Thoughts for un dia sin immigrantes...

I was fortunate enough to have been brought up in a large city. Compounding my good luck, my parents had the wisdom to send me to public school. As a result, I grew up knowing people who came from all over the world. Many of my friends were white Midwesterners like me, it’s true, but others were the children of immigrants from Mexico, from Guyana, from Laos, from Eritrea, from Afghanistan, from all the corners of this world. These people enriched my life immensely. From them, I learned to appreciate one of the trickiest and most important contradictions of human existence: we are not all the same, but we’re not all that different either. If this nation is great, it is great because it gives real expression to that truth. If we wish to be a society that the rest of the world looks to with respect and reverence, we can’t let our greed trample our generosity, our ignorance overrun our glory, or our fear blot out our beauty. So, while I don’t pretend to have the answers for those nagging border questions, I’d like to take this occasion to thank all my wonderful immigrant friends who have helped me to become the person I am today.