Like any rational employer, the owners of major league baseball teams do not care about a player’s place of birth. They care about his talent.
Many of the players drafted by major league teams come from Spanish speaking countries. They usually move to America to pursue their dream of being a professional baseball player, and are often overwhelmed. They are introduced to a culture that is foreign to them and they do not know the language. Fortunately for them, their employer has the resources and the long-term vision to address these issues, as this article explains.
A major league baseball team can easily pull the necessary strings to get a prospect into the country legally. It can hire a team of lawyers to expedite the process. But what of the individual who does not have such a benefactor? But what of the poor, ambitious Latino who does not have baseball talent? What of the individual who lacks skills, but does not lack in desire to make a better life for himself and his family?
Such individuals have little chance of entering the United States legally. To enter the country legally, they must subject themselves to years of arbitrary hearings, submit mountains of paperwork, pay outrageous fees, and then hope that some underpaid and overworked immigration bureaucrat will approve their entry. They must suspend their dreams and put their lives in the hands of strangers.
Or, they can enter the country illegally. Millions have done so, and they often take the most grueling and laborious jobs (as millions of immigrants before them have done). They must hide in the shadows, because many of those who benefit from their efforts denounce them as criminals. Their life may be better than it was, but it remains incomplete because the nation that once welcome the tired, huddled masses no longer does.
America is a nation of immigrants. Our greatness was built on the recognition and protection of the moral right of each individual—no matter where he happened to be born—to act on his own judgment in the pursuit of his own dreams. The Declaration of Independence does not state that “all Americans are born with inalienable rights.” It states that “all men” are. Those words were true in 1776 and they remain true today. All men—whether they are born in Topeka or Tampico—possess the same rights. It is time that we Americans recognize them.