To become an American

Immigration has been a big topic in the news lately and there's a wide ideological schism separating the two sides of the debate. For my part, I'm going to agree with Washington Post columnist Fareed Zakaria in his piece "To Become an American":

Beyond the purely economic issue, however, there is the much deeper one that defines America -- to itself, to its immigrants and to the world. How do we want to treat those who are already in this country, working and living with us? How do we want to treat those who come in on visas or guest permits? These people must have some hope, some reasonable path to becoming Americans. Otherwise we are sending a signal that there are groups of people who are somehow unfit to be Americans, that these newcomers are not really welcome and that what we want are workers, not potential citizens. And we will end up with immigrants who have similarly cold feelings about America.

More importantly,

Compared with every other country in the world, America does immigration superbly. Do we really want to junk that for the French approach?

That, as Political Animal's Kevin Drum succinctly puts it, "is an argument that even the wingnuts can understand."