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In another time, just a few weeks ago, before Joe Biden became intolerably old and Donald Trump’s minions concocted a 2025 plan to end the country as we know it, there was another issue that dominated the American political scene.
Immigration.
Remember when the border was THE biggest threat to America? When Hispanic immigrants were taking “Black jobs”? When gangs and drugs and terrorists were flowing over Biden’s “wide open” border every day?
Now, it’s unendingly weird that so few people recognize that “tha bowda,” like the Olympic games, only becomes an issue anyone cares about every four years. But regardless, it’s all anyone on the right could talk about 24 hours before Biden forgot the word “Medicare.” And I sort of wish that hadn’t changed.
Because immigration, to me, remains one of the clearest lines in the sand between conservatives and progressives. And in many ways, it signifies a person’s beliefs in this country’s most important founding principles, and whether or not they have allowed a simple case of bigotry to outweigh their patriotism.
It was stated best in a letter I received not long ago. A man wrote me and said: “You can go to live in France, but you cannot become a Frenchman. You can go to live in Germany or Turkey or Japan, but you cannot become a German, a Turk, or a Japanese. But anyone, from any corner of the Earth, can come to live in America and become an American.”
Yes, the torch of Lady Liberty symbolizes our freedom and represents our heritage, the compact with our parents, our grandparents, and our ancestors. It is that lady who gives us our great and special place in the world. For it’s the great life force of each generation of new Americans that guarantees that America’s triumph shall continue unsurpassed into the next century and beyond.
Other countries may seek to compete with us; but in one vital area, as a beacon of freedom and opportunity that draws the people of the world, no country on Earth comes close.
This, I believe, is one of the most important sources of America’s greatness. We lead the world because, unique among nations, we draw our people — our strength — from every country and every corner of the world. And by doing so we continuously renew and enrich our nation.
While other countries cling to the stale past, here in America we breathe life into dreams. We create the future, and the world follows us into tomorrow. Thanks to each wave of new arrivals to this land of opportunity, we’re a nation forever young, forever bursting with energy and new ideas, and always on the cutting edge, always leading the world to the next frontier. This quality is vital to our future as a nation. If we ever closed the door to new Americans, our leadership in the world would soon be lost.
A number of years ago, an American student traveling in Europe took an East German ship across the Baltic Sea. One of the ship’s crew members from East Germany, a man in his sixties, struck up a conversation with the American student. After a while the student asked the man how he had learned such good English. And the man explained that he had once lived in America. He said that for over a year he had worked as a farmer in Oklahoma and California, that he had planted tomatoes and picked ripe melons. It was, the man said, the happiest time of his life. Well, the student, who had seen the awful conditions behind the Iron Curtain, blurted out the question, “Well, why did you ever leave?” “I had to,” he said, “the war ended.” The man had been in America as a German prisoner of war.
Now, I don’t tell this story to make the case for former POW’s. Instead, I tell this story just to remind you of the magical, intoxicating power of America. We may sometimes forget it, but others do not. Even a man from a country at war with the United States, while held here as a prisoner, could fall in love with us. Those who become American citizens love this country even more. And that’s why the Statue of Liberty lifts her lamp to welcome them to the golden door.
It is bold men and women, yearning for freedom and opportunity, who leave their homelands and come to a new country to start their lives over. They believe in the American dream. And over and over, they make it come true for themselves, for their children, and for others. They give more than they receive. They labor and succeed. And often they are entrepreneurs.
But their greatest contribution is more than economic, because they understand in a special way how glorious it is to be an American. They renew our pride and gratitude in the United States of America, the greatest, freest nation in the world — the last, best hope of man on Earth.
Now, if you’re a student of history, or if you’re an old-school Republican, you likely know by this point that the words from the last dozen or so paragraphs are not mine. They are taken verbatim from the final speech delivered by former President Ronald Reagan.
They are as American as anything ever written or spoken. They signify the best of us and what has long made America the greatest country on Earth.
Imagine a country on this planet where men and women would literally walk thousands of miles with their possessions and children on their backs for the mere opportunity of – not becoming a citizen – but simply living in that country illegally. Of simply being the root that began their family’s more prosperous heritage. Of being able to say to their children that they took them from near certain death and lifelong despair into a country where opportunity abounds.
Instead, so many in this country today imagine immigrants as “invaders” or “murderers and rapists.” Instead of feeding into what makes America great, they have been cast as villains and takers. And they have been turned into political pawns by a group of politicians who lack even a thimble full of their courage.
It’s ironic considering, as Reagan noted, that they might be the last reminders of how glorious it is to be an American.
