Let Their People Come

Interesting. Are you advocating yet another full amnesty? Last data I saw reported that the citizens of this country support control of our borders; admitting the people we choose and not simply the people that choose to enter.

Mr. Miniter seems to have overlooked the fact that the United States, along with perhaps every other country in the world, has immigration laws. If a foreigner wants to move to the United States, he needs to follow the legal immigration process. If the United States were to implement an open-borders policy with unlimited immigration, it would lead to the destruction of the United States.

Your initially appealing take on the importance of free movement into the country forgets a few things. When those who first came to this country did so, they had to face financial and psychological barriers, which provided a bit of natural selection. Once here, they were responsible for themselves and their offspring. Now that anyone arriving here (even illegally) can lead to taxpayer-funded education for his children, medical care and legal representation, there is a reason to reconsider the value of allowing free access to so many.

Also, land has a population carrying capacity, if you want diverse flora and fauna, and not just asphalt and hedges. Oh yes, there could be discussion about the health issues and future national defense issues if we consider to pave over huge blocks of U.S. farmland. Your opinion sounds very much like that of someone who has spent too much time in the big city.

I read the article. My reaction: Bovine doo-doo. We are a nation of laws that are designed to control the behavior of its people--including immigration.

Because of his apparent attachment to politically correct ideology, Mr. Miniter will encounter difficulty if he wishes to use the Founding Fathers as an example for immigration policy.

John Jay, in the Federalist Papers, gave as a prime reason the likely success of a union of the states the fact that we are "a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs." Hardly a paean to "diversity."

In fact, the first American naturalization law, passed in 1790, required all applicants for citizenship to be "free white persons."

Perhaps it is a terrific idea to allow all 400 million Latin Americans, all one billion Muslims, and one billion black Africans to flooding into our states and communities tomorrow in a giant tidal wave if they wish. But to pretend that this is somehow an essentially American principle that one can trace back to the Founding Fathers is dishonest.

The Founders might have understood the importance of free immigration, but they were obviously alien to the idea of nanny state. And that's not the only novel notion that appeared between now and then.

The current system not only makes it easy for the newcomers to get a hold of the wallets of the Americans but it also makes it next to impossible to resist a displacement of the current population with the new one, even if it takes a form of mass, albeit peaceful, invasion. In the past, those immigrants who were not able to prosper in America on their own had no choice but to go back to their native countries. How different it is from now when the governments of all levels pay the unsuccessful so that they can stay in America and even bring their relatives over, compliments of those who bear most of the tax burden.

I wish the author be more careful what he wishes for.

Your emotional arguments typify the sloppy thinking produced by the U.S. educational system. I recommend you hire a smarter and better educated foreigner to write your editorials.

The United States has not exactly been a tyrant when allowing new immigrants the right to enter it's borders.

Brendan Miniter seems to forget that the United States has been settled for generations. The U.S. during its initial birth needed many immigrants to build itself into fruition as our forefathers had in mind, but we are no longer a birth nation but a strong, wonderful, settled country that most people worldwide marvel at in envy!

The United States became a great nation not by mass immigration, legal or illegal, but by being extremely diligent in screening newer immigrants who can live in compatibility with its citizens without overpopulation.

Since the 1965 Immigrant Act, our country I'm afraid has gone downhill (I bear witness to this fact). With Mr. Miniter's message of excessive immigration, I'm afraid the quality of life Americans once knew will come to an end.

Immigration, yes. Illegal immigration, no. What sort of a citizen can we expect a person to make if the first act is illegal entry? We have too many scofflaws in the U.S. already without allowing more of them to enter.

Mr. Miniter is right on the importance of immigration, both in its origins in American tradition as one of the points of dispute with the United Kingdom in 1776, and the moral case for freeing people from oppression in other countries, and the practical benefit of cultural and economic renewal in our own country.

Respondents also have valid concerns in the last generations when semisocialist domestic policies lead to the imposition of immigration absorption costs on people unwilling to bear them, and encouragement of immigration by people seeking to take advantage of that spending.

U.S. policy has had, and should retain, a bias in favor of substantial immigration. Appropriate screening should seek to limit, if not prevent, immigration by people likely to be health or security risks, including those with terrorist or criminal histories. The appropriate debate would seem to turn on how to achieve those objectives, at the same time encouraging the immigration of people likely to contribute to the betterment of the country, limiting the immigration of people likely to be net takers from resources, and minimizing bureaucratic red tape.

