US Missionaries in Haiti - Kidnapping

It's been on the new for a few days now, and right now I'm of the opinion that the authorities over there are more right than wrong about the situation. The thing is, I don't care how much you care about something, if you go about doing something illegally, then you are committing a crime. Let's say, shortly after Katrina hit, a bunch of Haitians came over and were taking 30 American children to Mexico, or Canada even. That's the same thing. Or even better, additionally imagine that the US is a lot smaller, but still an independent nation, and these foreigners come along at a time of crisis and are trying to take children out of the country without any sort of permission.

To me it's pretty cut and dry. The only grey area is if all of them knew and were actively a part of the crime. It sounds like maybe just one person may have known that they were acting illegally, but then she may just be sacrificing herself for the others since she was mostly responsible for the act.

When in Haiti, you're under their laws. That's no different than what Jesus said about acting under Roman laws. Just because you are a Christian and are trying to do something good in Haiti, does not mean you can break Haitian law.

So yeah, if I were Haitian I'd be pissed too and wanting these people prosecuted. How very disrespectful of them to just try and abscond a bunch of children, disaster or no. Yeah, that's kidnapping.

So, unlike what the media may be trying to do, I don't have much sympathy for the missionaries. Even if some of them didn't actually know that some sort of permission was needed, they should have known. Any reasonable person should know that they needed some sort of permission to do that.

People, you need to think about what you're doing before just acting on what you feel like is right. Feelings are fallible, you need to exercise good judgment... especially if you're in a foreign country. I just can't help but think these are kind people, but probably just a bit on the ignorant side. Not sure how else one can explain the stupidity of the actions with the good intent.

I'm really curious though if they had already reserved room in the Dominican Rep. before taking the children, because if they didn't do that, then that means they were just acting totally willy nilly and thank God they got caught.