Immigration reform offers Democrats an opportunity to unite around our core values AND expand our base. We can do the right thing morally and politically by rejecting hate-based bills that turn workers, charitable organizations, and clergy into criminals. As the Senate recently began debate on this issue, Republicans like Arlen Specter warned that these measures would "create a fugitive class", and Sam Brownback reminded his colleagues that "what you do to the `least of these' and `huddled masses' defines us as a society." He recalled that the Bible generally defines the "least of these" as "the widows, the orphans, and the foreigner among us." I don't often find myself in agreement with the likes of Sam Brownback, but even he can be right every now and then.
Pity Republicans, who must choose between their leaders' wedge-issue distractions, disastrous policies on every issue, and base-building with Latinos and Catholics; between symbolic walls and very real deficits. Tom Tancredo was against building levees in New Orleans because of the "unaccountable" spending, but he'll build a wall from San Diego to Brownsville that even he calls symbolic, and he doesn't even flinch at the projected NINE BILLION DOLLAR cost!
As an attorney, I can also appreciate the cost of a new fugitive class. It means new detention facilities, new legal defense teams, and new civil lawsuits. How will this cash-strapped government pay for the resources to arrest, imprison, prosecute and deport these overnight felons? Call me conservative, but I believe in responsible spending, and I wonder what happened to all the Reagan Republicans. Their hero challenged Gorbachev to "tear down this wall", and countered the "illegal alien fuss" at home with his vision of a "shining city" with "doors...open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here."
Our immigration system is unquestionably broken and needs serious repair. Unlike Mr. Tancredo, I really am dedicated to fixing it. I don't offer empty rhetoric, hate, and fear. I offer hope and real solutions. The system is broken because it makes "criminals" of decent people, because it only penalizes the poor and not those who exploit them, because it breaks up families, because it leads to needless death, and because it doesn't work for America or for the immigrants!
I often quote the inscription on the Statue of Liberty, which reads:
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
THAT'S the America I believe in. THAT'S the America I gave ten years of my life to protect! That's an America built on greatness, not fear. An America so strong that it doesn't have to fear refugees. An America where freedom, justice, and equality are essential characteristics for EVERY human being!
As the Senate debate began last week, MSNBC Countdown host Keith Olberman joked that some immigration reformists would "replace Emma Lazarus' `golden door' with `come on in, but close the door behind you.'' Emma's poem, like our Constitution, should not be "reformed" in the stampede to demonize immigrants. If we keep her lamp as our guiding light, we can remain the greatest Nation the world has ever seen, and we won't have to pull the ladders up behind us to do it!
Bill Winter, Candidate for Congress, CO-06
http://winterforcongress.com/