With the protests in LA and the growing noise surrounding the issue of immigration, it is important to make a distinction between what the Democratic Party is accused of supporting, and what we actually support. As a Democrat, with immigrant family members, I am supportive of an easy, common sense approach to immigration that encourages good people to do the right thing. I am supportive of the deportation of criminals, and individuals who refuse to try to do the right thing; not students with visas, not mothers escaping rape and murder, not hard working fathers looking for a new future.

It is easy to say we have to close the border, but in practice there will always be migration, there will always be a pressure to escape to a better place, and we shouldn’t fault people for wanting to live in a country we think is great.

Growing up my step-father, an immigrant from Ecuador, was instrumental in my youth. He supported me, he loved me, he was there for me. He was a strong father figure, who showed me strength, patience, and that being a man was more than just what you accomplished, but how you accomplished it. We have to have a process that encourages the good people looking to escape violence and persecution to do it correctly. We have to have a process that doesn’t take months or years, but rather days or weeks.

That being said, criminal actors crossing our border to participate in gang activity, smuggling, trafficking and worse should be prosecuted and deported expeditiously; but with the fair trial that we proudly grant any accused in this free nation. The issue my party takes with the current administration is not one of differing goals, but rather of differences in process. We hold dear our constitutional protections, our rights to due process and habeas corpus. We hold them dear because without them no American is safe from extradition to foreign prisons, safe from unlawful searches and seizures, safe from unlawful detainment.

When this administration promised to act on immigration they sold a story that they would be focused on criminals. Since the start of the administration that has failed to be the reality — they are setting deportation quotas, and attacking tax paying, hard working, and often legally compliant immigrants seeking work, education or refuge.

When our nation was founded by immigrants who fought for their independence from a king, they did so with an understanding that it was diversity that made our country so great. Immigration has always been our nation’s greatest strength, and there is a solution to the crisis at our border that does not involve militarizing our streets. We just have to set aside our differences and focus on our commonality, our common goals, our common sense.

DANIEL BYRON

Williamsport

Submitted by Virtual Newsroom