Last year former-Governor Spitzer got in some hot water when he boldly
proposed that all New York State residents be allowed to have a
driver's license. All that a driver's license legally implies is that
the bearer of the card is qualified to operate a motor vehicle on
public roads and that their identity has been validated by the DMV.
It does not say "this person is not a terrorist" nor "this person is a
citizen of the United States". The Spitzer proposal would have just
allowed people living underground to come out of the shadows and would
allow us to move forward on addressing the immigration issue. But it
was not to be—the proposal, probably a political gambit to begin with,
got caught up in broader political winds and was sunk. Shortly
thereafter, Spitzer himself was as well.

In the past year, I have been asked four times within the boundaries
of this country whether or not I was an American citizen by federal
officials. Once was near Big Bend National Park in Texas at a check
point, two more on an Amtrak train in Syracuse coming and going from
Buffalo, and inside the jetway boarding a flight from Puerto Rico
(whose residents are American citizens) to New York City. None of
those times was I crossing an international boundary.

This is one of the many the prices of cracking down on undocumented
immigrants. When even a small proportion of a population is declared
"illegal" and sought to be eliminated then the whole society becomes
distorted. Had I refused to declare my citizenship, would I have been
detained and searched or was I on safe ground to refuse to answer the
question? If I had brown skin or answered in Spanish would my answer
have been questioned? When one part of a society is suspicious,
everyone is questionable.

When my family came to this country (which for various parts was
between 1890 and 1910) they did not need to seek a visa—they booked a
third class steamer ticket and arrived at Castle Clinton or Ellis
Island ready to become part of America. In fact, there was no such
thing as illegal immigration until 1882 when the Chinese Exclusion Act
was passed; as a consequence, all but close relatives of Chinese-
Americans were prohibited from coming to the U.S. In response to a
massive wave of Southern and Eastern Europeans immigrating to America
between the Civil War and World War I, a series of racially-based
restrictive immigration quotas were passed in 1920–1924, creating the
concept of illegal immigration. (These acts were preceeded by the
notorious Palmer Raids where tens of thousands of immigrants and
naturalized citizens were deported.)

It wasn't until the liberalization of the immigration laws in 1965
that a trickle of immigrants became a steady flow. These new
Americans helped repopulation and rebuild many ravaged central cities,
including my now hometown of New York. It is interesting to speculate
that had the immigration engine not been cut off earlier, perhaps
cities would not have suffered the crisis of abandonment of the 60s
and 70s (but that is a question for another day).

The current politics around immigration are toxic and turn a complex
debate into a muddle of slogans and hysteria. A border wall is not
going to solve anything. Ahistorical hypocrisy is rampant. An
inability to look past a new language or a gradation of skin color
stops us from seeing that we are all human, we all have families and
we all need to support them.

So this Passover season, remember that the price of freedom is not
wearing a flag-lapel pin nor is it imposing our will abroad. The best
way to defend our liberties is to defend those of someone else.