Alliance of White Anti-Racists Everywhere – Los Angeles
Rhetoric
GOP Candidates Ignore Florida’s Diversifying Latino Population
06 days ago
Campaigning in Florida this month, GOP Presidential candidates continued to display a general lack of understanding of the state’s diversifying Latino population. While it’s well-documented that the Cuban-American population is currently a strong political force, the emerging story in Florida is that the state’s future voting population will become increasingly Latino, but less Cuban.
While it’s normal for political candidates to pander to today’s registered voters, they undermine the long-term electoral prospects of their party when they fail to recognize Florida’s changing demographics. Data from the U.S. Census Bureau reveal that increasing numbers of Florida’s children are non-Cuban Latinos. Overall, Latinos make up 26% of persons under age 18.
More striking, however—given Florida’s long association with Cuban immigration—is that the Cuban-origin portion of the Latino population is shrinking when you look at the youngest Floridians.
While Cubans are a majority of Florida Latinos over age 70, every Latino age group below 70 is becoming increasingly non-Cuban. Cubans are more than half (54%) of Florida Latinos aged 65 and over, but they are only 22% of Latino children in the state. Simply put, the Cuban population is getting older while a younger, non-Cuban Latino population continues to grow.
In fact, Cubans today are a minority of all Florida Latinos. The state’s Latino population is one of the most diverse in the nation: 29% Cuban, 20% Puerto Rican, 17% South American, 15% Mexican, 11% Central American, and 9% of other Latino origins.
Candidates and the party they represent are focusing on elections in Florida, not the future electorate. In doing so they are risking the long-term success of their party. The increasingly diverse Latino community in Florida is only going to be receptive to rhetoric and immigration policies that benefit all Latinos.
Photo by heacphotos.
Romney Uses Restrictionist Code Words to Describe Immigration Policy
01 week ago
GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney stole a page from the restrictionists’ playbook this week when he promoted the idea of “self-deportation” during a presidential debate. “If people don’t get work here,” Romney stated, “they’re going to self-deport to a place where they can get work.” Rather than initiate a constructive solution to our nation’s immigration problems, Romney is jumping in bed with immigration restrictionist groups who support policies that tear American families and communities apart, devastate local economies, and place unnecessary burdens on U.S. citizens and lawful immigrants.
Romney’s use of the term “self-deportation” is not at all surprising given his recent collaboration with Kris Kobach, the current Secretary of State of Kansas who continues to serve as chief legal counsel to the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI), an arm of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR).
Kobach, the self-professed author of several state and local immigration-control bills, advised Romney on immigration during his 2008 presidential bid and has long-promoted the strategy of “attrition through enforcement”— the immigration-control strategy to drive away the unauthorized population by making their lives so miserable that they will choose to “deport themselves” rather than remain in the U.S.
“Attrition through enforcement” laws—like Arizona’s SB1070 and Alabama’s HB56—were explicitly designed to interfere with the everyday activities of immigrants and go far beyond denying unauthorized immigrants work. These laws deny access to housing, school, work, and even water and electricity to anyone who can’t prove legal status. The laws’ supporters have made it clear that making people miserable and encouraging them to leave the state is the intended consequence of their policies.
It’s troubling that a serious Presidential candidate would adopt the code words of extremist immigration control organizations and propose that making people’s lives miserable so that they’ll leave is an acceptable policy goal. By using the term “self-deportation,” Romney is making it clear that he is on board with restrictionists groups’ strategy to force all unauthorized immigrants to leave the U.S., regardless of the time they have spent here, U.S. citizen family members, and their years of tax contributions.
Doesn’t this country deserves to hear more detailed and thoughtful approaches from politicians and policy makers—approaches that offer a way forward rather than divisive and punitive so-call “solutions” to unauthorized immigration?
Photo by Gage Skidmore.
Advocates Call Romney’s Relationship with Anti-Immigrant Hawk “Political Suicide”
02 weeks ago
As if Mitt Romney’s repeated promise to veto the DREAM Act wasn’t alienating enough, advocates warn that Romney’s continued relationship with famed anti-immigrant hawk Kris Kobach is killing future support from Latino voters, especially in key states like New Mexico, Nevada, Colorado and Florida. Kobach, co-author of Arizona and Alabama’s extreme immigration enforcement laws, appeared in South Carolina Monday night to spin for the Romney campaign following the GOP debate.
