Everyone agrees immigration reform should be on President Obama’s second term agenda. Such reform if done correctly could super charge the economy, strengthen the military and add new diverse ideas to the American mindset.
The question is where to begin? Fortunately a model for reform exists in the immigration policies of Ancient Rome an empire that lasted over a thousand years.
Embedded in Roman law were provisions and imperial orders that opened Rome to immigration allowing Rome to grow geometrically, become quite wealthy and to build a vast military system whereas the Mediterranean Sea was called by Romans, “Our Sea.”
Rome was very liberal with its immigration and citizenship policies going far beyond what is known in modern America. At one point an emperor extended citizenship to all the inhabitants of the empire. This would be like the United States offering citizenship to the entire free world. And as an aside Rome was a proto capitalist socialist nation offering free goods and foods to its people.
Of course there were Roman conservatives who opposed immigration and were xenophobic in respect to Ancient Greek learning like today’s conservatives who want to arrest immigrants while pooh poohing the ways of Europe.
Fortunately the Romans who controlled the levers of power followed the road of open immigration, citizenship and Greek learning and were in fact blind to those of other nationalities whereas in fact a few emperors were from Africa and many, like Constantine and Hadrian, not of Roman origin either.
Because of all of this Rome lasted a thousand years and even longer if you consider that the Eastern Empire outlived the Western Empire and though we consider the Eastern Empire to be Byzantium they themselves considered themselves true Romans and lasted another thousand years until the 1400s far longer than the 200 some odd year history of the U.S.A. leading one to believe that we have nothing to fear from immigration gaining only peace and prosperity for the long term future from it.