Dear Editor,
Millions of Venezuelans are fleeing hunger and repression in their collapsing socialist state.
I saw photographs of fleeing children and mothers. The images were disturbing and distressing. The children looked hungry, frightened and hopeless.
Editor, the President is familiar with the biblical story about caring for the “Least of these.”
These children are the “Least of these,” and they need our help.
They are asking our country for a little help. Will the President and country help them?
They are humans too. I repeat, they are humans too. Before you answer the question Editor, I want you to think about this:
If I speak with the eloquence of men and of angels, but have no love, I become no more than blaring brass or crashing cymbal. If I have the gift of foretelling the future and hold in my mind not only all human knowledge but the very secrets of God, and if I also have that absolute faith which can move mountains, but have no love, I amount to nothing at all. If I dispose of all that I possess, yes, even if I give my own body to be burned, but have no love, I achieve precisely nothing, 1 Corinthians 13:1-3.
Editor, one never knows how much helping a child can change the trajectory of the child’s life. And you never know how that child can end up helping the country by serving in the military or building a big business and employing thousands of Guyanese. You just never know.
As one whose family has fled starvation and violence, I empathized with the Venezuelans.
Editor, I have asked myself countless times what if the United States of America had rejected my family when we fled Guyana, where would I be, what would have happened to me, who would have saved me from a life of crime and prison, how would I have survived the living in one of the most violent villages (Albouystown) in the country. What future was there for me a dunce and school dropped out?
I am so glad that America accepted my family. Because America accepted me, I joined the military and served in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. My daughter is also planning to serve in the military.
Editor, a decade from now I can see a Venezuelan who was given refuge in Guyana writing about how much living in Guyana changed the trajectory of his/her life, like how living in America transformed my life. We never know how much you can help a person by accepting him/her into the country.
Mr. President, God has given you the presidency for such a time as this, and God will bless you, if you help these people, and one day, you will hear these most sacred words,”Well done, good and faithful servant, enter into your rest.”
Yours faithfully,
Anthony Pantlitz
