That was my dominant takeaway leaving the Ogden Municipal Building where hundreds had gathered to protest US ICE’s methods of dealing with asylum seekers.

Think of yourself waiting in a line 3.5 million people long, taking four or more years before you get your turn to make your case. But then you hear that enforcement agents, many of them masked and in unmarked vehicles, are in search of you. Chances are you are about to be detained and/or deported back to the country from which you have fled or maybe another country utterly unfamiliar to you.

The line didn’t have to get that long. And preventing that would not have had to be the inhumane separating of children from parents, or the “Remain in Mexico” camps where kidnapping, rape, and violence could be rampant. Surely many more asylum officers and immigration judges could have been appointed, and the process streamlined. Certainly allotting money for that would be a much wiser choice than the huge amounts now being spent to recruit and hire (with a $50,000 signing bonus) a swarm of additional agents (12,000 in just the past few months).

It not only didn’t have to come to this, it also doesn’t have to continue like this. Funds could be redirected, the line shortened, and agents trained to facilitate the asylum process with care rather than short-circuit it with fear. Our government leaders could give up using immigration issues as partisan leverage and adopt a bi-partisan comprehensive plan.

But there is something else, it seems to me, something more fundamental that doesn’t have to be the way it is. Why is it that we have come to resist and even resent immigrants? Has it not been immigration of a diversity of peoples that has made America great in the past? The Irish, the Italians, the Pols and other ethnicities were resisted at one time, but what contributions they have added since then! Most all aspects of American life have been enhanced by folks who came from Asia, Africa or Latin American countries. Interaction between different cultural backgrounds has stimulated so much helpful innovation.

For a few years I volunteered with refugee resettlement agencies in our state. I became acquainted with families from dozens of different nations as they found their place in our communities. There had to be regulations and limits, to be sure. But our resources for helping them adjust and assimilate were efficient and effective. They were so grateful and my life was so enriched by their presence.

Those relationships led me to read the Bible in a fresh way. According to this scripture, God’s mission is to bring all ethnicities in their rich diversity into a unity in him without inequity or exclusion. One of my most memorable experiences in life was participation in a Pentecost evening worship time with several hundred people speaking close to thirty different languages.

When I sense the trend in our society today to move in the opposite direction, and many churches even leading that trend, I think, “It doesn’t have to be and it shouldn’t be this way.” And, if the Bible is true about how God will fulfill his mission, it will not be this way in the end.

Bill Heersink is a resident of South Ogden.