The way the United States is treating immigrants is a terrible mistake.
In a country that would otherwise have a shrinking population, immigration is essential to mitigate the problems of an increasingly elderly population. At a time of low unemployment, immigration is essential to keep the economy running. One look at the ranks of successful entrepreneurs and high-tech founders should be enough to convince you that attracting the world’s top talent is essential for a dynamic economy. Bringing in students and other immigrants from abroad lets us absorb cultural impetus and project our own influence on a global scale. Here are some other things we depend on immigration for: military enlistment; university students and faculty; teachers in our local schools; my bishopric.
Our country only exists today because of centuries of immigration. This country will only have a future if immigration continues. I am not in favor of open borders, but if forced to choose, open borders would be far preferable to what we would become without immigrants.
Of course we have made some mistakes when it comes to immigration. It was a mistake to treat immigrants as a historically oppressed group to whom amends must be made. Regardless of whether or not historical oppression took place, the issue is a distraction from the primary needs and desires of most immigrants today: employment, stable housing, and a fair chance to build a life in the United States.
But the biggest mistake, a fatal strategic mistake, is treating immigrants as a threat, trying to make their lives miserable, subjecting them to arbitrary detention and expulsion, destroying our country’s status as the preferred destination by far for academic and entrepreneurial talent, and creating ‘illegal immigrant’ as a class that is an acceptable target of cruelty and aestheticized violence.
The delight in cruelty toward immigrants is particularly grotesque. Promoting fear of other people and stoking resentment toward them will canker your soul as badly as indulging in the most depraved pornography.
Are you concerned about limiting the number of immigrants, deporting violent criminals, prioritizing the most promising would-be immigrants, or establishing an orderly system for granting asylum? Great, please call on your congressional representatives to pass the appropriate legislation. But people with degrees, homes, jobs, families? Help them stay. We need them!
If you watched the most recent session of General Conference, you would have seen that the Church has quite a lot to say about the value of immigrants.
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