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By Senator Lamar Alexander
About 14 years ago, I attended the annual Italian-American dinner in Washington, D.C. The dinner that year was in honor of my law school roommate, Paul Tagliabue, who is known to most Americans as the commissioner of the National Football League.
The boisterous room was filled with men and women bursting with pride in their Italian heritage. There were cheers for Scalia the Justice, for Stallone the actor, for Pelosi the congresswoman, and of course, for Tagliabue the NFL commissioner.
But what struck me most about the evening was not just the pride in their Italian heritage. It was their pride in America. This pride was spontaneous and unembarrassed. You felt it in the speeches, in the singing of our national anthem and in the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance. They were proud that their ancestors were from Italy, but they were even prouder to be American.
For several weeks, the United States Senate has been engaged in an overdue debate about how to reform our immigration laws.
Because as many as 10,000 illegal aliens cross the U.S. border every day, comprehensive immigration reform should start with border security. It is hypocritical for the United States of America to preach to the world about the rule of law yet thumb our nose at the 12 million people who are living here illegally. It is hypocritical, and it is dangerous to our security not to control our own borders.
Then, once we secure the border and can uphold our limits on immigration, we should get quickly back to the American tradition of maintaining a legal status for those who temporarily work and study in the United States and who, by doing so, enrich our diversity, spur our economy and help export American values to the rest of the world. These temporary students and workers from other countries have helped us create an economy that last year produced 30 percent of the world’s wealth for us Americans - who constitute just five percent of the world’s population.
Finally, my goal during the immigration debate has been to make sure that we don’t stop there, that we don’t overlook, as Paul Harvey might say, the rest of the immigration story — that is, helping prospective citizens who are legally here become Americans. Our country’s greatest accomplishment is based upon still another principle: that is, we have united people from many backgrounds into one nation based upon our belief in a few ideas rather than upon race, ancestry or background. Of all the principles that we will be debating these next two weeks, none is more important than that one we have chosen as our national motto. It is carved in stone above the presiding officer’s desk in the Senate: E Pluribus Unum, one from many. (more…)
