Wednesday, July 12, 2006
What about the aliens?
Anti-immigration rhetoric has been an ironic constant in a nation built by immigrants. Each generation of arrivals has tried to justify exclusion of the next. Today's debate asserts the alleged sanctity of “legal immigration,” as if early thefts of natives' land, betrayal of treaties, tenements, child labor, predatory gangs and anti-immigration riots were quaint phases, but now Mexicans must obey the rules. Those who fear and fight immigration should endure the lines at Ellis Island and see its record of what actually happens when a nation welcomes “huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”
Rev. Tom Ehrich
Rev. Tom Ehrich
