A recent "Comment" in The New Yorker Magazine, by Jonathan Blitzer, focused on our immigration system, with Blitzer advancing the idea that there has just been, finally, thanks to President Biden, a "Leap Forward On Immigration Policy."
The American immigration system has been called many unsavory things, most of them deserved. It was last reformed thirty-four years ago. What has emerged in the decades since is a welter of backlogs, visa shortages, piecemeal enforcement measures, and every manner of bureaucratic complexity. Ordinary people, trying to work and take care of their families, are often forced into surreal scenarios. Take the 1.1 million people in this country who are married to U.S. citizens but are undocumented themselves. You might assume that it would be relatively straightforward for them to get on firm legal footing. In fact, the process is quite complicated. Anyone who first entered the United States illegally must travel to another country for a visa interview at a U.S. Embassy or consulate. But if she has lived in the United States for more than a year without papers, as some eleven million people have, a law in place since the nineteen-nineties bars her from reëntering the country for up to a decade. That could mean, in effect, getting stranded outside the U.S., despite having a partner, possibly children, and a livelihood here. She can get a waiver permitting her to remain in the U.S. if she can prove that her prolonged absence would cause “extreme hardship” for certain members of her family. But, because of processing delays, getting the waiver can now take three and a half years.A couple of weeks ago, at the White House, President Joe Biden announced the most consequential act of immigration relief in more than a decade. He gave roughly half a million undocumented spouses of citizens a path to permanent legal status, on the condition that they have lived here since at least 2014 and pass a criminal-background check. “I refuse to believe that to secure our border we have to walk away from being American,” Biden said. “The Statue of Liberty is not some relic of American history.”
Strangely - or, actually, not so strangely at all - I immediately thought about homeless persons when I read about this latest, significant change in how we are going to treat the immigrants who are here, living amongst "us," the non-immigrants and the non-homeless.
It is well known by anyone who has taken the trouble to read about immigration that our longstanding national policy of welcoming immigrants to the United States has been of inestimable benefit to our nation, both economically and socially. What the history of immigration to the United States tells us (symbolized by that Statue of Liberty mentioned by our president) is that people - and every person - must be welcomed and encouraged, and seen for what they really are, "assets," not "liabilities."
The human "potential" that each human being represents is lost and forsaken when we exclude them - when we fail to include them in our national life.
Human kindness tells us to welcome the poor, those who have nothing, and to invest in them because it is the "right thing to do." All true. But don't forget, when the temptations of "self-interest" start prevailing in your inner dialogue about reality, that extending help, and bringing into our lives those who are strangers, those who have nothing, not only gives them an opportunity to shine, it benefits all the rest of us, too.
Raise high that torch, and welcome all those who come with nothing, and for whom opportunity (and human kindness) will release great benefits.
Not only for them, which is good enough! For all of us!
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