RE-THINK IMMIGRATION
A Monday-through-Friday, non-partisan blog covering the most
contentious policy issue of our time: immigration.

lunes, febrero 04, 2008
Op/Ed: Does anti-immigration reform mean "anti-immigration?"

Escrito PorDaniela a las 11:53 AM |  Comentar |  Imprimir |  Enviar a Correo

Today's opinion selection comes for the American Spectator. Written by Myron Magnet, the piece centers around whether it's "anti-immigration" to be anti-immigration reform.

Here's a key excerpt:

I'm embarrassed it took me so long to grasp the phoniness of the charge that it's "anti-immigration" to oppose current U.S. immigration policy and the even worse "comprehensive reform" bill, which thankfully failed. I can only plead blind piety. After all, I live in the great immigrant metropolis, lit by the Statue of Liberty's torch, under which all my grandparents sailed a century ago to reach a land that amply fulfilled its promise to them. I feared that my misgivings about today's immigrant flood were but a short step from the nativist know-nothingism that dismissed my forebears and their fellow newcomers as defective both mentally and culturally, sure to debase American society with their ignorance, poverty, and crudity. Isn't the lesson of my grandparents' generation simply this: that American freedom and opportunity have a special magic, an alchemy for transforming tired, poor, huddled masses into free American citizens whose energy and grateful patriotism, and whose progeny, greatly strengthened the nation? However unpromising today's largely uneducated and unskilled immigrants may appear, do they really look any worse than their predecessors?



 
   
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