On the opening day of the California Legislature, California Democrats set aside reason and embraced hysteria by passing House Resolution 4, a belligerent proclamation that seemingly supports California’s immigrant population, but in reality cynically stokes immigrant anxieties for Democratic political gain.
Designed to re-establish California’s stance on immigration reform under the new Trump Administration, HR 4 could have been a sensible, inclusive bipartisan document on the positive contribution of legal immigrants to the world’s sixth-largest economy.
Unfortunately, midway through the resolution, HR 4 devolves into full-throated advocacy of illegal immigration and a thinly-veiled attack on President-elect Donald Trump as being “divisive,” “misinformed,” and engaged in the “politics of hatred and exclusion.”
By engaging in blatant demagoguery and ignoring the genuine difference between immigrating to America legally and entering our country in violation of the law, HR 4 perpetuates an oft-repeated false narrative that is designed to incite fear and distract Californians from the glaring failures of the Democrats in Sacramento to fix the state’s very real immigration and crime issues, not to mention our highest-in-the-nation taxes and poverty rate.
Beyond dispute by either political party is that ours is a nation of immigrants. Immigrants built America. Their energy and inventiveness — the patriotism with which generations of immigrants have embraced the United States — are contributions beyond measure. They have fought and died for American liberties and our way of life. Legal immigrants are the fresh blood that keeps America young and renewed.
Successive waves of millions have come to our country over the course of two-and-a-half centuries. And it’s worth remembering that they came here seeking to live freely in a nation of laws, unbothered by arbitrary governments that limited their freedom and opportunity; unbothered by governments that sought to distract from failed policies by intimidation and fear.
One cannot help but think that the politicized spirit of HR 4 has much in common with the nature of the regimes from which so many immigrants to America have fled.
If California truly wants to demonstrate its care and concern for the many residents of this state who are immigrants, I suggest we spend our time enacting reforms that will spur job creation, economic opportunity and upward mobility; enacting reforms to give poor families – many of whom are immigrants – the opportunity to send their children to the school of their choice; passing reforms that reduce income inequality by reducing taxes; and expanding opportunities for working people to earn more. I suggest we take meaningful action to offer Californians – immigrant or not — hope and opportunity, rather than further dividing the state with scare tactics and manipulative rhetoric.
America spoke last month with a loud and undeniable voice that took all the experts by surprise. We are tired of being ignored. Ordinary, hard-working Americans stood up because we are tired of “business as usual,” tired of being buried under the political agendas of the establishment, and tired of being silenced by bullying progressives.
The Democrats behind HR 4 believe they are making California a center of national resistance to an imaginary tide of bigotry. They are deluding themselves. What they are doing is isolating California from an America that has woken up and is pushing back against smothering political correctness. HR4 supporters are attempting to build their own wall around California – a wall built on a foundation of fear, cemented with political correctness and guarded by intolerance.
Californians should have none of it, and should reject the hysteria. Instead, we should fight to tear down the Democrats’ wall of divisiveness and ignorance, and fight to enact real economic reforms to lower our taxes, end our state’s crushing poverty rate, and get on with the business of making California great again. For all Californians.