Point of View: America is built on diversity
Published 9:30 pm Wednesday, July 9, 2025
Our often-described melting pot — or mixed salad — country should be its strength and beauty. Instead, people have organized and fought against the diversity.
We are a mixture of not just cultures with all the amazing foods, art and music they add to our country. We are also a mix of colors, races, religions, sexual identity, skills, careers and physical/mental abilities. I like the diversity. Like nature, the great designer intended us to be so. Diverse.
No one of us can really say we are native to this land unless you are Indigenous. We all have ancestral immigrants who left for better lives elsewhere.
Afraid of what diversity would do to the “WASPy” origins of colonialists, the might of the powerful and wealthy pulled the ropes of segregation and oppression to keep those not like them in fear.
Waves of immigrants have come into the country ever since its founding. Immigration is what this country is built on. It is now out of hand, there are too many, they are dangerous criminals, or so we are told. People are now afraid of “them.” Yet many of these people literally take loss of life chances as they flee from horrifying circumstances in their homeland. Asylum status is being rescinded and ICE agents are stealing people away.
A prison in Anchorage is now being used to hold ICE detainees. It’s not a federal prison and will get compensated for expenses. We know nothing about the detainees except they are from differing countries and supposedly illegal immigrants. It’s notable that national reporting indicates many of the ICE-arrested people have no criminal records.
In an effort to learn the details, our state House Judiciary Committee held a hearing to ask questions of corrections department commissioner. People of this state need to know about this; the legislators that called this hearing were right on.
ICE tactics cause fear even in people who aren’t immigrants. They seem to have the power of gang criminals.
Many are rallying against this power. Yet our state legislators in the minority caucus don’t seem to want the people to be informed. They intend to “stand with ICE” and suggest everyone wants their protection because “the rule of law still matters.”
The minority caucus does not speak for me. While I believe the rule of law matters, I can’t blindly follow a corrupted government, who appears to not follow the law, that sends out masked agents to steal people away.
Not all of District 6 voted for Rep. Sarah Vance, a member of the minority caucus, in the 2024 election. Homer 1, Diamond Ridge, Fritz Creek, Seldovia along with absentee/early voting ballots, did not vote for Rep. Vance.
Therese Lewandowski is a longtime Homer resident.