Following Kobach’s endorsement of Gov. Mitt Romney last week, the Romney campaign issued a statement accepting Kobach’s endorsement and supporting his leadership on extreme immigration enforcement last in Arizona and South Carolina. Now, however, with Kobach actually appearing on Romney’s campaign trail, advocates say Kobach will damage Romney’s image among Latino voters.
Dee Dee Garcia Blase of the grassroots Republican Latino group Somos Republicans said “Romney committed political suicide” when he welcomed Kobach’s endorsement. Outspoken immigration advocate Congressman Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) called Kobach’s affiliation with the Romney campaign “appalling” and characterized Kobach as the “Dark Lord of the anti-immigration movement” on a teleconference. And earlier this month, Hispanic Leadership Fund’s Mario Lopez said Romney’s approach to immigration was hurting him as a candidate and the Republican party in general.
As previously reported by the Southern Poverty Law Center, Kris Kobach has built a long and varied career out of attacking immigrants—first in the Bush Administration targeting legal immigrants from Muslim and Arab countries and later as the architect of city ordinances and state laws targeting unauthorized, mostly Latino immigrants.
But the addition of Kobach to Romney’s campaign is just the latest in Romney’s hard line on immigration. Romney again indicated yesterday that he would veto the DREAM Act should it come up in Congress, arguing that “aiding those eligible under the DREAM Act”—a bill that puts undocumented students who were brought here by their parents on a path towards citizenship—“would only encourage more people to enter the country without documentation.”
Appearing tough on immigration may not hurt Romney during the GOP primary, but come general election time, many wonder how Romney plans to win the Latino vote. Matt Barreto of the University of Washington said that Romney will not win the presidency without at least 40% of the Latino vote, a vote Congressman Luis Gutierrez believes Romney will not receive given his current approach to immigration.
“There is no route to the White House that does not go through a Latino neighborhood. Any winner in either party needs a significant proportion of Latino voters. When you say you want millions of us to leave the country … we will vote against you.”
When it comes to immigration, American voters have established that they want solutions not smears. Politicians, however, continue to read from a different playbook written by a narrow group of voters and commentators.
Photo by Gage Skidmore.
Washington Post Lists Treating “Immigrants as People” as “In” for 2012
01 month ago
You wouldn’t know it from listening to the ridiculous anti-immigrant rhetoric over the past year, but treating immigrants like actual human beings is a concept some hope catches fire in 2012. The Washington Post recently added “immigrants as people” on “The List: 2012”—their annual zeitgeist-inspired list of ins and outs for the new year. Granted, “peacock feathers” and “Margaret Thatcher” also made the “in” column, but dialing down the immigrant bashing—a message Republican presidential candidates clearly missed during previous debates—is an idea that GOP political strategists are now embracing.
Republican strategists are apparently growing nervous as GOP presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, continues to alienate Hispanic voters. While Gov. Romney has flipped back and forth on his approach to immigration policy over the years, he announced this past weekend that he would veto the DREAM Act—a bill that puts undocumented students who were brought here by their parents on a path towards citizenship—if Congress were to pass it.
According to Mario H. Lopez, president of the Hispanic Leadership Fund, Romney’s approach isn’t going to sit well with America’s fastest growing voting demographic—Latinos.
Romney’s tin ear on this topic, on immigration, will hurt him should he be the nominee, is hurting the Republican Party and is hurting every conservative who cares about passing conservative legislation in the future.
But Romney’s not the only one. In fact, anti-immigrant rhetoric has increased over the past few years—from Arizona Governor Jan Brewer’s “beheadings in desert” to Republican Congressman Lamar Smith’s portrayal of immigrants as stealing jobs from Americans. More recently, however, GOP presidential candidate Michele Bachman said she would deport every undocumented immigrant in the country while former GOP contender, Herman Cain, “joked” that he would electrify the border fence as a deterrent for unauthorized crossers. Not exactly rhetoric that warms Hispanic voters’ hearts.
Nor, however, does the Obama administration’s immigration enforcement strategies. According to a recent Pew poll, an overwhelming majority of Latinos (59% to 27%) disapprove of the Obama administration’s deportation strategy, which hit an average of 400,000 since 2009—double the annual average of George Bush’s first term.
