Archbishop Wenski: The elections are over, now it’s time to heal together | Opinion

The presidential elections are over, thank God.

Whether they agreed with the outcome of the races, I believe everyone also breathed a sigh of relief that there was no violence protesting the results of the presidential election, which proved to be conclusive.

The electoral cycle was once again highly polarized, and the polemics of each side lacked civility.

Now is a time for healing and to abandon overheated vitriol and recover civility in our national discourse.

Certainly, many wounds are needing to be healed, and there is a deep unease among many about the direction that President-elect Donald Trump may wish to take the nation, especially regarding how he might propose to “fix” our admittedly broken immigration system. But despite rhetoric that seemed “neo-nativist” to some, the president-elect once again attracted a significant number of Hispanic voters.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal in October, before the elections, the editors asked the president-elect about undocumented immigrants who have been here for years and might have U.S. citizen spouses and children. His response was that he wanted to help them.

Trump, while talking about deterrence in strong terms, hinted at something less than a draconian mass deportation.

He admitted the complexity of the issue. “We have a lot of good people in this country, and we have to do something about it,” he said. While the president-elect declined to specify whom he would deport, his chosen “border czar,” Tom Homan, told “60 Minutes,” that “it’s not going to be a mass sweep of neighborhoods… It’s not going to be building concentration camps. I’ve read it all. It’s ridiculous.”

To “make America great again,” we will need a robust economy — and we cannot do that without making an accommodation for the millions of immigrants, many without a permanent status, who help enable the engine of the American economy to keep running.

Until the Biden administration’s policies resulted in a massive influx of migrants, most Americans supported an immigration reform that gave a path to permanent legal status for those who have been already here for years, especially those who arrived here as children, the so-called “dreamers.”

Trump would do well if at the same time as putting in place policies that effectively control our borders, he would allow a path to citizenship for the millions who already live among us.

If we need “walls,” we need walls with “doors” because some of our “greatest Americans” have been immigrants or refugees.

Congress could offer a relatively simple fix by updating the registry, a provision of the 1924 Immigration Law, which allowed those in the country before a certain date the possibility of legal residency if they could demonstrate “good moral character.”

The last time the registry provision was updated was Jan. 1, 1973, over 50 years ago.

“Making America great again” also means learning from the mistakes of the past.

One hundred years ago, in the aftermath of World War I, Americans opted for immigration restrictionism, protectionism, and isolationism. These policies led to the Great Depression and made World War II inevitable. People, especially those left behind in an increasingly globalized world, felt angry then as they do now.

With wars raging in the Middle East, Central Europe, and parts of Africa, as well as the emerging threat from China, the United States and its allies cannot think of themselves as “gated communities” protected from the chaos outside. They will need to project confidence and strength if we are to avoid World War III.

This great American experiment in democracy and the rule of law, and not by men, requires commitment from all of us to work together for the common good.

Let’s pray that civility prevails in our political and policy debates — because we won’t make America great by making America mean.

Thomas Wenski is the Archbishop of Miami.

This story was originally published December 6, 2024 at 2:19 PM.