For this entry I decided it would be apt to borrow the title of John Cassidy’s Talk Of The Town piece from last week’s issue of the New Yorker.

All over the country there have been rallies, protests, and marches for immigrants’ rights. Since I work near City Hall, all afternoon I listened through my office window to the rally and march taking place in New York, which gathered as many as 100,000 protestors.

As a nation where the roots of each and every citizen – aside from Native Americans – arrived here as an immigrant, it is shocking (or maybe not so shocking, I suppose) that our own House of Representatives would approve a bill that would make living in the United States without a visa an “aggravated felony.” That’s right, placing illegal immigrants on the same level with murderers, rapists, and violent offenders. The hypocrisy could not be more startling or more enraging.

So, as the Senate Judiciary Committee attempts to tone down the harshness of such a bill and as the nation debates about what should be done, I watch and listen to the protests with utter joy and hope, regretting only that I did not take part in it all myself.