Imagine you are the host of a holiday party. Which “holiday” is not important and is certainly a subject for another blog. For your holiday party, you decide to invite 100 people. Since it is a friendly party in your home, you want it informal and ask each invitee to bring a bottle of wine and a snack of some sort.

As a good host, you go ahead and jumpstart your party with a few bottles of wine, some beer and sodas, as well as a few appetizers – knowing that a couple of people may “forget” to bring something.

Your guests begin to arrive early in the evening. Once you hit 100 people, you realize about 20 of them didn’t bring a beverage, a food item, or both. That is OK. It seemingly is all working out since 80 others did and you had “jumpstarted” the party.

However, now things take a different turn…

Another 25 people show up to the party. They didn’t actually get an invitation directly; they had just heard from someone you were having a party. Only a few actually bring anything. As the evening progresses, you see signs of running out of food and beverages. The 25 people that showed up have since called family members and friends and told them to come over to this great holiday party with free food and drinks. Alas, another 30 people show up; you are now out of food, out of beverages, and the party is over.

You really only have two choices to avoid such a scenario…

1. Don’t have a party.
2. Put security at the door and only allow those in with invites (or with food and beverages in hand if you will).

America is certainly a melting pot and I feel that we should continue to open our doors to those that wish to contribute and benefit (in that order) from everything this great country has to offer…but it should always be a two way street. To be a part of this great country you should always contribute to its growth and prosperity.