Perhaps people are just tired of the same failed enforcement strategies and constant immigrant bashing that’s plagued the immigration issue for the last several years. Poll after poll shows that most Americans—even those who consider themselves conservative voters—favor a path to citizenship for the 11 million undocumented immigrants currently living and working in America.
Maybe it’s time for those holding the microphone to take a step back and listen to what American voters really care about—comprehensive solutions to our immigration problems, not just more empty and hate-filled words.
Immigration Impact’s Top 11 Blogs of 2011
01 month ago
A review of immigration issues for 2011 reads like a rollercoaster of American politics. Some state legislatures, for example—backed by restrictionists groups—attempted to pass harsh enforcement-only immigration laws. Some states succeeded; others struck down these bills; and a few even passed progressive immigration laws like tuition equity for undocumented students. At the federal level, Congress failed yet again to take major action on immigration, but allowed a few humanitarian and refugee issues to pass. The Obama administration deported a record high number of immigrants, but at the same time issued prosecutorial discretion guidelines in an attempt to prioritize enforcement efforts. While our top 11 blog posts—those most read, shared and commented on in the past year—couldn’t possibly tell the whole immigration story of 2011, the list does provides an interesting snapshot of what moved people and prompted reactions throughout the year.
The 11 most popular blog posts of 2011:
11. Thousands of Children Stuck in Foster Care after Parents Deported, Report Finds (November 4)
10. The Facts (and Numbers) Don’t Matter in Alabama (October 12)
9. Despite Limits, How Padilla v. Kentucky Will Endure (January 27)
8. States that Passed Arizona-style Immigration Laws Now Face Costly, Uphill Legal Battles (June 3)
7. DHS No-Match Rule is Another Nail in Economy’s Coffin (October 27)
6. New Report Reveals Devastating Effects of Deportation on U.S. Citizen Children (April 26)
5. The List: A Modern Day Witch Hunt in Utah (July 15)
4. How Immigrants Can Help America Rise Again (February 2)
3. DHS Announces Expansion of Prosecutorial Discretion Guidelines (August 18)
2. What ICE’s Latest Memo on Prosecutorial Discretion Means for Future Immigration Cases (June 6)
However, the most popular blog this year by far was Immigration Policy Center Director Mary Giovagnoli’s post on the inclusion of the term “anchor baby” in the American Heritage Dictionary—a term initially included without context:
1. “Anchor Baby” Added to New American Heritage Dictionary (December 2)
The editors at the American Heritage Dictionary quickly changed the definition to include the words “disparaging” and “offensive.” And the popularity of the post—featured in USA Today, the New York Times, on Comedy Central’s Colbert Report and across the Twittersphere—proves that words have meaning and that many people really do care about how we use them. Without the readers, activists, advocates and scholars who want a constructive and thoughtful debate on immigration—laid out in the hope of practical policy solutions—we would be left with the uninformed, hateful, divisive rhetoric too often slung around this issue.
No one knows which headlines we’ll be reading in 2012 or which blog posts will be the most popular, but we do know that many Americans are tired of the inflamed rhetoric and failed enforcement policies—policies which continue to hurt families and cost communities. People want real solutions to immigration. As we head into 2012, an election year, we can only hope that common sense and smarter policies prevail.
As Iowa Caucuses Approach, Signatories of Iowa Compact Hope to Reframe Immigration Debate
01 month ago
Exhausted by the base immigration rhetoric prevalent in the GOP presidential debate, a group of concerned Iowans is seeking to reframe the issue in anticipation of the Iowa Caucuses next month. Last week, business, faith and city leaders in Iowa signed the Iowa Compact—a list of five principles meant to guide how people discuss immigration. Signatories of the compact, which is modeled after Utah and Indiana’s Compact, urged politicians “to stop playing politics on the issue” and said that state level fixes, like enforcement-only legislation, do “not address the root problem of immigration” but instead hurts economies and communities.
Similar to other compacts, the Iowa Compact includes five guiding principles: 1) Immigration is a federal issues; 2) Local law enforcement needs to focus on serious crimes and avoid policies with negative economic and humanitarian consequences; 3) Immigration policies should help families stay together: 4) Immigrants are beneficial to Iowa’s economy; and 5) Iowa needs to welcome immigrants.
