Our shared culture is rooted in the fact that we all come from immigrant families.
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We are a nation of immigrants. It’s where we draw our strength and ingenuity. Outside of the Indigenous peoples who have populated this land for millennia, everyone came here from somewhere else. My father came to this country as an immigrant and served in the military, and his children have all given back tenfold. My mom’s dad, my grandfather, immigrated to Detroit and became a police officer.
A record 79% of Americans believe immigration is good for our country, according to a Gallup Poll published in July. Our shared culture is rooted in the fact that we all come from immigrant families. It’s the thing that ties us all together. America is powerful because we are a wellspring of hope for the world, a door of opportunity for anyone yearning to breathe free — not a nation born from fear.
Yet a shadow has been cast over our country. Our neighbors are incurring untold daily traumas that most voters in America never signed up for. According to a Pew Research poll, 60% disapprove of the suspension of most asylum applications, 59% disapprove of ending temporary protected status, and 54% disapprove of increasing Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids on workplaces. The Trump administration’s blunt force approach is not only failing to address a convoluted immigration system in any meaningful way, it is purposefully punishing people and fracturing families. It is anathema to the ideals to which we aspire as Americans.
Comprehensive immigration reform is needed now. Our country had a functioning immigration system, though it’s now broken, with inadequate legal pathways and no “line” for people to stand in. President Ronald Reagan sought amnesty and a path to citizenship for law-abiding immigrants, but we have devolved to something treacherous. Abductions on the way to jobs, outside stores, on the steps of courthouses are a scourge on our nation and bad for business too.
In Napa and Sonoma counties, 73% of agriculture is powered by immigrants. Immigrants make up 39% of this area’s manufacturing workforce, 37% of construction and 29% of hospitality. A profile by the Migrant Policy Institute shows that immigrants annually account for as much as $1 billion of this region’s GDP. According to the Bay Area Council, mass deportations of California’s 2.28 million immigrants without protected legal status would cost the state an estimated $275 billion in wages and other direct and indirect economic activity annually.
Instead of driving neighbors into hiding we should welcome people who want to be here with pathways to prosperity that benefit us all. Hardworking immigrants who support our society deserve stability, and our local economy depends on it too. Some of those at the helm of government seemingly live so far removed from American main streets that they simply don’t understand what it feels like to have someone you know, someone your kids know, someone you work with, taken away.
That’s why business and community leaders from around the North Bay recently came together to raise money for the Immigration Institute of the Bay Area. Organizations like the institute can help renew a hardworking immigrant’s permit or green card, help a green card holder fulfill their dream of citizenship, reunite someone with their family or help a “Dreamer” renew their DACA application.
If we don’t turn the tide, we risk losing the American dream that so many for so long have toiled: the simple yet enduring belief that anyone can make it in America, regardless of race, creed, gender or status. What matters is what each of us do to contribute to what George Washington called “the last great experiment, for promoting human happiness, by reasonable compact, in civil Society.”
What are you going to do to change someone’s life, and the life of our nation, for the better? Our family is giving to organizations like the Immigration Institute of the Bay Area and Napa Valley Together, a new coalition dedicated to upholding immigrant rights, ensuring due process, reducing pervasive fear created by misinformation and safeguarding the prosperity of our community. We call on everyone to join us: give your time, your money, your voice. Document stories of immigrant neighbors’ challenges and send them to the media and your representatives in Congress.
Eric Jones is cofounder of the Eric Jones Family Foundation and a former partner in Dragoneer Investment Group. He lives in Napa.
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