Immigration Reform Is Necessary Even If Republicans Don’t Want It
“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.”
These words are found on the Statue of Liberty, an enduring symbol of hope for those lucky enough to have reached America from far-flung lands around the world. The statue itself, a gift from our oldest foreign friends, France.
America has always been a land of immigrants. Ever since the days of Vikings, Christopher Columbus, and ultimately the Puritans, people have cast out in search of a new land and found themselves standing on the shores of what is now the United States.
It was a country of immigrants when Chinese workers came to help build the railroad to tame the Wild West. It was a welcoming land to the German, Irish, and Italian peoples who are a part of the very identity of what America has become.
The simple fact of the matter is that only a select handful of people can claim and trace their heritage solely to the indigenous peoples of the Americas.
With such a rich history of foreign-born individuals moving to the United States, establishing their new lives, and birthing generations of Americans, one has to wonder how we have gotten to where we are now in terms of our immigration policy.
Instead of welcoming the tired and poor, we deny them entry to the Land of Opportunity. Instead of sheltering the huddled masses yearning to be free, we lock them in cages and cast aspersions against those who run from oppression. Instead of lifting the wretched refuse from their abysmal station in life, we turn our noses up and ignore their plight.
There is hope for us yet, however.
While the days of teeming masses at Ellis Island are long behind us, America still has the opportunity to regain some its standing on the world stage through acts of compassion.
Luckily, former President Trump was removed from office despite repeated attempts to attack another pillar of America, our free and fair elections, and the new Biden administration has begun the work of restoring some of the former glory of the United States. The draconian policies of the Trump administration have been cast aside for the most part, with 105 immigrant children who had been taken from their parents under Trump’s zero tolerance policies have been reunited with their families over the past month.
While the story is one that will warm the heart of many, the fact that the United States government was willing to go to such extreme lengths to punish people seeking out a better life is outright embarrassing. The cruelty displayed by many in the past few years can only be described as maliciously evil.
The Biden administration recently introduced an immigration bill in Congress called the U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021. Among the many sections of the bill are changes to the way spouses and children of green card holders are classified, helping speed up their own green card requests, as well as an increase in the number of family-sponsored visas available each year.
Also in the bill is a lifting of the three- and ten-year bans on people who were in the U.S. illegally and left, what many GOP members are equating to an amnesty program and have already come out against it. How soon they forget that the Republican messiah himself, Ronald Reagan, granted amnesty for nearly 3 million illegal immigrants in his 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act.
With anywhere from 10.5 to 12 million illegal immigrants estimated to be in the country, the bill could have a huge impact on reducing those numbers and introducing millions of new taxpayers into the population and keeping vulnerable people from being preyed upon by employers who severely under pay what are basically indentured servants.
The bill has to pass first, however, with no indication that Republicans are remotely interested in supporting any parts of the bill. This would leave Democrats with a 51 to 50 vote majority, including the tie breaking vote from Vice President Kamala Harris.
There is that pesky bit with the filibuster in the Senate, though. Without ten Republicans willing to vote to end a filibuster by one of their own members, Democrats would be handcuffed once again. Given that two of the more moderate Democrat senators, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, have said that they will not vote to get rid of the filibuster, the future of the bill is not a sure thing by any means.
Regardless, the Biden administration must push ahead with its efforts, if for nothing else than to fight the good fight and show the public that they are trying to do the right thing. Even if they must browbeat their own members, Democrats need to coalesce and put forth a united front and force Republicans to vote against another popular policy.
If the GOP must be dragged along for progress to occur, then so be it. There can be no return to the regressive, discriminatory practices that have filled the airways and news columns over the past four years.
This is an issue that we must not shy away from just because it is difficult. The country’s legacy where anyone can come and chase the American Dream is at stake and now more than ever we have to send the right message.
