Thinking too hard yet again, to the stalled immigration debate, I would add the following thought: we are Americans by an accident of birth. That’s it: the sum total of why I am an American. I was born here. My parents were born here. Neither they nor I had any control over that fact, and it was certainly not the result of achievement or choice.

The Us/Them, Native/Alien debate often comes with the presumption that those who are here by an accident of birth should be innately more privileged than those who are not. Logically, we have not “earned” our place, there is no quality that we accidentals posses that entitles us innately, as human beings, to be preferable to those to failed to pass the same accidental test.

At the end of the day, the immigration “debate” is not so much a debate as a fight for who gets to name and qualify the Other, in its essence, then, a deeply racist enterprise as one race of accidentals gets positioned against another. If we insist on such distinctions, should they not at least be earned, in some fashion, perhaps along the lines of Kennedy’s “ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country” invocation of service?

Under this model, those who have immigrated here and obtained citizenship pass a higher threshold that we mere accidentals. Seen in that light, service to country is passed by many: the military, firemen, policemen, coast guard, postal workers, teachers, public librarians, the list can go on for a while.

Perhaps a model of requiring such service as a condition of citizenship (or voting) would give greater impact and meaning to being a citizen of this country. Imagine all of those “illegal” immigrants now becoming legal through their service to this country. Many are probably doing so in some capacity already, and with greater effect than many accidentals.

And if we take this a step further, we could ask about establishing this as a general principle: you choose where you want to live on the basis of the qualities of the place and the culture (both economic and social) that it projects as a nation. If I felt “closer” economically and culturally to Canada or Germany or (depending) Saudi Arabia or (depending) Israel, why should I not be able to take up residence and service there? Would I not then no longer be accidental, but now actually a citizen “with a purpose”?

This would be the utopia of “one world, many cultures”, envisioned by the early Socialists who argued against the distraction of the nation state — whether secular or religious — in moving towards the goal of a universal brotherhood not based on statist, racial, or religious strictures. If you see this as a goal, the debate must recognize the fact of the accidental and strive to replace it with more humanistic, logical goals.