I hope you were able to pick up your Isthmus early this week so you have something to read as you laze around on the Fourth of July, the quintessential summer holiday. Independence Day, filled with patriotic speeches extolling the demonstration of unparalleled personal freedom unleashed upon the world with the founding of this nation and the adoption of the Constitution, truly is historic and laudable in the annals of human social development.
I unabashedly admit that I've drunk the Kool-Aid of personal freedom, thinking I should have all the rights and protections afforded me under the Bill of Rights anywhere I happen to be in the world. I also believe that anyone in the world, no matter what their nationality, should have the same rights. But of course they don't.
And sometimes people living in this country do not have them. Take, for instance, the case of Alex Timofeev, the subject of news editor Judith Davidoff's cover story this week. The future facing him is chilling and, under stringent immigration laws currently in effect, largely beyond his ability to influence.
It is this way because of deal-making that timid legislators have concocted to mollify know-nothing opposition to rational immigration policy. They're about to do it again with the current "immigration reform" legislation being batted around in Congress. This time it's a $40 billion extortion in the name of border security that the opposition is after.
Pity the poor human being. What rights can he have when his fellows conspire to deprive him of them? Precious few when those already inside the "Fortress of Freedom," a World War II-era propaganda phrase, decide to raise the drawbridge behind them. Be happy that you're in the club. Don't forget those yet to be admitted.
