(Photo by Bryan Cox/U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement via Getty Images)
Opinion editorial by WBZ NewsRadio political analyst Jon Keller
BOSTON (WBZ NewsRadio) — Yesterday, I stopped by my neighborhood convenience store to buy some milk.
I paid and left, and as I was about to pull away from the curb, the store owner—an immigrant from India—ran up my car in the rain and handed me four dollars, the change from a fiver I had given him thinking it was a single.
Every day, when I visit a frail elderly relative of mine, I interact with the immigrant women—from Ethiopia, Colombia, Brazil and Mexico—who provide her with tender, loving care. I have learned far more from these gentle women about how to help my relative than from any American-born doctor or social worker.
We have a lot of honest, caring immigrants who help us make it through around here. Many of them aren’t citizens, although I’ve yet to meet one who didn’t aspire to be.
And when I hear pandering pols and their ignorant enablers paint immigrants as some kind of scourge on our culture and way of life, I think of these people that we interact with and rely on every day, and I get very disgusted.
No one denies there are social problems related to our broken immigration system. No one in their right mind wants anything but the book thrown at anyone, here illegally or not, who engages in violent crime.
But it doesn’t help the cause of finding solutions when haters and trolls peddle fake horror stories about “invasions,” or talk about ending birthright citizenship, which conservative Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby notes is “indispensable to the assimilation of immigrant families into American life.”
Immigrant families—you know, like mine a couple generations back, and, unless you’re a Native American, yours too.
You can listen to Keller At Large on WBZ News Radio every weekday mornings at :55 minutes past the hour. Listen to his previous podcasts on iHeartRadio.
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