Buchanan Gets Ugly -- Again

WASHINGTON, D.C.--After a quarter century as an immigrant rights and civil rights advocate, I shouldn't be surprised when the debate over our nation's immigration policy gets ugly. It's a regular feature of a difficult and often emotional issue.

Immigration is at the heart of who we are as a nation, and those of us who fear demographic change and newcomers, and who worry about what these "strangers" mean to our nation's future, have been a force in the immigration controversy for as long as the United States has been in existence.

But it still shocks me when the discourse take the form of unabashed bigotry and hatred, and I'm especially dismayed that so much of this ugliness is relayed on our airwaves, framed as legitimate debate.

Look at Pat Buchanan's most recent book, "State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America," for example. It's nothing new; he wrote a book just like it 10 years ago, as he was preparing his failed run for the presidency. His relentless focus on race and ethnicity makes the book less a treatise on immigration than a disturbing call to arms to white Americans in what he believes is an ongoing culture war with everyone else in this country.

Buchanan starts with immigrants, but it quickly becomes clear that his argument is a white nationalist one, a pessimistic view of an America unable to cope with diversity. The country he describes is one I don't recognize. It bears no resemblance to the rich, diverse and vibrant community that we are, a people capable of sharing values despite differences in skin color and heritage.

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