The other night on TV, I watched a video of hundreds of people trudging through mud near the border between Colombia and Panama in a place called the Darien Gap–all trying to get to America.

All of Donald Trump’s talk and the miles of border wall that he built, and all of the efforts of Joe Biden to try to talk them into staying home have had little impact. They are desperate, dispossessed and they are trying to seek a better life. They are on the move.

There is nothing new about human migration coming to North America. Human beings have always been looking for a better life here, whether it was native Americans coming across an ice bridge from Asia, or Europeans fleeing famine and discrimination in their home countries. We live in a place that has offered opportunity and a new start.

For immigrants coming from places like Sweden, Ireland and Italy, it was a long sea voyage…3000 miles or more. It is also a long walk from the Darien Gap to the U.S. border today…about 2,000 miles. People will come long distances to get here no matter how difficult the journey.

Despite what it says on the Statue of Liberty, we no longer can abide by its words: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses….” We now have limits on immigration.

There is a lot of blame to be shared for our current immigration crisis. Trump and Biden did not create it, and they alone cannot fix it. Congress tried back when John McCain was in the Senate to change the immigration laws…and that effort failed. Congress today has been AWOL on the whole issue, and it has largely become a blame-game between Republicans and Democrats as to who is at fault.

The ultimate solution, of course, is to reverse decline in the failed states from which these people come. The Swedes stopped coming when their country began to offer jobs and opportunity at home. In Italy, democracy was established and a vibrant economy developed. The same kind of thing happened in Ireland. Today you don’t get a crush of refugees coming from these countries to the United States.

Today, not only are many Central American countries dysfunctional–in some, gangs and drug lords seem to have taken over. Even Venezuela, once a thriving symbol of prosperity in South America, has descended into the chaos of dictatorship.

Mexico is holding on by the “skin of its teeth” as a functioning democracy. But, even there, opportunity is hard to come by. You don’t hear about many of these thousands of migrants coming north deciding to stop and find a new life in Mexico. They just keep pushing on for the Texas border.

To be honest, the immigration crisis is worldwide in scope. The poor and dispossessed from Africa and the Middle East are trying to get to Europe. The persecuted in Myanmar are moving to Bangladesh. People living on islands in the South Pacific are afraid that rising sea levels may cause them to flee and seek life in a different country.

If there is an easy answer to any of this, I haven’t heard it. Ultimately, the needs of common humanity must be met in the places where people live. Otherwise, they are going to be on the move to find a better life–only now there are fewer “open spaces” than there were in centuries past.

Rolland Kidder is a Stow resident.