It always bugs me when a news story leaves out the relevant part of a story. The Washington Post does just that in it's coverage of the hearing just held in Miami about immigration reform.
MIAMI, July 10 — A congressional hearing on immigration came to a dramatic pause Monday when Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, choked up as he talked about his Italian immigrant father and the opportunities that America had given to his family.
A hush fell over the auditorium at Miami Dade College as Pace, a Marine who was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., and grew up in Teaneck, N.J., was overcome with emotion and struggled to continue reading from his statement as the opening witness at the field hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Pace was explaining his family's origins to the committee and the opportunities he and his three siblings enjoyed in America when he lost his composure, much to the surprise of the 150 people gathered in the hearing room and to the five senators, who sat riveted as the general paused in his testimony.
After he composed himself, Pace described his older sister, who went to law school, and his older brother, who, like himself, attended the Naval Academy and was a Marine.
"There is no other country on the planet that affords that kind of opportunity to those who come here," Pace concluded. The audience burst into applause.
Pace's father was born in Italy in 1914, immigrated to the United States and became an electrician in New York City, raising four children there. The first Marine to be named chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Pace has been chairman since September 2005 after serving as vice chairman for four years.
What did they leave out? The information on whether Pace's father entered the country legally (almost a certainty given the year of his immigration – almost certainly through Ellis Island where my mother's parents arrived). The point is, I really haven't heard any illegal immigration opponents who are against legal immigration. I'm not. I welcome them.
I do not welcome a tidal wave of unskilled illegal immigrant labor that puts our own most at risk citizens at an additional disadvantage. (By the way, I think general Pace is quite right. There is no other place in the world, indeed in the history of the world, that gives the opportunities America does. I'd kind of like to see it stay that way, not sink into the third world.)
UPDATE: Don't miss The Real Ugly American's take on this same article.
“There is no other place in the world, indeed in the history of the world, that gives the opportunities America does. ”
Plenty of countries. Say mine, for example. You can work, study, settle down, pretty much as you wish.
The same applies to Germany, Italy, Spain, France, Sweden, Denmark, Finnland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Austria.
Just to name a few.
It’s just they don’t write it on their flag…
On the increasingly rare occasions when I listen to TV news, I find myself filling in the blanks of what they aren’t saying. Same with newspapers.
I get my information from the internet and talk radio.
Listening to the TV news or reading newspapers is like reading and deciphering real estate ads. They can call it a “cozy dollhouse” & I know it’s a small dump.
“They can call it a “cozy dollhouse†& I know it’s a small dump.”
Real estate language is universal, I see.
)
“American style kitchen: we knocked down the wall between bedroom and kitchen.”
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