Renewal by immigrants is the fundamental American narrative, the story of people in ships, then covered wagons, coming to settle and make fruitful a land that rewarded their courage and grit. Except now that story is scorned and discarded, along with many of those immigrants.
Bills to streamline and increase legal immigration die in Congress. There are no visas of the type Mayor Bloomberg imagines, though we could use immigrant entrepreneurs in Detroit, Buffalo, New York City — all over. Nearly 150 years after President Lincoln signed the Homestead Act, the new frontier is in the inner city, not way out West. There is no federal or state Department of Urban Homesteading, but — DUH — maybe there should be.
via www.nytimes.com
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