Immigration Debate Is Legality And More...........................

By Daniel "Danny" Smiechowski

Viewing The Immigration Debate Through The Lens Of Political Philosophy.

Several thousand miles to the west at the entrance to New York Harbor, is another source of inspiration, the Statue of Liberty, with her lighted torch showing the way to the underprivileged, the sick and those escaping religious and political persecution.

America is a nation of immigrants. They constitute a great strength of tolerance, found perhaps nowhere else on Earth.

Standing like the Maginot Line however, are political forces taking aim at these new arrivals. From the Industrial Revolution, especially those years following the Great War, to the past contention over California's Proposition 187, we have as a nation often disparaged those of other cultures.

Nearly 75 years ago, thousands of Italians, Irish, Poles, Czechs and others with nothing more than a vowel ending their family name sought out a fair chance for an improved life in America. Noteworthy between them was an incredible sense of collective responsibility. Unlike our present-day society's abuse of personal liberty, these immigrants valued the thought of individual freedom being bound in conscience to a great sense of duty.

For the most part, these newcomers brought along time-honored values of honesty, courtesy, hard work and loyalty. They were, however, met with political resistance. At Ellis Island, site of triumph and tragedy, stonyhearted immigration workers processed multitudes of expressionless immigrants.

But the deplorable treatment of foreigners did not simply end by passing through customs.

Of the two major political parties, the Republicans lost at least a generation of voters because of their anti-immigrant stance. Beginning with the Harding administration in 1921 and continuing unabated for 12 years, the Republican Party enacted numerous anti-immigration controls meant to preserve the composition of America's population.

Despite a host of quota laws implemented through the prosperous 1920s, including the National Origins Law of 1929, the underprivileged from Eastern Europe, Italy, and Great Britain continued to arrive at Ellis Island, only to be deprecated and shamefully exploited as they first set forth on American soil. As a consequence, they remained for over a quarter century heart-broken in America's cultural minefield.

It was not until the 1968 presidential contest that the Republican Party began to recoup its losses. This was due, in large measure, to the great social upheaval of the '60s. The issues of school prayer, the Vietnam War, an out-of-control drug culture and, five years later, the legalization of abortion found a natural constituency in a predominantly Roman Catholic electorate with a faint memory of its discriminatory past. The result was a landslide GOP victory in 1972.

It is often said that in its heart America is a conservative nation. Perhaps this is true, but let us examine the state of cultural politics today.

As is the case in Europe, the United States is being overrun with political and economic refugees. America's refugees are mostly from Latin America, China, The Middle East and some area's of the Caribbean.

While the cast of countries swarming into our land is unlike that of our overseas neighbors, the outcome is nevertheless the same: precious financial resources are just not available, plain and simple.

Major players within the GOP such as William Bennett and the former Jack Kemp are on a political seesaw, balancing the moral and ethical values of a nation with that of fiscal responsibility incurred by individual states.

There certainly exists a political motive as was the case 75 years ago when millions of disenfranchised immigrants were given the boot by the Republican Party. During those years, the scales of justice weighed heavily against the powerless and weak, yet with faith and perseverance, these new arrivals ultimately found refuge in a Democratic Party offering an equal chance at the American Dream. It is a lesson not long forgotten by the GOP.

The primary difference between today's immigration and that of a few generations ago is one of legality.

Our laws concerning illegal entry into the United States were written without regard to individual differences in moral and ethical beliefs. Herein lies a great dilemma.

Just as those entering into the gilded profession of medicine accept the Hippocratic Oath, thousands of the laity rely upon the immutability of our human condition as their ethical counsel. While public opinion is a cherished measure of democracy, it is entirely possible for the minority view to be nearer the truth.

If the millions of illegal immigrants flooding our country were suddenly permitted entry within the law, would this fact alone change the character of the immigration debate?

Probably not. Which brings to mind a larger question: What was the real basis behind Proposition 187?

Only antiquity holds the answer. It is in the hearts of mankind.