Immigrants and Thoughtful Leadership

I have mentioned in this column before that I was reared in the part of our nation which had formerly been part of Mexico. The town I grew up in, Las Cruces, N.M., had a centuries-old center city with a Spanish-speaking population. The English-speaking newcomers built their homes on the outskirts of this dusty, but charming town. My father had been part of a government transfer of engineers to the Las Cruces area because it needed a sparsely-populated place for testing missiles. I went from first grade through college there. It afforded me a great opportunity to get to know the Mexican culture and indigenous people. It was a thoroughly delightful experience for this young boy. The Anglos, as they called us, and the native population got along extremely well.
The reason I told you this story is, because in those years out there, I developed a kinship with the people, which causes me to see them in a very favorable light. I observed that my father felt the same way. Our family would go shopping in Old Mexico every two weeks, and I never saw him as happy as when he was interacting with them. He spoke little Spanish and they spoke no English, but they always worked things out with bright smiles.
Moreover, we must not lose sight of the fact that America decided to become, in part, a Hispanic nation when we incorporated the Hispanic Southwest into the Union. Additionally, I think we are well served to have millions more of them as immigrants. Most of the other developed nations of the world are dealing with declining population. A nation needs at least a 2.1 birth rate just to maintain a stable populace which provides young people to replace the older ones leaving the workforce. For one thing, the way our Social Security system is structured, new people have to be paying into the system for there to be enough money for the older ones to draw money out.
Furthermore, for us to maintain our outsized prosperity, our population must not only be maintained, but must grow. To that end, with the U.S. fertility rate below the replacement rate, Hispanic immigrants provide a much-needed influx of workers, replacing the waves of European immigrants of former years. I know the argument: “Many of them did not come here legally.” May I say, that is largely an issue of governmental ineptitude borne of political dysfunction; we need these immigrants and they want to be here, and government did not address the situation. Where migration is concerned, people will go where life is most favorable for them.
We are also very fortunate that most Hispanic immigrants are culturally aligned with America’s dominant Christian culture, unlike Europe’s current wave of immigrants. Europe is having an enormous problem trying to integrate the large number of Islamic immigrants into their Christian-based nations.
Further, it is not good for our immigrants or for us to perpetuate the current impasse, and we need look no further than recent terrorist attacks in Paris and Brussels to see why. They are learning that one of the causes of the unrest is that the Arab immigrants are not assimilating into the dominant culture and are failing to thrive. The outworking is radicalization.
We must work with our immigrants and resolve this issue. Building a wall to the sky and sending millions packing is neither doable, nor desirable. Even such talk, much less such action, may create for us the destructive explosions Europe, through their mismanagement, have brought on themselves. God, give us once again thoughtful leadership.
Art Hall
From the Bible:  If you don’t know what you’re doing, pray to the Father. He loves to help. You’ll get his help, and won’t be condescended to when you ask for it. From James 1 (MSG)