One of the things that amazes me every time the subject of immigration comes up, is the view of some poeple that there is something fundamentally wrong with the millions of people who want to come to the US to find a better job, a better education, a better life. You know what I'm talking about -- the nasty comments about immigrants being lazy, only wanting to take advantage of our welfare system or medical services, being selfish or self-centered.
The determination to take care of your family, even if it means traveling hundreds or thousands of miles away from them, even if it means risking imprisonment, low wages and harsh working conditions, can only be seen as a testament to the power of love and the human drive to lead a dignified life. How the willingness to make such sacrifices and face such hardships so one's family can live a better life can be called selfish, lazy, usurious... well, it beats me.
If my child was ill and had no access to a doctor, I would want to bring it to a doctor. If my family had to go hungry, or do without shoes, I would want to find a decent job to give them that. If I had to live forever in fear of my own government, or my neighbors, I would want to flee with my family to someplace safer. How could that possibly be evil?
One of the most basic precept of secular humanism is that you should not do to others what you would not want them to do to you, which is, of course, the golden rule taught by so many religions. Denying medical care, safety, or jobs to people who need them, in my books, counts as something I wouldn't want people to do to me.
I find it even more bewildering that those kinds of comments, along with disdainful regard for immigrants maintaining their culture and customs, come from people whose ancestors -- and often not so distant ancestors - were once in the exact same boat -- poor, looking for a better life, discriminated against, acused of not being willing to assimilate as they chose to speak German, Italian, Yiddish, Swedish, Dutch, dressed in their own clothing, maintained their own religions (yes, the Amish are still here to this day, as are the Quakers, and the Christian Scientists, etc, etc).Solutions to some of the immigration problems facing us as a nation -- how to safeguard our borders without discriminating against certain groups, how to ensure timely processing of residency and citizenship applications, and what to do with the nearly 12 million immigrants who are here illegally -- are not simple. But xenophobia, racism, cultural elitism, and irrational fears don't help matters in the least. They only complicate matters, muddying the waters and making rational decisions elusive.
It seems to me that easy immigration is key -- we should be allowing in most the people who want to come in. America consumes and controls the vast majority of the world's wealth. Natural resources should not be the province of a few lucky people. Rather, they should serve to enrich all the world's people. As such, America has an obligation to share its wealth with the world -- in the form of jobs, education offerrings, and in the form of economic aid to developing countries so they can build up their infrastructure so there will be less need for people to come here to make a decent living.
We should be strenuously promoting human and civil rights, the rule of law and due process across the world (rather than propping up dictators who serve us, undermining popularly elected governments who don't, and toppling regimes who no longer prove useful...).
If we really want to stem the tide of immigration, the only real solution, is to make the entire world a desireable place to live, not just a handful of countries.
The Qur'an has a beautiful passage that expounds upon this idea. It's in the chapter called Women, and it spans parts of verses 36 an 37: Be good to your parents, to relatives, to orphans, to the needy, to neighbors from among your people and neighbors who are strangers, to the friend by your side and the wayfarer, and to those who have been enslaved. God does not like the arrogant, and boastful, those who hoard their wealth and encourage others to be miserly.”
Would that everyone took such messages to heart. ¶ 1:28 PM
