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Coloradans, mistaking our state’s insane and ignorant Republican caucus for a rational partner to off-set what they perceived as Democratic excesses, got what they asked for: A push for insane and ignorant policy (http://www.denverpost.com/legislature/ci_16736807). Buying into (if not authoring) the xenophobic hysteria around the immigration issue, the Colorado Republican House Majority is now using an essentially falsified estimate of the costs of illegal immigration to the state of Colorado to push for an Arizona style draconian law, neglecting the fact that Arizona’s law has hurt, not helped, Arizona’s economy (http://blogs.denverpost.com/thespot/2010/12/01/immigration-law-would-hurt-colorado-says-gazette/19099/).
In A comprehensive overview of the immigration issue, I laid out a framework to inform public policy that takes into account the facts of how immigration (legal and otherwise) affects our economy, as well as other considerations. We don’t need blind ideologues in office, hurting the state economy in order to impose as public policy a lose-lose act of xenophobic belligerence. We need informed and thinking human beings, mobilizing reason and goodwill in service both to ourselves and to humanity.
In The Dream Act & The Battle Between Humane Reason & Belligerent Irrationality, I reiterated the nature of this struggle over our state and national identity, a struggle I discussed at more length in“A Choice Between Our Hopes and Our Fears”. The immigration issue is one of the most focused tests of our humanity, a test which we as a people are woefully failing. We serve neither ourselves, nor our ideals, when we treat an issue so much at the heart of what it means to be a humane people with such callous disregard for humanity. And, ironically, it is not only an act of generosity to pursue a more enlightened path, but also an act of enlightened self-interest, for we benefit more than we lose from the contribution made by these people coming here to improve their own lives.
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