The solution is simply stated, but difficult to achieve. That solution is to eliminate, or at least drastically cut back, the socialized policies that both encourage immigration by the "wrong" people and impose costs on people unwilling to bear them. Elimination of governmental provision of schools, colleges, charity, hospitals, etc., will go a very long way toward achievement of those objectives. It will also go a very long way to restoration of the health of those functions in our country. Prior to governmental provision of these functions, they were provided privately and voluntarily, including in particular by churches, synagogues, immigrant associations, family and friends.

Such a major transformation of our social and governmental frameworks is not something that can be achieved overnight. Such a transformation also imposes adjustment costs on the rest of us, who have adjusted our behavior and choices to maximize our benefits or minimize our costs from the present system. That is the direction the change must take. It will encourage self-selection to come by people with the energy, drive and ambition to come here to improve their lives by their own efforts. It will encourage self-selection to stay away by people lacking the energy, drive and ambition to come here to improve their lives by their own efforts. Voluntary aid to new immigrants as they get started will also be self-limiting as those new immigrants seek assistance from family, friends, community, but not from those with whom they do not have such ties. And it will limit the necessity for bureaucratic controls.

It seems as if all of our ancestors came to this nation as immigrants at one point or another, save the Native Americans. Those of us who have traced our family trees back to when our ancestors came to America, find interesting and sometimes courageous tales of family members risking all for a new start in this nation.

I have a dear friend who is researching her father's family, which immigrated from Romania in the early part of the last century. Most of the family settled in Pennsylvania and worked in the steel industry. She know very little about the conditions that prompted her father's family to leave "the old country" and start new lives here. They never talked about it. They were assimilated into the American dream and never looked back.

Now she is trying to trace her "roots" and see who stayed behind and what has become of them. She sent 51 letters with return envelopes and postage to Romania. She is now beginning to hear and gather information about her dad's family and what was going on at the time, which led members of the family to sail to America.

She is finding out what brought them here was the hope of a better life. Things were rather bleak in Romania at the time they immigrated. I think it has always been the hope for a better future that has always brought immigrants to America. How blessed so many of us are to have been born in a country which people risk all they have to enter and become citizens.

I just don't see in the news people waiting to get into Russia or North Korea or certain nations in Africa. I don't know how we as a nation can deny all access to others who want to immigrate, become citizens and add their talents in making this nation the greatest in the world.

Immigration is at the very root of our nation's history. Restrict if necessary, but never take up the welcome mat to hope and the freedom found here.

(Now the Mormon Tabernacle Choir should end this response by singing," God Bless America.")

Mr. Miniter says that "liberty depends on a society that allows people the freedom to migrate and live where they can best build a life for themselves." I see the dependency in reverse order. The ability to move about freely in order to build a life for ones self, depends on the safeguarding of liberty.

Liberty has a special meaning in the context of the American experiment. The American notion of liberty flows from a Judeo-Christian ethos. We are endowed by a creator with certain rights from which we can not be alienated by human decree nor even legislative fiat. The Declaration of Independence names three of these rights, "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness."

The founders did not envision immigration of large populations of people whose presuppositional beliefs were formed by religious training that produced value systems antithetical to this unique construct of liberty. Undoubtedly they knew that all kinds of people with all kinds of beliefs would come seeking what America offered. The process of assimilation would take care of reconciliation of beliefs. For the most part that was the case. At least it was the case until political correctness began to cloud our thinking.

Today it is not clear that assimilation goes any further than understanding that there is a better material life to be had in America. It is now politically incorrect to pressure cultural minorities to learn English. Maintaining the "quaint" customs of their countries of birth has become a cause célèbre for certain groups. Each day I see turbaned or robed men walking with a shrouded woman walking respectfully several paces behind.

We have become mind-numbed as to the profound implications for society, of widely held religious beliefs. But religious beliefs form the foundation of on which people build presuppositions that become the basis for making judgments about right and wrong.

Religions that are at odds on the most basic questions of human nature are bound to lead their followers to conclusions and then to practices that are antithetical to others. The way we understand God influences the way in which we behave toward each other.

Keeping in mind America's founding and history, our institutions and our traditions, which thought is more aligned with our image of America, love your neighbor as yourself, or don't touch certain castes of people for they are unclean? Which of these values is more likely to build a society in which liberty thrives. If the latter does not give way to the former and forces a compromise between them, does liberty have a chance?

I don't have an ready answer as to how we reconcile the views of Mr. Miniter and Ms. Malkin. I do know that America is changing for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the mistaken notion that all beliefs are of equal value and no belief system offers any societal benefit over any other. Liberty can not survive that thinking in the long run.

