"As the 109th Congress continues to debate legislation that will affect the lives of immigrants, it is important for us to remember that we are a nation of immigrants"
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Serrano’s line is less a sentimental nod to Ellis Island than a tactical move in a live legislative fight: don’t let policy drift into abstraction. By anchoring the 109th Congress’s immigration debates in “the lives of immigrants,” he yanks the conversation away from numbers, borders, and partisan messaging and back toward people who will feel the consequences in their paychecks, families, and legal status.
The phrase “it is important for us to remember” does quiet but pointed work. It assumes selective amnesia in the chamber and, by extension, in the public: a willful forgetting that makes harsh restrictions easier to sell. “Remember” is a moral verb disguised as a neutral one, implying that to ignore immigrant humanity isn’t merely a policy choice, it’s a civic lapse. Serrano’s “us” is also strategic. It pulls lawmakers into the same national story as the people they’re regulating, rejecting a clean division between “Americans” and “immigrants” as if they were separate categories.
Context matters: the 109th Congress (2005-2006) sat in the shadow of post-9/11 security politics and the crescendo of mid-2000s immigration flashpoints, including enforcement-first bills and mass mobilizations. In that climate, “nation of immigrants” functions like a cultural speed bump. It slows the rush toward punitive certainty and reasserts a competing national identity: not fortress, but project. The line’s power is its simplicity; it doesn’t litigate details, it frames the terrain on which details will be judged.
The phrase “it is important for us to remember” does quiet but pointed work. It assumes selective amnesia in the chamber and, by extension, in the public: a willful forgetting that makes harsh restrictions easier to sell. “Remember” is a moral verb disguised as a neutral one, implying that to ignore immigrant humanity isn’t merely a policy choice, it’s a civic lapse. Serrano’s “us” is also strategic. It pulls lawmakers into the same national story as the people they’re regulating, rejecting a clean division between “Americans” and “immigrants” as if they were separate categories.
Context matters: the 109th Congress (2005-2006) sat in the shadow of post-9/11 security politics and the crescendo of mid-2000s immigration flashpoints, including enforcement-first bills and mass mobilizations. In that climate, “nation of immigrants” functions like a cultural speed bump. It slows the rush toward punitive certainty and reasserts a competing national identity: not fortress, but project. The line’s power is its simplicity; it doesn’t litigate details, it frames the terrain on which details will be judged.
Quote Details
| Topic | Human Rights |
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