Reader Mary posted this comment to my post yesterday on the immigrant court system in the US.

You appear to have fallen off the cliff to chronic cynicism. People are desperate and are forced to leave children behind. Who are we to judge? I, for one, have never been faced with these decisions.

Yes, I admit, the more I learn about the worldwide refugee industry, the more cynical I get.  But, Mary, please answer my questions, and the questions in the minds of many who read the story about the poor woman from Cameroon who spent 5 years wrangling with our court system before being granted asylum.

First and foremost, how does a poor third worlder (not just this woman, but all of them!) with virtually no English manage to acquire the tens of thousands of dollars required to make a trip halfway (or more!) around the world, through several countries that you and I couldn’t easily get into to arrive on the US border and know to ask for asylum?

Who is paying the trafficker, the airlines, the passport forgers, the lawyers?

And, I suppose I shouldn’t make a cultural judgment, but I will!   What mother leaves her children alone in a country she now claims is dangerous for her family to take a risky trip halfway around the world on the off chance she will be granted asylum in the US?  Was she just trying to save her own skin?  Who told her that asylum might be possible; who put her up to it?

Mary, you suggest I’m a chronic cynic.  Tell me how can you be so chronically gullible?

P.S.  Mary, I am sure you are a decent well-meaning and good-hearted person, but it’s time to see that “humanitarianism” is merely a smokescreen for, in my view, a devious political plan that uses poor people (and people with good hearts) to accomplish its goals.