An opinion piece in the Salt Lake Tribune. DP
By Colin Smith, Public Forum Letter
It's politically unstable to have a large, disenfranchised servant population. Ask Pharaoh about Moses. Ask Germany about its Turkish permanent guest workers. Without a melding of peoples, down the road is schism, anarchy. Ask the Romans about their Goth immigrants.
America has a similar problem with its 10 million illegals, so-called. If we can't deport them (and we can't), assimilation is essential. The sooner, the better; procrastination aggravates things. Ask Thomas Jefferson and the other masters who hated slavery. They couldn't envision a multiracial country and saw deporting freed black slaves as the only solution, but that wasn't practical, so nothing was done, and things got much worse.
When we politically exclude millions of permanent, working, taxpaying residents -- when we create an invisible class -- it undermines our core democratic value of "consent of the governed." Fortunately, every child born here is automatically a U.S. citizen, so we don't multiply the evil relationship through generations.
We need immigrants, a lot. I'm for a high wall with a welcoming gate so we decide who enters. Nevertheless, for our political security, and our humanity, put those here on a path to citizenship.
This land must be their land, too. Just ask Woody Guthrie.
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