Dispatch from a Friend Back Home: Where is the American Dream?

By Juan Ramirez

For more than 300 years, the land now known as the United States has been a beacon for liberty. Before the inception of the United States, this land housed people fleeing oppression. Some of the very first immigrants were escaping persecution in Europe. Other contemporaries sought better lives through hard work and determination. To this very day, immigrants arrive in the United States seeking better lives. They arrive from every nation on Earth with the hope of finding opportunities their homes could not offer.

At the site of the Statue of Liberty, the following is inscribed inside its base:

�Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,?
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;?
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand?
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame?
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
?Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand?
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command?
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.?"
Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she?
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,?
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,?
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.?
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,?
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

It does not ask for the powerful, the strong and the prosperous. The Mother of Exiles must never close the golden door of American prosperity to her children. As a nation, we are built on the principles of freedom and liberty for all � documented or not. If we repair our broken immigration system, we can once again hold true to these noble words. We have strayed from these ideals. We have begun to call other human beings �illegal.�

The very poor, tired and oppressed we accepted years ago are oppressed and rejected by our cumbersome system and confusing bureaucracy. Where is the land of opportunity I learned of as a child? Where is the American Dream? It is waiting to be reborn. It is waiting for the citizens of this country to say, �Enough is enough.� We must not stand idly. We must act now. The nation of immigrants must remain true to its origins.

The time for comprehensive immigration reform has always been now. Tomorrow may be much too late for those with families. It may be too late for those facing oppressive labor practices and abuse. It is too late for those who are in peril today.