We are finally having a badly needed discussion on immigration during this election cycle. Unfortunately the main stream media and the Democrat Party try to shout down discussion with cries of racism against anyone who wants to reform our system. Calling opponents racists is a lazy and dishonest tactic but it has been used by Democrats and media during every election for the last few decades because it works on single media source Americans. Not all that long ago a Democrat politician named Barbara Jordan was leading the charge on immigration reform.

Barbara Jordan was elected to Congress in 1972. She was the first woman to represent Texas in the House. Jordan made history by being the first African American woman to deliver keynote speeches at a Democratic National Convention. She was also a civil rights leader. But today her Party and the media would just call her a racist.

Ms. Jordan was a patriot. She was passionate about immigration and her work on immigration was an impetus behind the founding of NumbersUSA twenty years ago. She was the chair of the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform Her are some of her philosophies and quotes:

• Jordan loved her country and held her fellow citizens, all of them, in high regard. Accordingly, she was insistent that, while immigration was beneficial to the United States, her primary concern was how it affected the American people.
• “Immigration is far too important to who we are as a nation to become a wedge issue in Presidential politics. We have seen that kind of thing happen before, and it is not productive. I, for one, wish that we would do away with all the hyphenation and just be Americans, together.”
• “There are people who argue that some illegal aliens contribute to our community because they may work, pay taxes, send their children to our schools, and in all respects except one, obey the law. Let me be clear: that is not enough.”
• “Immigrants with relatively low education and skills may compete for jobs and public services with the most vulnerable of Americans, particularly those who are unemployed or underemployed. Jobs generated by immigrant businesses do not always address this problem.”
• Cultural and religious diversity does not pose a threat to the national interest as long as public policies ensure civic unity. Such policies should help newcomers learn to speak, read, and write English effectively. They should strengthen civic education in the teaching of American history for all Americans.
• The Jordan Commission’s reports called for tightening enforcement and cutting legal immigration by limiting family chain migration and eliminating the Visa Lottery.
• “We decry hostility and discrimination towards immigrants as antithetical to the traditions and interests of the country. At the same time, we disagree with those who would label efforts to control immigration as being inherently anti-immigrant. Rather, it is both a right and a responsibility of a democratic society to manage immigration so that it serves the national interest.”
• “Deportation is crucial. Credibility in immigration policy can be summed up in one sentence: Those who should get in, get in; those who should be kept out, are kept out; and those who should not be here will be required to leave. The top priorities for detention and removal, of course, are criminal aliens. But for the system to be credible, people actually have to be deported at the end of the process.”
• Jordan was one of the few courageous liberals who dared to bring up the relationship between mass immigration and falling wages and the negative economic effects of immigration on the working poor, and black workers in particular. Her commission found no national interest in continuing to import lesser-skilled and unskilled workers to compete in the most vulnerable parts of our labor force.
• Immigration to the United States should be understood as a privilege, not a right. Immigration carries with it obligations to embrace the common core of the American civic culture, to seek to become able to communicate – to the extent possible – in English with other citizens and residents, and to adapt to fundamental constitutional principles and democratic institutions.

Her philosophy on immigration is a common sense approach that most Americans probably agree with. The Democrat Party and the main stream media however do not. The last item above is perhaps the most important. Immigrants come here because they want to be Americans, so they should embrace our culture. This was once referred to as the melting pot. This has been replaced with multiculturalism which has resulted in great harm to our culture.

Jordan wanted be part of a national effort to manage an urgent national problem. That is why the commission’s first report, which took an unambiguous stand in favor of enforcement of legally established immigration limits, was titled “U.S. Immigration Policy: Restoring Credibility”.

There is nothing racist in wanting to protect our border and manage immigration according to our national interest. But with a dishonest media it is an uphill battle.