Summary

There is surprising controversy about wanting only legal immigrants, and then only those who want to assimilate into our culture. I see both as non-negotiable, but many do not. Some even want the opposite. I want to see tightly secured borders, a generous allowance for both the immigrants we want and those who need to be here for reasons of either economic or political persecution. And, yes, a final, post having well-secured borders amnesty for the millions of illegals already here.

I am an ardent fan of the historically-successful American melting pot. For the same reasons, I am not a fan of an American salad bowl.

For the next 10 minutes, we will talk about who we think we are, who we think we should be, and what it is that immigrants need to assimilate into.

Continuing

I started the high tech electronics portion of my career in Silicon Valley in the early 80s. An emerging press relations (PR) firm, Regis McKenna, discovered, to their surprise, that they could not deliver the needed cohesive PR message for their client firms. Why? The client firms did not have a cohesive message to deliver in the first place. The CEO, executives, and employees had varying views on what their company was all about. Before Regis and his team could explain to the world who their client was, what it stood for and why it mattered and to whom, the company had to sort that message out before it could be delivered. In short order, Regis McKenna added a strategic consulting firm to the front end of its PR arm. Summary: Regis and his staff needed to help their clients decide who they were before that message could be intelligently announced to the world.

In exactly the same way, we, we as Ameircans, must decide who we are, what we are proud of and what we stand for as a culture, before we can invite other people to join us. And before we can proudly tell others why being part of our culture will be a plus--a huge plus--for them. N.B. I said “people” here, not just immigrants. Some of us, and some of our neighbors, need to be reminded of who we are as a people, and what we stand for as a culture.

Let’s pause for some clarifications here. I am a supporter of people being bilingual, not countries. When a person has an understanding of more than one language, he is broadened in his thinking. She has insights into other cultures and ways of thinking than can come only from understanding linguistic nuances. When countries are multilingual, it tears them apart. I am also a fan of countries being multi-ethnic, but not multicultural. Bringing different ethnicities together in one culture is like adding alloys to iron to make steel. Bringing different cultures together trying to make a successful country is like stirring rocks in the attempt to get them to blend.

American culture was first codified in its founding documents, including the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. The Founders put in writing that we the people had unalienable rights, rights that came from our creator, not the state. The state could neither grant nor deny these rights; rights including the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  For the first time in history, the individual was elevated higher than the state. In a series of astonishingly bold documents and announcements, an unknown group of men and women from an equally unknown backwater British colony, declared that the divine rights imbued in man by his creator completely replaced the false notion of the divine right of kings. What began with the Magna Carta in 1215 was now complete. As long as they were not hanged as traitors for their beliefs.  

Today’s Key Point: We are the highly fortunate inheritors of the revolution of 1776. We are here to build on that legacy, not to dismantle it. As a country, with heroic ups and tragic downs,