I believe in America’s immigrants. They are the essence of America.

I believe in America’s immigrants for what they teach us about others, what they reveal to us about ourselves, and for what they help us understand about humanity as a whole.

The American relationship with its immigrants is symbiotic.

America, or more rightly, the idea that is America could never have existed without the rest of the world—without its émigrés.

America is descendant of the world. Apart from a scant few, we are all immigrants here. Either we, or our parents or distant relatives emigrated from somewhere else.

Immigrants—those forlorn masses that fill rich our shared history, in all their glorious hues—constitute every culture and ethnicity that our world has ever cultivated. Outcasts and exiles, refugees and fortune seekers, all departed their ancestral homes in search of future promise.

All journeyed to the land of opportunity devoid of the understanding that the land was just that: the land; and that they themselves are the sine qua non that drives opportunity to fruition.

They came for something called opportunity—or fleeing something called tyranny—but stayed because of an idea called America; ideals called freedom and equality.

Those roots run deep and spread far. They have predisposed America with a unique perspective and a universal empathy that is quite possibly unequaled in human history.

Those same roots return to the world a sense of promise and hope that all share a stake in—not just those wanting to immigrate to America. It is also true for all aspiring the same ideals in their own homeland.

America offers all immigrants—and maybe all people—the promise of freedom and justice and opportunity and equality (though certainly, at first, it failed that measure considerably).

America’s immigrants have always been, and even now still are, them and not us. They are “those people” from distant lands with strange ways that are not our own. They have always been different: Different religion, different race, different language, different customs, different…

We have labeled them outsiders, and takers and freeloaders and they impose themselves on what is—oft times not apparent until they achieve it—“rightfully ours.”

But inevitably, as each wave of immigrants assimilated into our collective culture, concurrently, enriching us with their own culture, we accepted them as different, not wrong. They earned our respect as they contributed with an energetic commitment to productivity and responsible citizenship, exponentially offsetting the meager generosity we initially felt forced to bestow upon them.

In return, immigrants offer their dreams and longing; their sweat and muscle; their cheap labor and eagerness; and their perseverance. They add to the melting pot new flavors and colors and textures that enrich the whole.

They teach us the lessons that our fathers and grandmothers learned as they themselves walked the path of the immigrant, the newcomer, the spoiler of what previous (and still, sadly, current) American generations have demanded as theirs and theirs alone.

America’s immigrants have repeatedly taught us that in a world where most are less fortunate and subservience is an immutable encumbrance for the majority of people, we here in America refute that standard. More so, we exist to prove it wrong.

Immigrants challenge us with change and entice our conscience toward its better potential. They prod at our comfort zones, thwarting our human nature to become insular and selfish and fearful and spiteful.

Immigrants continually refresh America’s hope and replenish our faith in our own ideals. They insure that we never lose that empathy, that connection with the rest of the world and they encourage America in the role that destiny invites us to embrace.

America’s immigrants have always refused to break in the face of adversity and instead embraced life’s problems not as such but as opportunities ripe for those choosing to recognize them as so. The American can-do spirit is epitomized nowhere greater than within the ranks of our immigrants.

And they remind us that hard work and a measure of sacrifice for the future is a blessed burden that each generation must embrace for the promise of their children. That selfish gain is the surest path to self-destruction.

Immigrants give to America their children: Bright and smart, inventive and creative, productive and devoted, and patriotic. The emigrating generation willing sacrifice’s its own full human potential in order to secure for the next generations an equal standing. And, oh, how the subsequent generations stand and shine! Consistently their decsendents have filled our history proud.

Some combination of opportunity mixed with the drive that immigrant’s instill in their children, and the children’s experience straddling the gap between the old world and the new, and enumerable other factors, creates a dependable recipe yielding successful and productive and contributing Americans.

Consistently, each generation of immigrants also offers us the opportunity to either rise or fall to the occasion. They reveal for us that we are neither all good nor all bad and that we must continually reexamine our preconceptions in search of the ever-unveiling truth.

By their presence immigrants illuminate the fact that we are too often intolerant and prejudice, and too frequently self-righteous, espousing a sense of entitlement that disparages the aggregate sacrifice of our forebear’s blood and toil.

America’s immigrants negate our fear of others with familiarity. They repeatedly teach generations of Americans that fear is a cancer that we must ardently defend against, and they summon us to demonstrate our abundantly generous nature. Though stubborn and proud we are also kind and forgiving, and the gift of familiarity that immigrants bestow upon us guides much of our empathetic global outreach.

But perhaps the greatest profit that we reap from America’s immigrants, with their seemingly endless and diverse waves landing upon our shores, is how they robustly exercise the conviction that the American promise is profuse.

This simple proposition is the fertile soil that nurtures initiative and propels success. The lore of America as the breadbasket to the world is a good analogy to its symbiotic role with immigrants: America is the fertile soil that would go fallow without the seed that are its immigrants.

Ultimately, America’s immigrants unveil for us an inalienable truth: we are all fundamentally the same. Neither pigment nor language or beliefs can obscure the simple fact that we do it all for our progeny. We all love our children desperately and we will do anything for them.

All we ask—all everyone asks—is a modicum of peace and security so that we can work hard to create our own opportunities. America’s immigrants come ready to stand on their own two feet on a level playing field—or just as eagerly, on an uneven playing field. They seek no hand out but history demonstrates that any they’ve received has been repaided exponentially.

The tempation to ignore or belittle the contributions of all immigrants—past, present and future—should be vociferously resisted. The greatness that this country now enjoys was created by its immigrants and grand achievements yet to come await only the well-nurtured offspring of future immigrants.

We must consider the question of immigration with an honest heart. The impetus to curtail immigration—or expunge immigrants not considered legitimate—glares at a history we too conveniently disregard.

The proposition that the priveledge of immigration into our society should require some limited qualification casts a dark shadow of contempt on past generations of immigrants who have repeatedly—and resoundly—invalidated that conviction.

The sons and daughters of an immigrant past should take care not to denigrate their predecessor’s sacrifices with the same villainous whip of predjuice that so heavily burdened their forefather’s steady ascent to the ranks of responsible and productive citizenship.

I am an immigrant to this country and now have been for over half a century. I enjoy the good fortune of having been accepted into a very select club. And I count myself in very good company. Individually, I add my small patch to the collective fabric of the American quilt.

I am also an American by choice not by birth right. And everyday I choose to be an American, exercising this unique opportunity—this gift—that so many take for granted.

I warmly embrace my debt to all those who came before me—all those who labored under the suspicious and disdainful eye of the nth generation American—and pay forward an obligation to those yet to arrive. All those future immigrants from distant lands and cultures. All those future Americans.

From my limited perch, I see the promise that future immigrants offer. I see the furtile soil that lies handsomely tilled, awaiting the seed for tomorrow’s harvest. And I fear the scourge of reactionary thought that would truncate their arrival.

Rest assured that the sadest day for America would not involve a foreign threat or the loss of a beloved statesman. The saddest day for America would be the day when the world’s wretched masses no longer yearn to lay their seed in America’s rich soil.

The questions we should now be asking ourselves are: How do we ensure a steady stream of immigrants for the future and how do we help them more rapidly become successful and contributing Americans.

America needs immigrants. They are its sustenance. Immigrants fulfill the promise that is America and nurture it’s full potential.

I recognize and celebrate America’s immigrants as the defining attribute of America. An honest accounting on the sum total of America’s immigrant experience is irrefutable: Immigrants have been America’s best investment. Ever.