A July 4th reminder

Amid the celebrations of the Declaration of Independence that the original 13 colonies made to throw off the increasingly oppressive yoke of the English rule, remember that we are caught up in a very divisive conflict among our own people now about immigration reform.

We have angry mobs screaming "Get Out . . .  Go Home" at frightened women and children in California -- one of our later states that was mostly owned by Spanish speaking people who were there before we arrived.

There are no "Native Americans" except those we belatedly choose to call native Americans;  and look how we treated them.   Took the land that they inhabited, cheated them, pushed them out, confined them to reservations under terrible conditions.

So when did it become "our" land and our right to exclude others who want to come here?   I agree there are practical problems.   We can't just open the borders and take in everyone, because we have a collective society with agree-upon rights we give to each other.   It is a participatory democracy.

But could we, at least for today, put aside the hate and the fear of the outsiders?   Remember the words inscribed on the Statue of Liberty from a grateful France . . . "Give me you tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free."

Let's at least have a little humility and less entitlement and arrogance.   And let's put aside petty political squabbles and agree on some sensible reforms to our immigration system.

This is a nation founded on and by immigrants.  Except for the Native Americans, we all descend from immigrants -- and even their ancestors came here from somewhere, even if it was 10,000 years ago.

Of course, many of the "keep out" shouters refuse to believe scientific evidence that the earth existed ten thousand years ago, but that's another problem for another day.

Ralph