to generate wealth – the wealth that makes socialistic whims possible, for those who want to be kept citizens. But the socialistic whims only last until – as it has been said – we run out of other people’s money. “Other people”, of course, being those who are producing the wealth needed to sustain those who prefer not to work.

And, we should be doubly glad that they are gone because they are ILLEGAL! If they do not respect our country to the degree that their first act is to commit a crime with the crossing of our borders, then exactly when can we expect them to be law-abiding, trust worthy citizens, who truly respect this country and its laws?

The answer is never.

Never will they stand up and defend those principles or the people who live by them, when the chips are down – which is a most likely scenario with so many dishonest and disrespectful criminals abiding among us, who will vote for corrupt politicians. They vote for unethical politicians to wield the force that is necessary to aid them in their ideal of confiscating the property of the honest and productive citizens.

That there are many people crashing our borders because they want freedom there is no doubt. It is mind boggling that there are many in the US who apparently do not want freedom – people who apparently believe that powerful politicians, who will subjugate others, are their friends. It is indeed too bad that they have never studied history.

There was a reason for having a legal structure to enter the US – so immigrants would not have to sleep in the streets. Part of that process included immigrants having a sponsor – someone to help them get established so they would have a place to live, food and a job. And, US citizens across the board readily stepped up to be sponsors. Often they were church organizations, not unlike the one recently reported on in Billings that is assisting legal immigrants.

Democratic leaders in places like Chicago and New York are crying that they lack the resources to feed and house the thousands upon thousands of illegal immigrants who have descended upon their communities, and they blame President Biden for not giving them enough funding to do so. They say their states have provided millions in aid but the federal government has not matched it.

These politicians are little different than the illegal immigrants who thought the “American dream” was about freebees and handouts. They too do not understand the “American dream.” They apparently do not know that it isn’t their state or the federal government that has the wealth needed to support the illegal aliens. They do not seem to know that the aid they talk about comes from taxpayers – the citizens who work and produce and abide by the laws. They express no appreciation or recognition for the people from whom the funds must come. But given the role they play as legal plunderers, their indifference is not surprising.

This situation of encouraging illegal immigrants to enter the US, seeking a distorted perception of the American dream, has every potential of unraveling the fabric of the “American dream.”

The truly sad thing is the “American dream” is not something that has to be uniquely American. Any country can have it. Nothing – absolutely nothing – stands in the way of any country having the wealth and standard of living that Americans have – but it can’t be achieved through socialism or any kind of collectivism.  The people of a country – including the US —must rid themselves of the confiscators – the corrupt politicians – and they must believe in the justness of individual freedom, and abide by the ideals and principles of individual responsibility and system of laws, rather than the favors of power mongers.

While many illegal immigrants have come with a very incorrect idea about what the American dream is –they are not alone. Many Americans hold the same mistaken ideas, which is significant because it is the IDEA that matters. It is not a matter of borders. The American dream is built upon an IDEA . . . and it is that IDEA that is the focus of the desperate efforts of collectivists to censor communications, silence free speech and criminalize the exchange of ideas, so that people never understand the IDEA. It is the IDEA of the “American dream” that they fear. The American dream is the IDEA that each citizen should be free to live life as they choose.