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Commentary: Sensible immigration reform needed

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  • Commentary: Sensible immigration reform needed

    Indiana Gazette, IN
    July 31 2014

    Commentary: Sensible immigration reform needed
    by DAN THOMASSON on July 30, 2014 10:10 AM


    President Barack Obama three weeks ago attended July 4 ceremonies for
    25 members of the U.S. armed forces who were sworn in as newly minted
    American citizens. It was a quiet, dignified and impressive event that
    punctuated the importance of somehow solving what has become the
    nation's most pressing domestic problem: the lack of coherent
    immigration policy.

    More than that, it seemed an oasis of sanity in the political upheaval
    that is bound to be a major issue in the coming midterm elections and
    the crisis that deepens daily, aggravated by an onslaught of homeless
    children at our borders and the refusal of the Congress to pass the
    fiscal wherewithal to deal with it before the coming August recess.

    If House Speaker John Boehner is to salvage any hope of being regarded
    in history as anything even close to mediocre, he needs to get his
    majority Republican troops in line with a reasonable solution or reach
    some compromise with the administration.

    The president has asked for more than $3 billion to meet the current
    challenge, and under the circumstances, it seems like a reasonable
    request. If Republicans on the far right don't think so, Boehner
    should demand they at least propose their own solutions.

    What's the alternative? Should we haul tens of thousands of children
    back to some jungle or urban nightmare and just dump them?

    Be that as it may, during his brief remarks to the new citizens Obama
    noted that they had stepped up to risk their lives to prove the
    sincerity of their intentions, that as a nation of immigrants millions
    before them had proven that democracy would never have been sustained
    without their sacrifice.

    The president quoted no less an authority on what it means to be an
    American than a naturalized citizen whose own youthful escape from the
    horrors of oppression early in the last century is an inspiration for
    us all.

    Master chef, restaurateur, author, entrepreneur and philanthropist and
    Presidential Medal of Freedom winner George Mardikian survived the
    genocidal policies imposed on his Armenian homeland to dedicate his
    life to promoting the freedoms he found here.

    "You who have been born in America, I wish I could make you understand
    what it is like not to be an American -- not to have been an American
    all your life -- and then, suddenly, to be one for that moment and
    forever after," Obama quoted Mardikian, whose 1956 book, the "Song of
    America," has sold millions of copies.

    The president noted that in many sites around the country that same
    day immigrants were becoming citizens. Many had sacrificed for years
    to get "to this moment and forever after."

    Whatever one thinks of this president, to believe that nothing from
    now through the election of a new chief executive two years from now
    can be expected is perhaps the saddest and in many ways the most
    frightening prospect this nation has seen in a long time. Immigration
    needs to be solved as do a half dozen crucial issues or why should we
    elect a Congress?

    Mardikian's biography lists his political affiliation as Republican
    but it was a Democrat president, Harry Truman, who awarded him the
    nation's highest civilian honor for his contribution to liberty.

    He was a friend of Herbert Hoover, a Republican, and is quoted by a
    Democrat, Obama.

    Is it not possible today then for Republicans and Democrats to
    recognize the contribution of each other for the good of the whole
    without sacrificing one's convictions? If not, Mardikian and those who
    were inspired by his view of a shining, welcoming country where one
    could live in peace and freedom and prosper is increasingly fantasy.

    Ideology certainly has a place in politics but it should not override
    every reasonable consideration. One's social beliefs are his or her
    own but they need not be imposed on those who hold other ideas, and
    there always should be room it seems to me for compromise.

    An unwillingness to reform what clearly requires fixing, a capricious,
    hide-ously expensive (in both money and its toll on our citizenry)
    lack of coherence in immigration policy, could be the rock this
    country eventually founders on.

    If we don't find a way to accommodate the Mardik-ians among the masses
    who want to huddle here, where will we be ultimately?


    http://www.indianagazette.com/news/opinions/commentary-sensible-immigration-reform-needed,20318943/

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