Coburn: How the House Can Get Immigration Reform Right
How the House Can Get Immigration Reform Right
A “walls with doors” policy could unite our nation.
By Tom Coburn
Now that the Senate has passed a flawed $46 billion immigration bill it’s time for the House to be the higher chamber and start over. Do what the Senate failed to do. Pass a bill — or series of bills — that balances the two fundamental American values at stake in this debate: openness to immigration and respect for the rule of law.
The first task for House Republicans, I would argue, is to understand that you don’t solve a messaging or political problem with bad legislation. You solve it with good policy that honors our values, respects the rule of law, and improves people’s lives.
President Reagan, in his farewell address, gave today’s Republicans a blueprint for how to approach immigration. Of his “shining city on the hill,” he said, “It was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here.”
In the House, “walls with doors” is an immigration policy that could unite our nation. But Reagan was describing something even more profound — a deep belief in American exceptionalism, which is something we don’t hear enough of today.
America, of course, is exceptional because it is a miracle of assimilation unrivaled in human history. The fire beneath our melting pot is not our economic or material wealth, but an immaterial idea that all people are created equal and are endowed by the Creator — not the State — with certain rights. Every immigrant who longs for freedom and “comes hurtling through the darkness, toward home,” as Reagan said, makes that fire brighter and our nation stronger.