And with the Republican primary caucuses less than a month away, Compact signatories hope GOP presidential candidates take notice. Lori Chesser, chairwoman of the Iowa Immigration Education Coalition, believes “there has not been enough thoughtful discussion in the debates” thus far. The mayor of Perry, Iowa, Jay Pattee, agrees:
During the Republican presidential primary season, the rhetoric on immigration has reached a new low. This type of debate is not only extreme and divisive, but it serves as a distraction from a genuine policy debate.
Other signatories, like those in the business and law enforcement community, also want to send the message that Congress’s inability to reform our broken immigration system is hurting state economies and what’s worse, has given rise to enforcement-only immigration laws which put law enforcement officers at odds with communities.
According to Perry, Iowa’s police chief Dan Brickman, “the lack of federal action on immigration reform has put his officers in an awkward spot at a time when they can’t afford to take on additional responsibilities or alienate their residents.” Nearly 40% of Perry’s population is Hispanic.
Martha Willits, chief executive of the Greater Des Moines Partnership, said foreign-born workers are crucial to Iowa’s economy since, according to the group, the state’s primary population growth comes from minorities.
We know from our business partners that work force is a critical issue, particularly finding workers with the right skills … We want to keep foreign-born students who are trained at our universities and intern in our businesses. But we can’t because of our makeshift laws. We need comprehensive reform.
Other signatories include the CEO of Banker’s Trust, the oldest and largest independently owned bank in Iowa, and the Iowa Nursery and Landscape Association, who relies on immigrants for workers.
Hopefully, communities across the U.S. will realize that immigrants are vital to their state’s economic prosperity and enact policies that welcome them, like in Dayton, Ohio, rather than bash them in debates and drive them from the state through anti-immigrant legislation.
American Heritage Dictionary Redefines “Anchor Baby” Term as “Offensive” and “Disparaging”
02 months ago
The firestorm around the inclusion of the term “anchor baby” in the new edition of the American Heritage Dictionary has led to a dramatic reversal in the definition. Not only did the executive editor, Steven Kleinelder, emphatically apologize for the initial definition, he promised swift action to change it. By Monday morning, the term was labeled as “offensive.” By Monday afternoon, a new definition appeared online, one that was crafted to reflect more accurately just how artificial a term it really is:
anchor baby n. Offensive Used as a disparaging term for a child born to a noncitizen mother in a country that grants automatic citizenship to children born on its soil, especially when the child’s birthplace is thought to have been chosen in order to improve the mother’s or other relatives’ chances of securing eventual citizenship.
This is the kind of controversy that doesn’t fade away quickly, and many argue that the term is so offensive that it shouldn’t appear in the dictionary at all. I understand but disagree with that position, largely because the term, however offensive, exists as a political and practical reality. I think the new definition validates what many outraged voices in blogs, on Twitter, and in the press have been saying all along: “anchor baby” is a term that shouldn’t exist but does because immigration restrictionists are really good at creating words that generate fear.
While the origins are not reflected in the definition, characterizing the term as both “offensive” and “disparaging” says volumes about how it is used in real life. I would much rather have a curious student or citizen have the ability to look up the term in the dictionary and find this definition than to find no guidance and accept the meaning and agenda of restrictionists who used it.
And of course, that agenda is the repeal or amendment of the Fourteenth Amendment to eliminate citizenship at birth. The Immigration Policy Center has published numerous articles on the legal and practical problems inherent in that position. This position, in turn, arises from the misplaced notion that the problems plaguing our current immigration system would somehow be eliminated if only we could prevent persons here without legal status from having children.
It’s not solely the dictionary’s job to lay out the politics behind words. It is the job of advocates and scholars, policy-makers and politicians, community leaders, people of faith, and everyone else who values a constructive solution to immigration reform.
We must not only monitor how terms are used and defined, but must work to make hateful terms archaic. If we challenge the people who prefer fear to solutions, and direct our energies affirmatively towards an immigration system that is thoughtful, fair and reflects our country’s needs as well as our values, then hateful terms like “anchor baby” can become part of the past.
Photo by Péter Gudella.
