Salty Zebra

 Last year about this time, I wrote to you all asking for a little help from my friends , and you showed up! We raised $357.68 in donations over the month and I wanted to share with you today how that has influenced my blog this year.  First, it showed me that there were real people out there reading what I was writing who actually valued it enough to contribute financially. That means more than I can possibly express! I love  writing, but it's hard when you put things out into the blogosphere day after day and you wonder if anyone sees it, if anyone cares, if it's making a difference. When you all showed up for me last December, it encouraged me to keep writing, to keep traveling, to keep learning and sharing things with you. THANK YOU!!!  Next, by having some level of financial income, my blog was legitimized as a business. This enabled me to open five different credit cards and two bank accounts earning me 365,000 points/miles and $1,200 in account signup bonuses....

Note: This is the fourth and final post in a series of posts focusing on the illegal immigrant situation in the US. While much of this is informed by my personal feelings and opinions, I do not claim to be unbiased, I have tried to share sources whenever possible. Please feel free to share with me your thoughts, but I ask that you would do so in love. Any comments given that are hurtful will be deleted, though they cannot be deleted from my mind, so consider our relationship when posting please.   Image courtesy of WikiMedia Commons  I put off writing this post, I think. It's the hardest one for me to write because the subject is so precious and therefore so scary to me. Today I'm writing about how illegal immigration affects children. One wouldn't think that it's a major problem, but the more I learn, the more concerns I have. And it's not just immigrant children that are affected, other children are as well. According to this article , nearly 150,000 come to the b...

Note: This is the third in a series of posts focusing on the illegal immigrant situation in the US. While much of this is informed by my personal feelings and opinions, I do not claim to be unbiased, I have tried to share sources whenever possible. Please feel free to share with me your thoughts, but I ask that you would do so in love. Any comments given that are hurtful will be deleted, though they cannot be deleted from my mind, so consider our relationship when posting please.   “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”  As I mentioned in my last post on this topic, the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) seems to indicate that the only way to apply for asylum today is if you are already in the country (1). So the logical question follows, why don’t people just ask for asylum after they enter the country? Sadly, it seems that for many, if not most, this will do no good.   A number of people entered the country illegall...

  Note: This is the second in a series of posts focusing on the illegal immigrant situation in the US. While much of this is informed by my personal feelings and opinions, I do not claim to be unbiased, I have tried to share sources whenever possible. Please feel free to share with me your thoughts, but I ask that you would do so in love. Any comments given that are hurtful will be deleted, though they cannot be deleted from my mind, so consider our relationship when posting please.    As a person who has traveled a bit around the world, it seems obvious to me that one could do it legally. Now, mind you, when travelling to India I know that you're not supposed to put "missionary" on your visa application. You put "business" or "vacation" on it or it will get denied. Is that illegal travel? Some would say so, but I call it looking at life from a different perspective. The thing is, I have the privilege of living in the United States. We have the honor o...

Note: This is the first in a series of posts focusing on the illegal immigrant situation in the US. While much of this is informed by my personal feelings and opinions, I do not claim to be unbiased, I have tried to share sources whenever possible. Please feel free to share with me your thoughts, but I ask that you would do so in love. Any comments given that are hurtful will be deleted, though they cannot be deleted from my mind, so consider our relationship when posting please.    I've heard from a lot of people that they believe illegal immigrants are mostly criminals, and not just for committing the crime of coming in illegally, I mean that is obvious. They are concerned about rape and murder, drugs and trafficking. "they're coming from prisons and jails, mental institutions, and insane asylums," Trump said at a rally in Chesapeake, Virginia last year, "millions and millions of people that are coming from prisons." (1) People I know believed him outright...