All these issues are pieces of the same larger debate: Are we more fearful of "them" out there, or more confident about "us"? Is our goal to constrain and limit citizenship, or to enlarge and fulfill its promise?

Some legal scholars believe Congress cannot make this change by statute because of the Wong Kim Ark decision. I disagree, because that case did not concern the child of an illegal immigrant.

In San Francisco yesterday, I was one of 1,245 people who put our hands on our hearts and with one voice betrothed ourselves to a flag. There was something faintly cultish about it all.

It's the immigrants who really know the fragility of liberty; how it can be won and lost, and won and lost again. For them freedom is not a parade. It's a flower in a storm.