“We build monuments to freedom while arguing over who gets to experience it.”
CHRISTOPHER ALDANA | ANCHOR 250
In my family, immigration is not an argument that disappears when the television goes off. I am an American citizen married to a Guatemalan immigrant, and I know the distance between the way politicians describe immigration and the way families live it. At our table, I see my husband, not a category in a federal database. That distinction may sound obvious. In today's political climate, it needs repeating.
On October 28, 1886, rain soaked New York Harbor as ships sounded their whistles and crowds gathered to see a copper figure emerge from the fog. President Grover Cleveland dedicated the Statue of Liberty, a gift from France celebrating freedom and friendship. The spectacle was enormous. So was the contradiction. Women's suffrage advocates protested from a boat because a nation unveiling a female symbol of liberty still denied women the vote.
There is another twist we tend to forget. The statue was not designed primarily as an immigration monument. Emma Lazarus wrote “The New Colossus” in 1883 to help raise money for its pedestal. Her words later faded from public attention, and she died before they were displayed. Only in 1903 did her poem find a place inside the pedestal. The welcome that Americans associate with the statue was not carved into its original purpose. Later generations helped make it part of the national conscience.
That story fascinates me because it exposes something uncomfortable and hopeful about America. We often recognize the meaning of our ideals after we have celebrated them. We build monuments to freedom while arguing over who gets to experience it. We learn the language of liberty before we agree on what it demands.
The statue is now everywhere, from movie screens to souvenir shops, reduced at times to a green silhouette. But for people whose futures depend on immigration decisions, liberty cannot remain merchandise or metaphor. It has to survive contact with paperwork, deadlines, uncertainty, and laws that affect whether a family can plan its next chapter.
I do not think living in a mixed-status household gives me the answer to every immigration question. It does mean I cannot treat these questions as entertainment. I believe in borders, sovereignty, and enforceable laws. I also believe that describing every undocumented immigrant as a threat ignores the differences between people, histories, and circumstances. The hard work begins where the slogans end.
That is why I pay attention to the bipartisan Dignity Act of 2025, introduced by Representatives María Elvira Salazar and Veronica Escobar. The proposal would offer certain long-term undocumented immigrants a seven-year program with work authorization, background checks, tax obligations, and $7,000 in restitution. Successful participants could qualify for renewable legal status, but the program would not itself create a path to citizenship. Those are concrete terms worthy of congressional scrutiny, not a substitute for that scrutiny.
Through ANCHOR 250, my civic initiative examining immigration alongside energy, justice reform, small business, and mental health during the Declaration of Independence's 250th anniversary, I want these conversations to move beyond outrage. Congress should hold substantive hearings on proposals, examine their consequences, and tell Americans where agreement is possible. A nation capable of arguing about everything should be capable of governing.
My Christian faith does not make immigration law simple. It does remind me that the person across the table possesses dignity before any government issues a document. Compassion is not the absence of standards. Accountability is not permission for cruelty. We should be mature enough to hold both truths without treating compromise as surrender.
One hundred forty years after a rainy harbor welcomed a monument, the torch still rises above the water. A symbol cannot write legislation, reunite families, or rebuild public trust. That work belongs to us. When I think about the light in Liberty's hand, I think about the person across from me at home, and about a country still deciding how far that light is supposed to reach.
