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The Free Press
The Free Press
What Both Sides Get Wrong About Immigration
What Both Sides Get Wrong About Immigration
“A clean line must be drawn between legal and illegal migrants, and that can only be done by simplifying and clarifying legality,” writes Martin Gurri. (Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images)
The LA riots prove we’re missing the point.
By Martin Gurri
06.25.25 — U.S. Politics
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The Free Press
The Free Press
What Both Sides Get Wrong About Immigration

Every immigrant faces a tragic choice: Stay who you were and stand apart, or morph into something alien to join in.

This country, in its wisdom, offers the immigrant an uncommonly generous deal: be a hyphenated American.

I was born in Cuba. At some unremarked moment, I became a Cuban-American. That means, roughly, a U.S. citizen with access to really good food and really loud conversations. I could feel proud of the people I came from and still love the country I have grown old in.

My parents were scrupulously law-abiding, and made sure I was a legal immigrant. Back then, all the immigrants I knew had entered this country legally—many of them, like my family, had escaped Communist oppression. Dreamers and desperadoes have always snuck across the border, but the numbers were rarely significant, and many of them were arrested and sent back to their country of origin. Deportation wasn’t a display of bigotry. It was the law. If you wanted a share of American freedom and prosperity, you had to play by the process. Barack Obama, apostle of hope and change, deported over 3 million illegal migrants—more than any president before or since. That was his duty: to enforce federal law.


Read
What Happens After ICE Raids Your Company?

So, I watched the videos of the Los Angeles immigration riots in a state of utter perplexity. Who were those angry, violent people? Were they really illegal migrants who wished to stay in the United States? In that case, why did they wave the flags of the countries to which they were apparently desperate never to return? Why didn’t they say, “I will abide by whatever rules you wish, so long as you give me a chance to live here”? Or, as many conservatives insist, were the riots the work of organized leftist groups?

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Martin Gurri

Martin Gurri is a former CIA analyst and author of The Revolt of the Public. He is currently a Visiting Research Fellow at Mercatus Center; his essays have appeared in Discourse, City Journal, and UnHerd, among other publications.

Tags:
Immigration
Donald Trump
Politics
California
Democrats
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Joe Biden
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