Welcoming the stranger is a nation-defining decision

Valerie Elverton Dixon in Sojo.net:

The issue of illegal immigration in the United States requires an anti-logic of radical love.
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We ought to welcome them as brother and sister citizens.
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The question for me is: what would have happened had European-Americans welcomed African-Americans into the labor unions? What would have happened had they extended hospitality rather than violence?
History does not reveal its alternatives, but my guess is that race relations in the country would be very different. Cities would look very different. Knowing my own history, I say: welcome the stranger. Yes — they are not citizens of the United States as were African-Americans moving north during the Great Migration. However, they are human beings acting on the same human impulse to go where they can make a better life.