In an ideal world, I would agree with the principle of free immigration. However, in our "liberal" society, where my taxes pay for the benefits provided illegal immigrants, I would disagree. If what you were proposing was to open the borders, but not the public coffers, it could work.

Immigration shall always be part of America's greatness. But tell me, where is it written that America must allow in those who hate America with a passion so devoid of reason that they would seek to destroy this grandest of all human experiments?

Have they or their ancestors through the centuries ever come close to achieving what America has achieved in so little time? No, they have not. They failed over and over again. America shall not fail or give up, ever! America is a place for those who love freedom with heart and soul above all and shall never fall to those who hate freedom--never.

I believe you miss the point over immigration control. King George was accused of "obstructing the Laws of Naturalization of Foreigners." Laws serve to protect the citizenry. Health, security and resources, both nature and social, come to mind. Laws also signify geopolitical sovereignty (who's in charge here?). We are no longer a nation with a burgeoning frontier of land if not opportunity. We have an obligation to ourselves to ensure and secure prosperous resources for ourselves as a nation. Therefore, we have an obligation to control immigration into our country. AS a sovereign nation, we have the right to do it, too.

The issue is the standing of the immigrant. Does he enter the circus tent through the main entrance or does he sneak in under the tent? He is welcomed through the entrance. The liberal interests in America, bent on crippling and degrading America by hallowing the name of "Immigration" as sacred, has slashed open the back of the tent for Mexico in a political effort to court the Hispanic population's vote, exploit their "minority" status, and use their numbers to swell the union ranks. The liberals are thereby obstructing the "obstructing the Laws of Naturalization of Foreigners," and conservatives are too intimidated to oppose them. Liberals also encourage this illegal immigration by pilfering Social Security funds to fund the trespassers. Federal mandates obligate the states to provide medical and educational services to illegal without supplying the funds to do it. This allows the liberals to scream for Federal control of medicine and education to control their skyrocketing costs where it's their insistence that lies at the root of the malady.

Please, therefore, get real about the state of "immigration" today. Ms. Malkin isn't beating her gums for the sake of being the Wicked Witch of the West

The problem with Mr. Miniter's thesis is that in 1776 America was essentially empty, even including the native populations. On Earth there is a finite space parameter that no political philosophy can dodge. With numbers of humans increasing greatly and almost nothing else tagging along to support them, Third World countries quickly descend into a hell on earth. These are ecological principles that conservatives don't recognize, but Jefferson surely did. The American "lifeboat" is not the only answer to world poverty. The inability to control their numbers culturally, and a desire for a better future is an escapist's dream. Only by rebuilding your own house will you be truly free. Someone should point that out to Vicente Fox.

My problem is not with immigration. My problem is with our government policies once they get here. Like policies that keep immigrants isolated and do not encourage assimilation, and offer them special programs like affirmative action, and let them take citizenship in their language instead of requiring it in English, and lead to defying our laws and being rewarded for doing so-like granting amnesty to illegal immigrants and euphemistically calling them undocumented, like allowing reduced in-state tuition to illegals at our tax-supported colleges when they should instead be deported and made to follow the law, etc., etc.

And lastly, like state and city government officials which declare their fiefdoms are havens for illegals and the officials proclaim their defiance to federal immigration laws. (Note how these officials get away with defying the federal government for a politically correct cause, but how the full weight of the feds is threatened against the judge in Alabama who is fighting against removing the concrete Ten Commandments from the courthouse.) So we have the "rule of selective law," depending on which men rule.

Let the entries be properly documented and controlled. There are now as many as three million people currently on State Department wait lists patiently occupying their places in queues at U.S. embassies worldwide. That's what immigration should be.

Immigrants from European countries, by and large, wanted to be Americans. They may have spoken their mother tongue at home, they may have worn their ethnic costumes at festivals, and they may have practiced their religion in their churches, but they wanted to be like the people in this country. They did not want to be different.

When we changed our immigration patterns in 1965 to allow far greater numbers of non-European cultures, we virtually guaranteed failure of the immigrants to be absorbed into the extant culture. In addition, we have become so politically correct that we encourage celebration of differences rather than an acknowledgment of the contributions made.

I'm all for immigration as long as the majority of people who come here attempt to contribute positively to our cultural, political and economic experiment. We have enough homegrown America haters and welfare recipients. Immigration is a privilege extended by the host country, not a right.

