Why are illegal immigrants treated better than our own veterans?
Getty Images/George Rose
We’ve heard the stats, but I want to make sure we’re not calloused to the reality of those numbers. In a 2017 study, researchers found that an alarming number of people were ambivalent about or even wary of veterans due to perceived problems with mental health, despite having no context other than their photo.
While the Left and today’s youth flood social media with discussions of mental health, they seem more concerned with not being misgendered than caring for our men and women in uniform. The collective treatment of veterans and service members in the last several years has not done anything to boost morale for the brave men and women who serve our country.
The complete mismanagement of the Afghanistan withdrawal was hard to watch for civilians, and even more so for those who served. I had a Vietnam veteran tell me that watching the withdrawal felt like coming home from Vietnam, thanklessly and painfully all over again. This operational failure left civilian contractors abandoned. People in the region whom we asked to help us and supply our forces, with the expectation and trust that we would help them if it all fell apart, were left helpless.
Those details rest on the shoulders of our soldiers. Not to mention the people in the last administration who facilitated military operations safely and responsibly, getting people home without compromising their safety or our national security, including 58 hostages in volatile countries. The Biden administration’s recent and poorly negotiated
$6 billion exchange with Iran only adds to the pile of negligence, especially given the conflict that arose in the Middle East right after.
Recently, a nursing home was shut down and sold directly to
house illegal immigrants, giving 95-year-old Frank Tammaro, a Korean War veteran, less than two months to figure out where he would live. America’s current illegal immigrant population receives more funding than veterans do, and now more than ever, it’s not a victimless reallocation of funds. We have an open southern border, with more than 260,000 people pouring in every month. How much of that funding going toward illegal immigrants could be used to house the 55,000 homeless veterans who fought for our freedom?
I work with Musicians On Call, a nonprofit organization that brings music into hospitals nationwide, and I saw firsthand how increased funding for veterans led to an influx of improvements in 2017; it was visible in the halls. It doesn’t take huge budget increases, just incremental improvements in facilities and attitude.
Veterans are the direct pipeline to the freedom and liberties we enjoy every single day, something I fear the upcoming generation doesn’t understand. The efforts to squash patriotism and pride in the armed forces have gone hand in hand.
With the hyper-politicization in today’s culture, I fear that veterans and the military have been made to seem like a partisan issue, especially to the Left. America’s youth haven’t seen a draft; we haven’t seen people too young to order a beer be shipped off to some foreign land to defend the flag under which we all live. We are now living with the results of weak men creating hard times, and we forgot to thank the strong men (and women) who served to make the good times of the past.
Veterans Day should always remind us of the importance of thanking members of the military. But it should also stand as a reminder that the world we create, the people we vote for, the policies we usher in, and the respect we teach our children should reflect the world our veterans agreed to defend.
Veterans served our country to give us the opportunity to create a better one. My grandfather served in the Korean War. He died a few years ago, and it makes me cringe to watch the news and see people cheering for things he fought to keep out of this country. A son of immigrants from a warring country himself, he would be pained at the ideas of socialism, terrorism, and limiting freedoms we see threatening our daily lives. He and so many other veterans gave so much to leave America better than they found it; the very least we can do is be brave and speak up in these uncertain times to carry on that legacy.
We are responsible for maintaining the world they sacrificed everything to defend. Today and always, we should do everything we can to thank them, assist them, and most importantly honor them.
This column was originally posted on Washingtonexaminer.com