Stranger Danger Lessons Applicable to Illegal Immigration

I grew up in a small town in Baghdad, Iraq. My neighborhood had many stories shared by its families who knew each other for many years. Most of the houses were occupied by owners who found tranquility not only within their own homes but among their neighbors as well.

In our neighborhood, there was a store run by an elderly man called Abu Muhammed and his son Sadeq.

There was another elderly man called Abu Ali, who used to sit near the front door of his house smoking cigarettes and chatting with pedestrians all day long. The chair on which Abu Ali sat was always outside, but before sitting in it he would always move his chair either to the left closer to his front door, or to the right to sit in the shade of a big oak tree marked at the corner of the street on which my family lived.

Many of us as children used to think that old Abu Muhammed and his son Sadeq only ran their store, while old Abu Ali just sat in his chair in shade smoking cigarettes and chatting with others.

But there was much more going on in my Iraqi hometown as we, the children, played outside.

Of course, Abu Muhammad, Sadeq and Abu Ali would occasionally assert some authority over we, the children, whenever parents were either absent or unaware of bad behavior by their children. All parents of our neighborhood knew and appreciated this authority.

If any of the children's conduct was bad enough to warrant disciplinary reaction, it was fairly applied by those senior men, and we would be reported immediately by Sadeq, who was in his early '20s, to our mothers. Our mothers in turn would discipline us even more, and then we would report to our fathers. Our fathers would typically administer their own rules of discipline on us as well.

This coherent series of disciplinary reactions by our senior men along with our parents created a safe environment for us as children and parents alike. We all knew there is an authority to be respected, and guidelines to be followed.

Of course, disrespecting or ignoring elderly people in my hometown was a taboo not to be violated by children, and respected by parents.

Likewise in America today, we can see a similar seniority in most family trees, where grandparents naturally assert a more authoritarian role within the family than any other member among the family branches.

When a good child misbehaves, the grandmother will be assertive on the parent of the child, not the child itself. It's always the parents who are responsible for raising their children.

Grandpa will always be the shield of love and contentment for all his family, including their pets.

Coming to America with my family as an immigrant, the first advice I learned from mothers in our community, in our children's schools, and from those who helped us to resettle, was to teach our children never to interact with any stranger, never receive any candies or gifts from strangers, and to teach our kids thoroughly the words "stranger danger."

As much as this "stranger danger" concept helped me as a mother to navigate the people around my children and to set the rules of engagement for my children affirmatively, it is now making me question our government in American.

What about those who keep raiding our country illegally, without any security vetting, proper identity documentation or legal process?

Is the "stranger danger" discipline approach to which I was introduced as a legal immigrant no longer valid for American parents and for our local governments?

Should our state and local governments not intervene when our children are faced with the desperate calls of "stranger danger" by their parents in the face of federal government policies that seem to be encouraging illegal immigration?

Why are our border states not conducting their own discipline, just like old Abu Muhammed and Abu Ali used to do in my Iraqi hometown, when faced by bad behavior by illegal immigrants?

Fortunately, Article I of our Constitution concludes by acknowledging that, "No State shall, without the consent of Congress, ... engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay."

I hope our parents will continue to teach their children "stranger danger," as our neighboring countries and our federal government allow illegal immigrants to invade the United States of America. We are already "in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay."

I pray for our people to refine their voice as parents, learning what we all have learned from our ancestors — and guided by our Constitution's values and principles. We need to be cohesively aligned with our Constitution as one family, one community and one nation.