I do not believe that the Founding Fathers intended that we have unlimited immigration. The Constitution gives Congress the authority to regulate and control immigration.

Which choir is Mr. Miniter preaching to? Immigration is not a major divisive issue in this country. Illegal immigration, on the other hand, is a biggie. This is lost on Mr. Miniter apparently.

Nobody asks that immigration be ended entirely. We only make the minimal request that our pinko State Dept personnel experiment with the radical plan of actually doing their jobs and keeping terrorists and illegal immigrants out.

Well, they might also block all Saudi immigration to America until the Saudis free Americans kidnapped and removed to Saudi Arabia. Arabs are famous for their courage and ferocity when fighting women, children and the elderly. (See Sam Katz's "Battleground" for confirmation of this fact.)

Newt was right about our State Department, while President Bush is clueless. One can only hope that his goal is to be relatively spineless in his first term, then actually govern as a smaller-government conservative in his second, red-meat term.

I voted for the guy in 2000 and will vote for him again in '04. I didn't base this vote on Mr. Bush's total capitulation to Edward Kennedy on education and prescription drug plans for the wealthy. (Usually, when the words "Bush" and "wealthy" appear in the same sentence, it's a liberal distortion. This is the exception that proves the rule.)

It is not patently obvious that Mr. Bush is familiar with the Constitution, judging from some of his capitulations, e.g., campaign-finance "reform" or the despicable Supremes' decisions that racial discrimination in university admissions is unconstitutional--but here's how you can do it, anyway!

Mr. Bush is not a stupid man, although he does occasionally play one on TV. Gotta love Laura, though!

The current debate on immigration is not the colonial-era debate, which was probably an attribute of sovereignty, Naturalization was denied by the king and demanded by the new nation.

The current debate is about legal vs. illegal immigration, and enforcement thereof, and the types and duration of immigrants we will have, and who may become an American by naturalization, and about labor economics (and their domestic partisan consequences) intersecting with immigration policies, and about the foreign relations aspects of closing our border with Mexico, with the porous transmission of Mexicans and millions of other Mexico-transiting illegals who seek "America" without the burden of lawful compliance.

Patrick Buchanan, somewhere off in the mists of political dystopia, thinks we cannot assimilate (Americanize) too many furnirs too fast or fast enough, and there are others, like me, who think that we have lost the desire and legitimacy to Americanize our visitors and new citizens, but these are debates quite different from that of 227 years ago.

We are mostly from somewhere else, if we go back far enough. That is not quite the point.

Ms. Malkin and Pat Buchanan make a lot more sense than you on this topic. Are you starting an equivalent of PETA for immigrants?

You come across as an elite who never experiences personally the dark side of immigration.

Common sense is needed on this issue. We need standards on immigration regulations that limit the "wretched refuse from those teeming shores." We are getting further "balkanized" and need to civilize more of our own people who have been here for generations. I am concerned things will get really bad before the situation improves.

Also, must we be constantly beset by absurd sloganeering such as "Our strength lies in our diversity"?

There is indeed some merit to arguments against immigration, especially when those arguments concern terrorists infiltration and people coming to this country just to go on the dole. And it should be considered that the Founding Fathers were faced with an enormous, almost unpopulated continent. It was very easy to welcome people when they could get off the boat, pick up an ax and start clearing land for a new homestead. These days the country is far more congested, and the environmentalists have made even looking at some trees the wrong way a punishable offense. Nevertheless, it was immigration and the desire for a better life that built this country (which may explain some people's aversion to immigration since they don't care for what the country has become). We should continue to welcome those who come here legally and seek to build a better life for themselves while working overtime to root out and stop those with less benign motives.

Liberty, freedom and the pursuit of happiness. These are indeed rights and it is good to remember that the two century plus struggle is to afford these rights to individuals not groups.

Arbitrarily, human nature conspires to group people. People have different skin colors, facial characteristics, cultural traditions and languages. We use terms like "race" and "creed" to whitewash the fact that one similar "tribe" is suspicious of any other "tribe" based on the above differences. Human nature, plain and simple. We do hold that the ideal that things needn't be that way and, as such, the colonial spirit is maintained. We constantly strive to improve and, in doing so, we make numerous and sometimes grievous errors.

