Once upon a time, the white people from Europe sailed to the shores of America with the stated purpose of practicing freedom of their several different interpretations of the Christian religion. They proceeded to take the Native Americans’ land by force, much as the Israelites in their biblical journey from Egypt took land from all that stood in their way. The white Europeans then bought and sold imported African natives to work the fields as slaves as they built churches and spread their varied versions of their religion across the land.
Today the European conquerors are in search of a quantifier over the question of legal and illegal immigration. Should everyone without papers be exported? If so, who will work the fields and bring in the harvest? Surely, such work is beneath the whites, and blacks have long ago been freed. Why not go back to the beginning and start all over as some in Congress proposed with health care?
I suggest that the president appoint and Congress confirm a commission on immigration composed of one member from each Native American tribe still in existence today and let them write the laws that control immigration.
Phil Lowe
Knoxville