Immigration Matters

"And if thy brother be waxen poor, and fallen in decay with thee; then thou shalt relieve him: yea, though he be a stranger, or a sojourner; that he may live with thee."
― Leviticus 25  600 BC

"For ... I was a stranger and you invited me in."
― Matthew 25 33 AD

بَدَأَ الإِسْلاَمُ غَرِيبًا وَسَيَعُودُ كَمَا بَدَأَ غَرِيبًا فَطُوبَى لِلْغُرَبَاءِ
"Islam began as something strange and it will return to being strange, so blessed are the strangers." 
― Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim 145 846/232 AH

"He is not a citizen who is not disposed to respect the laws and to obey the civil magistrate; and he is certainly not a good citizen who does not wish to promote, by every means in his power, the welfare of the whole society of his fellow-citizens." ― Adam Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments 1759 AD

"The bosom of America is open to receive not only the Opulent and respectable Stranger, but the oppressed and persecuted of all Nations And Religions; whom we shall wellcome to a participation of all our rights and previleges, if by decency and propriety of conduct they appear to merit the enjoyment." ― George Washington, letter, 1783 AD

"If aliens might be admitted indiscriminately to enjoy all the rights of citizens at the will of a single state, the Union might itself be endangered by an influx of foreigners, hostile to its institutions, ignorant of its powers, and incapable of a due estimate of its privileges. ... There is great wisdom, therefore, in confiding to the national government the power to establish a uniform rule of naturalization throughout the United States." ― Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution 3:§§ 1098--99, 1833 CE

To what extent or degree should a national community/bordered country define and enforce who lives and works within its borders? Are there extenuating human factors that deserve consideration? Is there a win-win solution for everyone to these challenging issues?

Human vocabulary is littered with words [and human history with acts] that have no intelligible meaning other than to divide human beings into two subsets ... "us" and "not-us".

• hebrew - Semetic word meaning - "one from the other side"
• gentile - Hebrew word meaning - "not Hebrew"
• barbarian - Greek word meaning - "one of unintelligible speech"
• alien - Latin word meaning - "other, different"
• heathen - English word meaning - "neither Christian nor Jewish" 

And although variations on these broad-brush approaches to distinguishing among individual human beings may seem to lack precision [and logic] even as they raise troubling questions [moral, civil, criminal, economic, etc.], they are likely to persist because they are relatively easy to administer. 

So ... in the spirit of dialogue, New Symposium Society encourages its members and friends to lay aside all previous judgments concerning this and related issues ... personal and cultural ... chosen or inherited ... and to make room for an evening of honest and open examination of the alternatives available to communities [from neighborhoods to nations] to regulate the rights and privileges of the people who pass through and/or dwell within their boundaries.

We will be working HARD to assemble a panel and moderator who can

• identify and define the keywords,
• articulate and connect the thoughts then
• construct and test the arguments

which will help us bring a little light to bear on a topic which is greatly overheated in America and across the world.

When, Where and a Flyer

Tuesday, June 26th,  7:00 to 8:45 pm at Friends University, William Penn Hall, Room 100 [west of Riney Fine Arts Bldg].  Click FLYER above and [if we have it] you will get a flyer which you can print and post appropriately to alert others about the upcoming meeting.

Panelists and Moderator 👥

Please welcome our generous and accomplished panelists and moderator. Click a name to see a bio [if we have it]. And remember, they have busy lives so we do NOT require them to provide a position statement or suggested readings in advance ... but if they do, we have provided links to those materials following their name/bio below ... and we encourage you to review these links to get to know our panelists and moderator better.

Irene Caudillo, MPA  - President and CEO of El Centro in Kansas City, with the mission to strengthen communities and improve lives of Latinos and others through education, social, and economic opportunities.

Frank Choriego – business owner and Special Projects Consultant, Wichita State University Business Development Center, who describes himself as a serial entrepreneur.

Judah Kogen – Rabbi at Wichita’s Hebrew Congregation.  He is a noted academic within his tradition and has been on the bimah for more than 15 years. We welcome Judah back as a panelist whose insights are always as provocative to our minds as they are touching to our hearts.

Joyce Mucci – Southern Field Representative FAIR, Federation for American Immigration Reform, a public interest organization untied in the belief that immigration policies and laws should serve the nation’s future needs.

Dr. Russell Arben Fox [moderator] –  Political Science Professor and Director of the Honors Program at Friends University ... a valued addition to our society whenever he is available.

The Evening's Format

The first half of the evening will consist of each panelist presenting an 8-9 minute opening position statement. In the second half of the evening, the audience will help our panelists by asking questions.

And for those of you who are inclined to get some questions out in the open for consideration BEFORE the evening's meeting ... feel free to join the liberales ... and blog your COMMENTS and REPLIES below as needed/wished to build some trains of thought for us.

Epilogue

With exceeding thanks to our informed and articulate panelists ... to our wise and just moderator ... and to EACH AND EVERY passionate and patient symposiast ... we experienced some of the finest moments in the history of New Symposium in our discussion of why "immigration matters". We understood [even if we did not know] that the words "passion" and "patience" come from the same Greek verb "patior" which means "to suffer".

Immigration is a subject that brings us all to our feet [sooner or later] because it affects us where we live ... personally and intimately as well as collectively and socially. But once again we were able to demonstrate that honest and ardent sharing thru dialogue is a powerful agent for helping us get in touch with ourselves and with others ... to form and sustain community which both welcomes and strengthens us all as co-members of and co-contestants in the "human race". And if nothing else, we came away with a better understanding of the feelings behind the perennial plea e pluribus unum:

“Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists.” ― Franklin D. Roosevelt

For those who missed [or just want to relive] this stimulating evening at Friends University, here is the link to the AV recording on "Immigration Matters" ... again with thanks to Paul Soutar at Graphic Lens ... or you can just go to YouTube and search for us under "New Symposium Society Immigration Matters".

Whatever your personal profile is, we hope you will stay in touch with New Symposium Society in the remaining months of 2018 and join us again in the future. And if you have some ideas to share about ways to improve our work ... just let us hear from you ... contact us at newsymposium@gmail.com.  Goodbye until our next meeting and stay tuned to our blogsite for further info.

NSS  Suggested Readings [with links]

Featured
Political Tribes: Group Instinct And The Fate Of Nations, Yale law professor Amy Chua, 2017
>>Review: A Time Of Tribalism, Rod Dreher, The American Conservative, April 27, 2018
Who Is Dayani Cristol, a film by Gael García Bernal and Marc Silver

Pro or Con
Opposition to immigration, Wikipedia
Yes, Violent Crime Has Spiked In Sweden Since Open Immigration, The Federalist, 2017
Immigration, League of Women Voters,  2017
Is Immigration a Threat to Our Culture?, Robert Tracinski, The Federalist, 2015
15 Common Arguments against Immigration Addressed, Alex Nowrasteh, FEE, 2016

Pro and Con
Should the Government Allow Illegal Immigrants to Become Citizens?, ProCon.org, 2017
Should America Maintain/Increase the Level of Legal Immigration?, BalancedPolitics.org

Public Opinion Polls
What Americans want to do about illegal immigration, Sara Kehaulani Goo, Pew Research Center, 2015
Muslim Beliefs about Sharia Law, Pew Research Center, 2013
Public Opinion Polls on Immigration, FAIR [Federation for American Immigration Reform]