One of the nice things about blogging is the opportunity to get something off your chest when you feel the need. Here goes.

As I read and follow the news, I am consistently dismayed by the way in which we, as a nation, seem to frame all the right problems in all the wrong ways. For example, take the current immigration debate. We seem to frame this issue as a choice between building our own Berlin Wall and allowing vigilantes to guard it, on the one hand, and creating some sort of amnesty or guest worker program, on the other.

I am reminded of an old story. A guy walks along a river and notices a sick person being carried in the current. He pulls the sick person out of the water, only to see another sick person floating along, and then another. Pretty soon our hero has the wonderful idea to raise money and build a hospital on the site, to take care of all the sick people who keep floating by in the current each day.

The hospital is a huge success. It raises money, builds state-of-the-art facilities, and hires the best doctors. Then, as the founder is about to receive the Nobel Prize, he is asked by a reporter: “So, where do all these sick people come from?” And our hero just scratches his head. “I don’t know,” he says, “I haven’t had time to walk upstream and check that out.”

If we walk upstream in the immigration debate we will realize that so long as the standard of living is better in the U.S. than in the countries people flee from to come here, the flow will not stop. The issue must be re-framed as a worldwide concern, not as one amenable to an American answer.

In 1922, my mother, a small child, came to America by boat with her family. Even though my grandfather was illiterate even in Italian, spoke no English, lived in overcrowded tenements, and worked the dirtiest, most dangerous jobs possible, he would still say that the conditions here were so far better than the unplumbed stone hovels of his native Sicily, that it was a great step forward to come to America.

They will continue to come, from Eastern Europe, Latin America, Asia and Africa, until there is the possibility of providing for a family, and the hope of something better for the children, in the old country. We can build walls to keep them out, we can deport them, or we can grant amnesty to everyone who is currently here and then “get tough” on anyone who comes later, but unless we look at the upstream reasons they come in the first place, nothing will stop illegal immigration.

We have a little game in our firm that goes like this:

You know you have been traveling too much when . . .

. . .you try to call the front desk for a wake up call, but discover you are at home in your own bed.

. . .The ticket agent at the counter greets you by name.

. . .You have the seating configurations of the different jets memorized.

. . . You know the best place to get an emergency shoe repair in four cities, but not in the one you live in.

How do you know when you’ve been traveling too much?