On freezing winter nights, I picture these servers returning late to sparsely furnished apartments, lonely, cold and longing for their families, warmer climes, and free-flowing conversations minus the frustrations of language limitations. It has become popular to speak of locking our borders. They suggest that America can never cure her internal ills if she devotes so many resources to welcoming strangers. The Canadian concept, now adopted, of welcoming only those foreigners with valuable skills and a certain minimum income appeals to today's sons and daughters of immigrants in America. While I do believe that immigrants, and America, are best served when new arrivals work to learn English, take advantage of our public education system, and knuckle down to the real business of supporting themselves and their families, I remind myself that most, in fact, do these things.
Bloodsuckers are a small minority.
The welfare rolls in America are not top-heavy with immigrants. It is not the new arrivals to our shores who swell our overcrowded prisons. America is still a vast country with miles of empty land begging to be cultivated and developed. There are still roads to be built and maintained, products to be manufactured, improvements to be invented, arias to be sung, buildings to be designed, surgery to be performed, and languages and histories to be taught at every level. And, staring them down are the nameless and faceless heroes of America today, building cars in Detroit, completing residencies in hospitals, providing child care, teaching in our universities, creating music and paintings, in short, driving the engine that is America.