A Fervent Wish

Not my words, not spoken this year or last, but so in line with my thinking, so relevant to the here and now.

I do believe there will be a rational immigration policy eventually.… What’s interesting about our country if you study history is that there are some isms that occasionally pop up. One is isolationism and its evil twin protectionism and its evil triplet nativism. So if you study the twenties, for example, there was an America First policy that said who cares what happens in Europe. Well, what happened in Europe mattered eventually because of World War II. There was Smoot-Hawley which is part of an economic policy which basically said we don’t want trade, in other words let’s throw up barriers. And there was an immigration policy that I think during this period argued we have too many Jews and too many Italians therefore we should have no immigrants. And my point is we’ve been through this kind of period of isolationism, protectionism and nativism. I’m a little concerned we may…