UPDATE: American Heritage Dictionary Responds to “Anchor Baby” Definition Criticism
02 months ago
In response to ImmigrationImpact.com’s critique of the definition of “anchor baby” included in the latest edition of the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, the executive editor of the dictionary has agreed to revise the definition of to reflect the derogatory nature of the term. In conversations with Mary Giovagnoli, Director of the Immigration Policy Center, Executive Editor Steven Kleinedler promised a swift and careful revision of the term. Mr. Kleinedler noted that the editors are already undergoing further review on how the term is commonly used and said “we will be adding a label to the term, either derogatory or offensive, which I acknowledge should have been done in the first place, and we will determine how to revise the definition. Then on Monday we begin making the actual change—first on the website, and then we begin propagating the change out to the electronic products and in the next printing.”
ImmigrationImpact.com will continue to monitor the changes and urges the editors to adopt a definition that reflects the truly insidious nature of this term.
“Anchor Baby” Added to New American Heritage Dictionary
02 months ago
The degree to which the immigration debate has coarsened over the last few years is no more evident than in the pages of the recently released fifth edition of the New American Heritage Dictionary. Among the new entries is the term “anchor baby.” You might think that the definition would read something like: slang, a pejorative description of a child born in the United States to parents without legal status, implying that the parents intend to leverage the child’s citizenship to “anchor” their own presence in the U.S.” You would be wrong.
Instead, the definition reads:
anchor baby n. A child born to a noncitizen mother in a country that grants automatic citizenship to children born on its soil, especially such a child born to parents seeking to secure eventual citizenship for themselves and often other members of their family.
According to the dictionary’s executive editor, the trick to defining new words is to “to define them objectively without taking sides and just presenting what it is. And, in some cases up, you know, anchor baby is definitely a very charged, politically charged word.”
Although the politically charged nature of the word made defining it difficult, the editors ultimately felt it was best to put the word in with no commentary, claiming “it falls into a gray area where we felt it was better just to state what it was, and then people can filter their own life experiences through the word and judgments on it as they see fit.”
The trouble with this philosophy is that “anchor baby” is not a neutral term, nor from what we have been able to find, has it ever been. First, it appears to be a wholly American term, one mired in the politics of anti-immigrant rhetoric. Those who use it are not in the business of clinically describing some sort of sociological phenomena. They are instead intent on suggesting that people come to the country illegally and deliberately have babies in order to use their children’s citizenship to acquire legal status of their own.
Second, the New American Heritage Dictionary’s definition ignores the very specific intent of the term and, in fact, gives it more credibility by treating it as some sort of universal description of children who acquire citizenship at birth. This masks the poisonous and derogatory nature of the term, a term which demeans both parent and child and in the process suggests that it is acceptable to call a child born in the U.S—i.e. an American citizen—an “anchor baby.”
What is particularly disturbing about this new definition is that it confuses popularity of a term with neutrality. While the term anchor baby has skyrocketed in usage in the last decade, that usage appears to be spurred by the general explosion of anti-immigrant rhetoric, blogs, and other media outlets. Objective reporters tend to put the phrase in quotations, to indicate that the term is a loaded one.
In fact, back in 2006, Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn received complaints about his reference to the child of an illegal immigrant seeking sanctuary in a Chicago church as an “anchor baby.” Zorn found that the term isn’t a neutral descriptor, but instead, according to one of his sources, it’s a way to dehumanize the children of undocumented immigrants. Upon reflection, Zorn said that the complaints he received were a “good enough reason to regret having used it and to decide not to use it in the future. Sound arguments don’t need loaded language.”
And loaded language needs to be identified as such in the dictionary. The New American Heritage Dictionary acknowledges the derogatory nature of hundreds of terms. By failing to do so with the term “anchor baby,” however, the dictionary implies that the term is acceptable in common usage and misleads the public by insinuating that giving birth to a child in the United States necessarily carries with it the intention of using that child for immigration status.
In an era where politicians and pundits have no qualms about being imprecise, dictionary editors need to be—even if that means calling a term “highly charged,” “political,” or down right nasty. While dictionaries may be neutral, language isn’t. “Anchor baby” is a term that epitomizes the way words reflect and reframe a debate.
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UPDATE: Since publication of this blog post, the executive editor of the New American Heritage Dictionary has agreed to revise the definition of to reflect the derogatory nature of the term. Read more…
How to Talk Turkey on Immigration: Redux
02 months ago
Washington, D.C. area schools participate in the Urban Debate program, which gives middle school children the opportunity to learn the art of debate. My sixth grader signed up right away. She was surprised to learn, however, at her first tournament that many people have no qualms debating either side of an issue, no matter how they personally feel about it. She also discovered that a few kids had no problems saying whatever they had to say to win. She was in tears because another twelve year old insisted that American lives were more valuable than others in a debate over U.S. military involvement abroad.
