You have heard the story before. You have read the story before.
Indeed, you have your own story.
The particulars of my story are: About 1904 my 25-year-old
paternal grandfather got on a boat and came to New York. He ended
up in San Francisco where he married the daughter of an immigrant.
His son, my father, married a Chicago woman whose grandparents had
been immigrants. I married a Canadian woman who immigrated. She was
the daughter of an immigrant to Canada. Although my father is a
veteran of Iwo Jima, I am privileged to be a friend of a man whose
Japanese parents immigrated and he is a member of our Foreign
Service.
Yet, despite our stories, and despite the number of
immigrants who day in and day out join us here, we are all tempted
to be insular, to become used to America, to take America for
granted, to think that America is not exceptional.
Consider, however, the illegal immigrants — not the ones
who enter lawfully, often by boat or plane, and who overstay their
visas. Rather, consider those who enter unlawfully across our
southern border. They leave their parents, their spouses, their
children, their hometowns, and walk and walk and walk, often
hundreds of miles. They risk death from asphyxiation in trucks,
kidnapping and death at the hands of strangers, death from desert
heat. We cannot but admire them. And we cannot but see America
through their eyes: as the exceptional country it is.
We listen to Neil Diamond’s “America” (1980) and we see
the star to which they travel:
Far
We’ve been traveling far
Without a home
But not without a star
*
* *
Everywhere around the world
They’re coming to America
Every time that flag’s unfurled
They’re coming to America [copyrighted]
That said, we — President Obama, the Congress, and the
American people — are responsible for the deaths of those who have
died trying to cross the southern border.
These people from the south are attracted to America like
moths to a flame, like children to a pool. If they knew that their
chances of success in crossing the border were remote, they would
not risk death. But we do not make their chances of success remote.
Our border remains porous. We invite them to cross the way a
landowner would invite children to swim in his pool if he had no
fence.
And so they come.
Last week, 72 migrants from various countries, including
Guatemala, Brazil, Honduras, El Salvador, and Ecuador, on their way
to the United States, were kidnapped and then
massacred 100 miles south of Brownsville, Texas, by the
Zetas gang. (Warning: the picture is graphic.)
Many Americans think they are being compassionate when
they encourage the Federal Government to stand down from its
responsibilities to close the border and when they help illegal
immigrants find work in this country. Many Americans think it would
be racially discriminatory to close the borders to Hispanic persons
from the south.
Would it not be more compassionate to close the border? To
stop hiring illegal immigrants? To encourage Mexico and other
countries south of ours to grow their economies? To change our laws
to enlarge the number of temporary and permanent immigrants,
including people of color from not only Mexico and Central and
Latin America, but also people of color from Asia, Africa and the
Middle East who cannot walk here and who wait years to enter
lawfully?
I believe in the frog phenomenon. A frog put into boiling
water will jump out. A frog put into lukewarm water that is slowly
raised to boiling will cook. The number of kidnappings and the
deaths of people coming to join us from the south over more than 30
years has risen in stages not sufficient to cause us to jump. The
massacre of these 72 coming to America may finally cause us to
act.
Let us recognize that America is an exceptional country
and that people from all over the world are drawn to join us. We
should not allow conditions that encourage them to risk death to do
so. Our memorial to these 72 should be a closed
border.
