Pilgrim’s Pride: We Are a Nation of Outcast Immigrants

Kris Kobach will be in the news a lot. He’s Donald Trump’s main advisor for drafting registry laws for Muslims and deportation plans. 

He’s the lawyer-architect of the strongest anti-immigrant laws in states such as Arizona and Alabama. His laws have made it a criminal offense to hire an illegal alien—not a civil penalty but a criminal offense. He calls his policies "self-deportation" because they force illegal immigrants to leave. 

Mr. Koback is a Baptist who was born in Madison, Wisconsin.

On Thanksgiving, let’s remember Roger Williams, the man who led an outcast group of Baptists to leave England and colonize Rhode Island. Baptists were considered subversives in England.

Let’s remember other subversives who immigrated to America— William Penn and the outcast Quakers who settled in Pennsylvania.

And let’s remember that the Pilgrims were English dissenters against the Church of England. They were known as Separatists because they believed that they should separate themselves from the state Church entirely. They were persecuted for their belief—and as a result of being thrown out of England, we are blessed to have the United States of America.