"Diversity" and "community" are two contemporary errors that pit groups against each other for the very reasons we have been trying to overcome. Immigrants to America, as Mr. Miniter points out, come here to seek opportunity and a better life, not because of a need to belong to a political group or "tribe." They do this for themselves and their family not for some high minded or base political reason. We are all individuals and will spend our lives as such. We must welcome individuals to this nation and grant them the rights to liberty, freedom and the pursuit of happiness based on an agreement to abide by the Constitution and laws of this land. To do any less is to further regress from the foundations of our nation.

We maintain our right to be free and in doing so, to struggle. Freedom is not without cost and not without danger. We must never become complacent.

Mr. Miniter seems to be espousing the Journal's traditional suggested constitutional amendment of "let there be open borders," suggesting a slight modification "except for terrorists."

But his invocation of the Founders is flawed in several ways. First, the Founders were quite explicit about which immigrants they wanted; they wanted more Englishmen, not even Germans and certainly not free Asians or free Africans. That is, they wanted people like themselves. This criterion is to this very day determinative in almost all non-English speaking nations. We are the exception.

Secondly, the founders objected to King George telling them who could move to the U.S. They insisted, however, that they themselves could be selective about who moved here; they certainly did not advocate open borders.

Free people certainly have a right to live where they wish within their own nation. But I doubt that Mr. Miniter would say that any free individual in the world, e.g. any U.S. or South African citizen, should have the right to move to Israel no matter what the Israeli government has to say about the issue.

As Mr. Miniter intimates, Michelle Malkin, and George Borjas, a Cuban immigrant economist, have pointed the numerous negative economic impacts of the current wave of unskilled immigrants, e.g., unavailable care in emergency rooms; crowded, poor, violent schools; busted budgets in California; lowered wages for citizens, etc. Not to mention urban sprawl and overcrowding by citizens fleeting California of the formerly "open" states such as Wyoming and Colorado which defined much of our national culture.

With the number of congressional representatives capped at 435 early in the last century, the 30,000 citizens per representative at the nation's founding is now over 655,000. Given that the nation's present growth rate--due overwhelmingly to immigration--will lead to a population of nearly a billion people by the end of the century, my question for Mr. Miniter is: As bad as taxation without representation is, isn't representation without representation worse?

Countries gain through immigration. It is usually the best and the brightest who leave one country for another. The lazy, the uninspired, the complainers usually stay home. America almost always gains from immigrants.

Citizenship should have value. It should convey advantages to its citizens, such as the right to vote or special treatment in government programs. It should be something people strive to obtain that a country confers judiciously. Citizenship should be something that can be lost for unacceptable behavior.

A country should favor its citizens over immigrants in a way that makes citizenship something to be desired by immigrants.

As Solomon says in the Book of Ecclesiastes from the Bible, "To everything there is a season, and there is a time and a place for everything under heaven." Immigration has had its time, and now it is over. The only sector of society that wants immigration is big business, which uses immigration to depress wages and prevent unions. There are many sections of America, that if cultivated, can provide the workers for business. However, it is much easier for the oil companies, the drug companies, the insurance companies, etc. to hire desperate immigrants than to educate the poor in West Virginia, New York and California. After all, why should business educate and hire the poor, they are only Americans. Moreover, it requires too much time, money, and effort.

When the Republican party learns that the poor and middle class are Americans, that they are the ones who do the dirty work and fight the wars, and when it supports these groups, instead of always supporting insurance companies, etc., it will become the majority political party in America. Until then, its pontificating about moral values will sound hypocritical.

What a disappointing essay on free immigration by Brendan Miniter. Of course, free immigration as a principle is a good and noble thing which should be upheld. But that does not preclude a nation applying due regulation to it, as it must do with all things, to preserve "domestic tranquility" and the general health of the nation.

If Mr. Miniter intended his concept of freedom of immigration not to conflict with society's right, and government's obligation, to insure that immigration is conducted lawfully and for the overall good, he should have said so. But as it stands, and considering past WSJ opinions on this subject, it seems that he intended no such thing.

Yes, well, all I can say about this is that I used to see this subject as Mr. Miniter does. I have changed my mind. We should implement a general moratorium on all immigration and make time for a national debate on the subject and a restructuring of our immigration laws and their implementation.

As Mr. Miniter is well aware, the current system does not merely permit free immigration by the willing, it is heavily structured to give preference to some over others. I am not at all sure that we are giving preferences to the best people and keeping out the worst.

I would direct Mr. Miniter and others to Fouad Ajami's column, which shares the page today. It contains this little anecdote:

"In the days that followed the attacks of Sept. 11, a young Palestinian . . . boy passing out sweets in celebration of America's grief wondered aloud as to the impact of the bombings on his ability to get a U.S. visa. He felt no great contradiction. He had no feeling of affection or loyalty for the land he yearned to migrate to."

