Immigration and the Next America: Part I

In “Immigration and the Next America: Renewing the Soul of Our Nation,” Los Angeles Archbishop José Gomez puts the immigration debate into the larger context of who we are as an American people. Immigration reform, he says, must be “part of an even more comprehensive reform – a project for American renewal aimed at forming a new national identity and civic culture dedicated to the universal values of promoting human dignity, freedom, and a community of the good.”

Gomez understands the frustration born of the lack of leadership in Washington on the immigration issue. He also sees immigration as a “flash point” over the “deeper anxieties” we feel about the future of our country.  But, he sees cultural elites, not Hispanic immigrants, as the real threat to America’s future. America’s renewal requires challenging “the secularist, multicultural, and relativist consensus that in recent decades has taken hold among elite thinkers and opinion-shapers in our universities, cultural centers, and government.” Suspicious of our founders’ motives, these elites are “skeptical about the ideals of citizenship and integration around a common national identity,” preferring “a kind of anarchy of diversity” where no one has “obligations to anyone but themselves.”

The Archbishop offers a different vision: “We need to restore the ideal of citizenship based on integration and Americanization.  Immigrants would be welcomed within a civic framework built on a common American story and universal values.” He would promote “broad expectations for citizens – including the understanding that individual rights presume common duties; and that freedom doesn’t mean doing whatever we want, but instead means doing what is true and beautiful and good.”

Tune in soon for Part II of this review: “The Forgotten Piece of the American Story.”