Immigration debate needs clarity, compassion
My maternal grandparents were immigrants to America in the early 1900s.
Actually, they were “double immigrants”; first they were Swedes who lived in Finland.
Life for the Matson family was very difficult, but they raised a large family and survived – as many immigrants did then and still do today.
The incredibly contentious immigration debate in our country right now needs to take a big collective breath. So let’s do that, and then let’s all sing Woody Guthrie’s 1956 “national anthem”:
“This land is your land, this land is my land, from California to the New York Island. From the redwood forest, to the Gulf Stream waters, this land was made for you and me.”
Our singing together begs this question: Who are the YOU and ME this land was made for?
And that leads me to a more basic question: Who made this land in the first place?
I think both questions must be asked over and over again. I also believe the answers should not be given too quickly or too glibly.
The debate is so acrimonious. (Isn’t that a great-sounding word? It means “sharply bitter.” Say it, and it sounds just that way.)
My simple goal is to soften the tone of the rhetoric for a few of us and encourage us to think with more clarity of mind and compassion of heart.
I suspect the rigid debate comes because many of us ignore the facts that 1) “YOU and ME” includes far more people than just you and me; and 2) “YOU and ME” didn’t create the land we’re fighting over.
Even the natives who met the first Europeans so long ago didn’t make the land.
I believe our immigration chaos is not really a political problem. Certainly it involves some highly complex political issues. But beneath the morass of political maneuvering on the national and local levels lies a vastly greater challenge to our national spirit.
Who made this land in the first place? A quick, glib answer may be “God.” Yet “God” may also be the deeper, more thoughtful answer.
But that God is not a sectarian, power-hungry deity that sets one religious group off against another. No, this is a God who erases geographic, political and religious borders artificially drawn by Americans who want “their” God to be the only one who creates, saves and who is always in charge.
Our nation can no longer afford the luxury of believing in a God who is small enough to fit into the box called Christianity, Judaism, etc. Our country continues to be a melting pot, a smorgasbord – or whatever metaphor you choose to indicate a depth of cultural, religious, political and economic diversity.
Why is it so difficult to embrace the possibility of a cosmic creator or energy force – choose your own words – who/which is still creating a world that can be more hospitable than we currently let it be?
We can be our country’s own worst enemy when it comes to doing what is best for the people who live here.
From the most powerful national politician to the least powerful local politician, from the richest corporate leader to the most impoverished migrant, from the most corrupt to the most innocent, from “I’ve got mine, too bad about you” to the most compassionate Mother Teresa wannabe – this land was made for YOU and ME, not by you and me.
Remember that we have been given a magnificent trust. This living trust embodies our nation’s heritage that was built in large part on our immigration history.
This trust involves balancing our drive for healthy capitalism with our nation’s tradition of justice and liberty for all.
I don’t have a clue how to “solve” the incredible political dilemma that immigration presents to us. But I am confident the answer will not come from just talking about political solutions.
We must listen to our own spiritual legacies once again. Let us listen to each others’ legacies as well. Let us listen with clarity, reason and compassion.
Solutions are more likely to come when we rediscover ways to listen to who we were yesterday, who we are today, and who we choose to be tomorrow. There is nothing wrong with America that what is right with America can’t change.