Surely our Founding Fathers never intended to welcome to our country those who would undermine and destroy us. I am quite sure their vision was of people from all lands coming here to be free Americans, not jihadists intent on Muslim world domination. And our current ethnic, religious, and political special pleaders use our essentially self-destructive immigration policies to further less violent but no less ambitious and destructive agenda.

Sept. 11 was a crisis, but it has provided us with a moment of clarity and opportunity. On July 4, our nation's birthday, let us resolve anew not to squander those things, but determine again, like the great men and women who waged the American Revolution, to do the difficult tasks necessary to preserve this great and unique nation.

America's Founders, as with the liberal theorists of today, believe that immigrants are human capital and not a drain on resource. Like monetary capital can be used to generate more goods so does human capital. A visit to any large city in California would make anybody understand the fundamental philosophy of the Founders.

The Founders were influenced by the French Enlightenment philosophers and in economics the French Liberal school--the school that gave us the terms laissez-faire and free market (in French marche-libre and hence the name "Liberal" school). They believed in the free movement of labor, capital and goods. So did the Founders.

The Founders defines a Nation that America "should be" and not what it was. It was their dream about the "distant future." While it may still take many more years to arrive at that dream, it is on that path.

Immigration is great if someone is going to pay for it. Europe has a huge immigrant population from the middle east and the former East Bloc countries. The strain on the government budgets is significant. So much so, that it has created a backlash in those countries allowing for extreme points of view to become mainstream.

Now there is talk of relaxing immigration to this country. The problem is the current political climate is to reduce government spending and enact tax cuts. Here in California, Republicans want to gut social services and spending that can accommodate the immigrants rather than raise taxes. For those conservatives who advocate increased immigration they should tell us how they are going to pay for it.

That was a very nice essay to commemorate our Independence Day, Mr. Miniter. I am assuming you have retained some reservations against total free immigration, as I remember nothing said encouraging the Hatians and Cubans bobbing around in the gulf trying to outswim the Coast Guard launches and step on the sand so they can stay in the U.S. There is something very disturbing about that.

I hate to be the one to rain on the Fourth of July parade, but I would like to limit the entrance of those whom we must educate or support in favor of those already educated. Evidently I am not alone in this wish, as in a recent Paul Johnson article he pointed out the United States accepts more educated immigrants each year than all of the other nations combined! I like that. Of course I could be swayed if we first found jobs for our own unemployed, uneducated and unprepared, and housed them in decent places to eat and sleep.

And, have you noticed it is more difficult finding a place to park? It is my recommendation you leave early enough to find a good parking place for the fireworks show tomorrow.

Perhaps Mr. Miniter would like to come to my former neighborhood to see just what totally free immigration would accomplish. Some cultures will mess up our culture. I had to deal daily with one neighbor (actually I mean five families jammed into a three-bedroom house) using my yard as their personal park in the afternoon. Asking them nicely didn't do any good. Asking them not so nicely resulted in veiled threats, beer bottles left all over my yard, etc. Calling the police didn't do any good, after all sitting in my yard isn't a crime, and I can't prove who left the bottles in my yard. Not to mention the graffiti that started happening after my "neighbors" moved in, their "gangsta" "friends" that visit them, the loud parties every weekend, etc. So, Mr. Miniter, let them come! Welcome them with open arms! Just make sure it's in your neighborhood, not mine.

So I guess Brendan must leave his door wide open so anyone can just walk right in. By the way, this country has not always let people from others countries in. Have you ever heard of the 1790 Naturalization Act or the 1924 Asian Exclusion Act?

Given the fact that almost all of the countries from which our ancestors came were only too glad to be rid of them--after all they wouldn't have been able to come here in such enormous numbers were the governments in those lands particularly opposed to their doing so--I am at a loss to understand what Mr. Miniter has in mind when declaring our freedoms are in large part a product of our society's competition to attract them to favor our shores.

When you take a look at how the U.S. was settled, and what the immigrants and their descendents brought to this fascinating country, one has to ask a single question.

Is freedom, or liberty, the best condition for people to develop themselves and the land in which they live? The testimony of history answers in the affirmative. So, where does liberty meld with watchfulness so that threats from afar do not become a fifth column within the U.S.?

The answer, in so many words, is, a realization of the shortcomings of people. But liberty keeps the fire of hope blazing so that we can see a high degree of good come from each of us.