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I’m a Native American from New Mexico — a Southwestern state with large immigrant and Native communities. When I think about the Declaration of Independence, I have to wonder: Who wrote it, and for what reason?
Thomas Jefferson, along with John Adams and Benjamin Franklin and the rest, were all colonists on a new continent. From the perspective of my people, they were all immigrants. So it wouldn’t be a stretch to say the Declaration of Independence was about creating a humane country for immigrants.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident,” Jefferson wrote, “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are the Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Those words sound almost perfect, right? Maybe they could be if they actually meant something.
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