The Flickering Torch

The Statue of Liberty just shed a tear.

“No matter how many miles of fence we build and how many agents we station on the border, I truly believe people will come to this country illegally as long as they believe America offers a better life and a better job,” Mr. Portman said on the Senate floor. ("Bill to Expand US Database to Verify Hires"). Mitt Romney could not have stated it more eloquently.

Forget spending $40 billion. No need to build 700 miles of fences. Send 40,000 border patrol officers home to find productive employment elsewhere. Merely insure that our country no longer serves as a land of opportunity for those who, like every one of us, want nothing more than the best of possibilities for themselves and those they love.

There is a basic lack of morality in the fervor to protect our citizens from alien invasion. This is not "War of the Worlds" and these are not creatures from another planet come to destroy us. These are fellow occupants of this earth who have not had the same chances that serendipity has afforded us.

I appreciate the fact that we want the United States to prosper. I get that, especially in these continuing difficult economic times for so many, there is a natural tendency to say and do things that may sound rational in the moment, but in the long view seem particularly ugly. I comprehend that much must be compromised so that some comprehensive immigration reform is even a remote possibility.

But the very ugly truth is that, in the words of Senator Portman and many others like him, there is a blindness to what makes this country a beacon of light. The torch the old lady holds proudly above her head just flickered.