Venue: Barnes & Noble, 86th & Lexington Avenue Branch, 150 East 86th Street, New York NY 10028, USA

Tickets: This event is free and open to the public. For further information please email Jean: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

With an estimated twelve million undocumented immigrants living in the U.S., many people agree that something must be done. At the same time most citizens acknowledge with pride that our country was founded by immigrants seeking to build a better future for themselves and their families. No other country has offered this to the same extent as the U.S. This implied open borders not only for people traveling inside the country but also for people traveling or moving to the U.S.

Many have lambasted Arizona’s new immigration legislation signed into law in April by Republican governor Jan Brewer. In July a federal judge blocked implementation of provisions in that law that require police to determine the immigration status of people they stop and suspect of being in the U.S. illegally. And yet there has been much less criticism of the Democrats’ plans to tighten border security and require all U.S. citizens and legal immigrants who want jobs to obtain a high-tech, fraud-proof Social Security card each with a unique biometric identifier.

As the temperature rises in the immigration debate, what should our vision be for American society in the twenty-first century? Do we want to live in a country that shuts others out or is there a moral case to be made that welcomes immigrants and their aspiration for a better life?