Trego's Mountain Ear

There are some strangely irrational arguments going on about immigration.  There is a simple answer.  Like all humans, each potential immigrant is unique.  The management concept that regards humans as interchangeable is unsound.  Each immigrant has unique skills and abilities.  Some make our society a better place to live, some worsen it.  That makes for a simple policy.  I want immigrants who will make my country a better place. It’s the same argument whether it’s the neighborhood or the nation.

Much of my life has been spent as college faculty.  Consequently, I have seen different foreign students, different immigrants, than my friend whose career was in ICE.  He tells me how bad the Haitian immigrants are – and Jean Michel Basquin’s face and smile come into my mind.  I would like to have Jean Michel as a neighbor and a fellow citizen.  My neighborhood and country would be improved.  I hear of the problem of anchor babies – and I remember Gonzalo.  His mother, a pregnant teenager, had traveled from the Yucatan to El Paso, around 1960, that he might be born with more opportunities.  Not to belabor the point, but if Gonzalo inherited only half his mother’s courage and drive, he would make my country a better place.

I haven’t met a Nepali who won’t improve my America.  India?  I think of Priyanka and Prasanthi, and hope each will make a home in my country, and make it a better place.  I recollect one of the lost boys of the Sudan, who enlisted, not in the US Army, but in the South Dakota National Guard, explaining that “these are my people, they took me in.”  I think of Li Li, whom I knew as a Ph.D. student, now an Army non-com in Colorado.  These are people who make my country a better place.  

Not all immigrants make my country better.  Just being a refugee and having suffered doesn’t make one a good person.  The bastard who ran his semi into the rear of my daughter’s pickup was a Bosnian refugee.  Our research showed he was violating several laws when he hit her.  Then he lied.  The morning he ran over her was the last day she could recognize a face.  He was brought into the country because he was a Bosnian refugee.  He made my country a worse place.  

Immigration?  The solution is simple.  Bring in people who can be expected to make our country better.  I have known many.  Deport the ones who make our country a worse place.  Throw out the emotion, and do the unyielding calculations.