Dean Minnich: Politicians forget human decency and compassion when the topic is immigration | COMMENTARY

Immigration is the theme and history of world turmoil. Humans are nomadic, always searching for the next thing, place or adventure. When they do settle, they want to keep it for themselves as they found it. Late arrivals are not always welcome.

That’s the source of conflict over land, from the earliest conquests of raiding tribes from the East to today’s resistance to the threats of changes in neighborhoods.

Our politics and cultural hypocrisies are laid bare as we fumble for a response for people seeking a life in America.

New houses obliterate the fields and woods where “natives” used to hike and play. Traffic makes it harder to get around, familiar landmarks giving way to industrial use and other things that bring out the NIMBYs in protest (Not In My Back Yard).

There is no question that borders need to be respected and consistency through law and orderly growth is essential for security and stability.

The United States and European democracies have been conflicted about how to deal with the pressures of mass immigration. As pressures squeeze political leaders, some nations have caved and taken the easy way out — just appease the most militant and least compassionate elements.

Desperate people, families and children are turned away with the only real excuse a variation of the simple un-golden rule: Me first, and to hell with you — the authoritarian’s license for domination. There’s no shortage of aspiring tyrants and enabling bullies..

The idea of right-wing politics finding support in Europe came as a surprise to some who recall that it was support for strongman nationalist leaders that led to the disasters of World War II.

Americans have justification to be proud of our country, but there’s a tendency to rewrite some inconvenient facts. Like the legacy of slavery, and the unwillingness to let go of some need to justify it.

We like to think we have never experienced in this country the horrors of totalitarianism, the rule of a few over the many, the bullying of entire classes of people. Ask the American Indian. Ask the Chinese who came to build our railroads, the Japanese Americans who were forced into desert camps during WW II.

Ask the Catholics who were assaulted by the Protestants and the Jews who were assaulted by Catholics and Protestants.

America’s real threat is if we buy into the premise that there’s only one definition for an American favored by God. That our virtues are represented by flags and slogans and symbols and what we hate. That we are justified in using violence to dominate others, and the only thing we need to fear is change.

People want freedom to live in safety, the right to earn a decent wage, to own privacy and property, and to expect a show of respect from others across the social spectrum. The essential dignity of any human being is the basis of all our relationships — personal, political and spiritual. Some of us are better at recognizing that than others.

We need to control access across borders into our country. That’s a given. It is not realistic to demand that all those who look to come here be just like us. Nor can we accept all who want access to the U.S.

Purge our vocabulary of thoughts like, “they aren’t one of us,” or “there goes the neighborhood,” or “not in my back yard,” or “those people.”

It would also be a lot easier to fix immigration if our politicians were not more determined to keep the opposing party from succeeding than meeting needs and standards of common sense and human dignity.

Dean Minnich writes from Westminster.