Retiring Miami Rep. Ros-Lehtinen’s set an example for tackling immigration issues
TextEditor
These days, the changes of bringing people together and passing commonsense immigration reform in Washington seem long. We’re constantly deluged with painful imagery of families being separated, immigrant caravans and cruel rhetoric toward those seeking a new beginning. Daily headlines call into question the very idea that America is a “nation of immigrants.”
How do we return to our values and prove that we can be a nation of laws and a nation of grace? There is no easy answer, but we would be wise to follow the example set by retiring Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Republican from Miami.
Ros-Lehtinen is a Republican who made history in 1989 as the first Cuban-American and Latina elected to Congress. Since then, she has stood strong — and often courageously — to try to ensure that our immigration process is fair and that it supports America’s economy and moral authority.
Earlier this year, Ros-Lehtinen signed a discharge petition to move immigration reform forward, not because it would be popular among Republican leadership (it wasn’t), but because it was the right thing to do. She co-founded the Congressional Refugee Caucus, and introduced the Support and Defend our Military Personnel and their Families Act, which would address longstanding barriers to naturalization for immigrant members of the U.S. armed forces, veterans and their families.
These efforts have in common not only an adherence to values that help make the U.S. a leader in the world. They also are examples of Ros-Lehtinen’s consistent willingness to reach across the aisle.
Ros-Lehtinen recognizes that immigrants will integrate if we give them the opportunity and encourage them to do so. When we help immigrants integrate rather than cause them to isolate, we are all stronger and more secure.
During a series of 26 “Living Room Conversations” across America earlier this year, including in Gainesville and Tallahassee, we learned that whether immigrants integrate or isolate is a source of anxiety for many native-born Americans. Ensuring that immigrants continue to have every opportunity to integrate, as Ros-Lehtinen has tried to do during her career, is a way to address this anxiety in a way that can unify us. Likewise, Ros-Lehtinen’s recent examples of bipartisanship offer hope that we can overcome polarizing forces regarding immigrants and immigration and work together toward a stronger country.
Most Americans are not at extreme poles on immigration. They’re near the center. They want their elected leaders to listen to them and do the right thing, which is what Ros-Lehtinen’s career has been about. They know we can be safe and secure, protect DREAMers, and create legal opportunities for immigrants whom we need in our labor force and value in our communities.
For example, as polarizing as immigration can be, 78 percent of Americans believe that young people who came to this country as kids — Dreamers — should be able to earn citizenship if they attend college or serve in the military, according to recent research by More in Common. The group also found that 64 percent of Americans agree “that America should bear some of the burden of taking in refugees fleeing from war or persecution.”
Ros-Lehtinen, herself a Cuban refugee, shows us that the American story is an immigrant story. She has taught us that we can modernize and improve our immigration system without criticizing those hoping to contribute to America.
As we bid Congresswoman Ros-Lehtinen farewell, we need more leaders like her: principled, bipartisan and strong.
Ali Noorani is executive director of the National Immigration Forum and author of the 2017 book, “There Goes the Neighborhood.”