Raising Arizona: What Would a Buddhist Immigration Policy Look Like?

Amid the outrage and protests over Arizona’s new immigration policies, Justin Whitaker (of the great American Buddhist Perspective blog) revisits a 2007 Washington Post article by Amy Chua. Justin then deals at length with the question, “What Would a Buddhist immigration policy look like?”

Some highlights:

“To me one of the greatest American values has been the value of opportunity for everyone here. The opportunity to make something of their lives, to create new community, and to pass that forward to the next generation. Perhaps, contra Buddhism, that value has been translated into commercialism and greed. But it could also be translated into deeper opportunities for service, for realizing our interconnectedness, for overcoming ignorance.”

“Americans today suffer not from too little material wealth (and hence real fear of immigrants taking it away), but instead from too much. It is much of the rest of the world that has too little. It seems obvious that the Buddhist immigration policy would look to eliminate this imbalance.”

Read the full post here.