An immigration ideal for Veterans Day

“It is both a right and a responsibility of a democratic society to manage immigration so that it serves the national interest“.
– Barbara Jordan

Happy Veterans Day.

NumbersUSA is privileged to have several veterans on our team, including Co-President Michael Hough and founder Roy Beck. More than a decade ago, Roy wrote a Veterans Day message that remains strikingly relevant today:

VETERANS SERVED THEIR NATIONAL COMMUNITY — CIVILIAN ELITES ARE SERVING NARROW SELF-INTEREST

“Can you even imagine during the Great Depression — or soon after World War II — during times of high unemployment that the leaders of the nation’s businesses, labor unions, civil rights groups and religious denominations would have insisted on more immigrant workers instead of hiring the jobless in their own communities?

“Of course not. Those were times when the civilian elites imitated veterans and acted in the interest of their community.

“This Veterans Day, we witness the sad spectacle of elites who turn their backs on the most vulnerable of their community and seek immigration policies that make the elites more money, gain them more members, give them more power or supposed glory.”

Serve the national community

Veterans did not serve a global marketplace; they served a nation and its people. Immigration policy should do the same.

We’ve displayed Barbara Jordan’s quote on our homepage for years as a reminder of this simple but profound truth: every democratic nation has both the right and the responsibility to craft an immigration policy that serves its own national community.

Americans–veterans and civilians alike–may debate the finer points of that policy. But we can all rally around the principle Jordan expressed: immigration should serve the common good of the nation that our veterans served to protect.