#6 Democratic Party Principles
Immigration
The first thing Democrats should say about the immigration problem is there is no immigration problem.
There is a perception problem.
The first thing Hitler and his buddy Goebbels did was to dream up a problem to blame all the other problems on: The Jews!
Trump and his buddies have done the same thing.
Joe Arapaio and Paul LePage have ridden to prominence singing the same song.
Oh, those nasty immigrants!
Fact is, we had much more immigration of people who were less likely to succeed in the past: Look at those pictures from Ellis Island.
We had the Irish wave, the Italian wave, a Jewish wave from Eastern Europe, a Scandinavian wave.
Each new group was vilified at first, then assimilated. All contributed big time.
No, we cannot throw our borders wide open.
If we allowed every person who wants to enter the USA from India alone, we'd like have close to a majority Hindi speaking population. Same for China.
We do not want to see sudden, huge shifts in our ethnic, linguistic, cultural makeup.
But if we do it gradually enough, carefully enough, we can celebrate diversity rather than fear it.
And diversity is our strength. It gives us an competitive edge over every other country.
Diversity should not be allowed to stay in silos, however. Anyone coming here has to agree to try to assimilate and most of all, to tolerate every opinion, no matter how foreign, no matter what his/her religious beliefs.
Tolerance is the basic requirement for living in America.
The last thing this country needs is a lot of superpatriots who think they are more American than anyone else.
Immigration
The first thing Democrats should say about the immigration problem is there is no immigration problem.
There is a perception problem.
The first thing Hitler and his buddy Goebbels did was to dream up a problem to blame all the other problems on: The Jews!
Trump and his buddies have done the same thing.
Joe Arapaio and Paul LePage have ridden to prominence singing the same song.
Oh, those nasty immigrants!
Fact is, we had much more immigration of people who were less likely to succeed in the past: Look at those pictures from Ellis Island.
We had the Irish wave, the Italian wave, a Jewish wave from Eastern Europe, a Scandinavian wave.
Each new group was vilified at first, then assimilated. All contributed big time.
No, we cannot throw our borders wide open.
If we allowed every person who wants to enter the USA from India alone, we'd like have close to a majority Hindi speaking population. Same for China.
We do not want to see sudden, huge shifts in our ethnic, linguistic, cultural makeup.
But if we do it gradually enough, carefully enough, we can celebrate diversity rather than fear it.
And diversity is our strength. It gives us an competitive edge over every other country.
Diversity should not be allowed to stay in silos, however. Anyone coming here has to agree to try to assimilate and most of all, to tolerate every opinion, no matter how foreign, no matter what his/her religious beliefs.
Tolerance is the basic requirement for living in America.
The last thing this country needs is a lot of superpatriots who think they are more American than anyone else.
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