The Immigration Debate We Must Not Lose
NOVANEWS
The Zogby family circa 1923. (WWW.AAIUSA.ORG)
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, March/April 2018, pp. 19, 22
Special Report
By James J. Zogby
THE DEBATE OVER U.S. immigration policy is a very personal one for me. It’s about my family’s history and the hardships they faced coming to America. It is also about who we are and who we aspire to be as an American people.
In the waning days of the Ottoman Empire, my father’s family, like many others in the mountains of Lebanon, facing economic hardship, sent their oldest son, Habib, then only 14 years old, to America to start a new life, plant roots, and pave the way for the rest of the family to join him.
A few years after Habib left, facing increased pressures from the raging World War, the family was forced to leav...