I didn’t have the heart to tell her that in the debate over immigration we see far worse nearly every day. The misinformation that is routinely spread and the disregard for human lives is common in the immigration debate. Whether it is politicians calling for electrified fences, schoolchildren herded in to gymnasiums to determine their legal status, or blatant misuse of statistics to scare the public, immigration is hardly a genteel topic.
This year in particular, as the Alabama law unleashes a civil rights crisis in that state, I can only imagine that there will be some very difficult conversations around the Thanksgiving dinner table. Although proponents of immigration reform are armed with more anecdotes and statistical information than ever, the increasingly preposterous stories coming out of Alabama will make some people shake their heads and say—it just can’t be so.
So what to do? We offer a list of tips for making the case, politely but firmly, for a rational immigration policy.
- Be prepared. The Immigration Policy Center’s (IPC) website contains numerous short fact sheets on immigrants and the economy, crime, unemployment, immigration reform and more. At a minimum, download your state fact sheet. And since Alabama is all over the news, check out IPC’s recent publications and blog posts that detail some of the absurd consequences of HB 56.
- Be sympathetic. The evidence is mounting that most people who fear immigrants are really afraid of the change that immigrants represent. This is particularly true in states that have relatively little immigration, such as Georgia and Alabama. The number of immigrants is small, but the percentage of growth can seem huge. Try to figure out what is really irking your relative—are they angry that their favorite restaurant has changed hands? Ask them what they would do if that same restaurant closed. Are they afraid that there will be no jobs for Americans? Ask them if they believe immigrants, rather than lack of job training and job growth are better targets for their ire. Helping them to see that change can be positive and is rejuvenating many communities can help to reframe the conversation.
- Avoid the blame game. Don’t get trapped into arguments that start out, “well, those people broke the law.” Try to move the conversation forward by stressing that rather than focusing on punishing the past, you want to think about how we make the future better for everyone. I often say—because I believe it—“I can’t get the jobs back that may or may not have been lost in your community. All the economic studies show, however, that immigration is essential to further economic growth. So, if we want a better future for everyone, we have to find solutions that work right now.”
- Know your audience. There are issues you just shouldn’t touch and maybe immigration is one of them. But it might also depend on the way your present your arguments. A deeply religious person could be unmoved by your crisp economic analysis, but genuinely touched by the biblical call to aid the stranger. There are so many different reasons to support immigration reform—you don’t have try to list every one of them in one breath. Less, in fact, may be more.
- Be practical. You are not necessarily going to win your loved ones over with a single brilliant analysis. But you can ask questions that get them thinking differently. Ask them what the solution is from their perspective? Can we really afford to deport 12 million people? How can legalization be an amnesty when it requires people to register, pay taxes, stay right with the law and “earn” citizenship? Wouldn’t you rather have folks paying taxes at their full potential than being paid under the table and not paying their full share? These kinds of questions really do start the dialogue.
- Find common ground. The fact that most of us have an immigrant past—no matter how distant—sets the stage for a conversation. How was grandma or even great-grandpa treated when they came over from Italy, Germany or Ireland? What did they want for their future? Where would America be today without those immigrants who took a risk? The more people realize that they have a personal stake in keeping those opportunities alive for others, the more they might listen to your point of view.
- Find the exception to the rule. No matter how anti-immigrant someone is, they will have at least one friend or colleague who defies their stereotypes of immigrants. If you let people talk for a while, the story of that friend will inevitably come up. Start asking questions about that exceptional immigrant’s life.
- Have another piece of pie and a cup of coffee. Food is a universal facilitator of conversation. It’s much harder to yell at someone with pumpkin pie in your mouth.
Sooner or later, Urban Debate will probably tackle the question of immigration, but when it does, I want my daughter to be able to draw a distinction between arguments grounded in reality and compassion and those that are motivated by nothing but fear or a desire to win. There are legitimate policy debates to be had on the immigration question, but for many people, the conversation never gets that far. If you can get past square one, I’m convinced that most people will see that immigration reform is in the country’s best interests. And if that happens, then maybe next year’s feast will be a bit more pleasant.
Photo by moonrat42.