The Immigration Interlude: A Tangled Mess
The irony is that the judge is trying to decide the legal status of an native American
This feels a bit prophetic for a daily prompt. I’m currently in the middle of researching immigration law to better understand the “current mess” we’re in and how we got here. While this is all preparation for a much larger post, I wanted to use today’s question as an interlude to set the stage.
If I had to sum up the answer to the prompt in two words, it would be: Immigration Law.
Right now, it’s a tangled mess geared more toward exclusion than inclusion. Historically, the U.S. had one major strength over every other country—a process that welcomed an influx of people and ideas, which in turn built the most powerful economy in the world. But that has changed over the years, and there are specific reasons why, which I’ll be exploring in greater detail soon.
For now, it feels like the words on the Statue of Liberty have lost their weight:
“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-tost to me, > I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
To be clear: I’m not proposing “open borders.” There is a long history between the old “just show up and good luck” era and where we are today. I’m currently building out a timeline to show exactly how and why that shift happened.
Stay tuned—the full story is coming.
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