Immigration!

Immigration! Everyone is talking about it. Without saying "yea or nay," "right or wrong," "good or bad," let us use it as a starting point for another discussion.

When people come to America, for what do they come? Or, why do they come?

The first immigrants came mostly for freedom- both religious and personal. They came through great hardship and struggles so that they could worship God freely, and, without oppression, be able to live the life that was brought forth out of that worship. Then, after more years of struggles and battles to maintain what they had, the people advanced to Union under the Constitution and our republic form of government. Do the immigrants realize the value of this? Do we? Do our children?

Our history is very important, all the good, the bad and even the ugly.

"History, by apprising the people of the past, will enable them to judge the future." Thomas Jefferson.

A true study of it can show us the mistakes that we do not want to make again. And, it

can also show us what is important and the good things that need to be re-instituted or reinforced.

Our history is our heritage. Our heritage connects us in a common bond.

Karl Marx said, "Take away the heritage of a people and they are easily persuaded."

Ominous words! Sure, a while back the Communists would have liked, by force, to take away our heritage so they could control us and all of our wealth. However, we would have immediately risen up and stopped that theft.

The more subtle way of which Marx was speaking consists of slowly but surely diluting our heritage—the history, by focusing on the mundane, obscuring the vital and adding little bits and pieces from here and there to separate rather than maintain the common bond. After a while it is all a jumble and of no value to protect us.

In 1913, Woodrow Wilson said, "A nation which does not remember what it was yesterday, does not know what it is today, nor what it is trying to do. We are trying to do a futile thing if we do not know where we came from or what we have been about."…

America has always been about FREEDOM - freedom to worship, freedom to live, freedom to work, grow and prosper. Now this freedom is not to do and get just anything and everything we want. But, this FREEDOM is to live responsibly to and through the very principles on which we were founded.

According to an 1892 Supreme Court decision, "Our laws and our institutions must necessarily be BASED upon and EMBODY the teachings of the Redeemer of mankind. It is impossible that it should be otherwise: and in this sense and to the extent our civilization and our institutions are emphatically Christian. This is a religious people. This is historically true. From the discovery of this continent to the present hour, there is a single voice making this affirmation we find everywhere a clear recounting of this same truth that this is a Christian nation."

Our faith must be our passion, and responsibility to God and our civil government must be our purpose.

So, if the foreigners come to live here and partake of the blessings, let them learn of this heritage—our heritage -- the very struggles and high cost to found, to build and

to continue this land of opportunity. May we, too, be reminded of our precious privilege.