2.Before His Country Dies
When I first listened to George Harrison’s song about Bangladesh I was perhaps 12 and learning English (mostly from the lyrics of The Beatles). I remember the line "before his country dies" hit me more than any other. Not people or hunger, the country was dying. Years later near Beirut I watched (about a half a mile away) Syrian soldiers pulling a frozen body out of a foxhole. There they were, like me, 100 miles from their country fighting for (who knows what). And probably thinking they might be the ones freezing to death the following night. I was fortunate to have been in a bunker with heat.
These two stories contributed to my (admittedly cynical) approach to borders and nationality. While I acknowledge most people usually feel more passionately about a country's boundaries and enforcing them, it's not as easily done as drawing a line on a map.
With borders in mind, here is Thane Rosenbaum - novelist, essayist, law professor and Distinguished University Professor at Touro University – who shares his strongly worded opinion in Jewish Journal.
"Let’s get something straight at the outset: I am a child of immigrants and a first-generation American. I need no convincing that America was built by people from other lands. The Pilgrims, Puritans, Calvinists and Quakers did a nice job during those early American Thanksgivings, but without the industry, initiative and intelligence of immigrants who started arriving in ever increasing numbers from the 1880s until after World War II, the United States would simply be another Canada—with far fewer decorous people.
"And, yet, the sprawling crisis along our southern border, with two million immigrants having crossed into and remained in the United States over the past two years, is a desecration of American law and moral principle," he writes in "Border Crisis Beyond Belief."
Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, Israel is issuing "Job Seekers" entry permits to Palestinians. The policy is designed to decrease the number of illegal border crossings. It enables Palestinians to enter Israel 15 times over the course of two months in order to seek out employment.
Where do you stand?
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