Our country, which I was lucky to adopt for the last 55 years (trying to contribute and be useful like the rest of my fellow citizens), is enormous, privileged, and made up by diverse people regarding origin, ethnicity, and race — nevertheless, all sharing the blessings of our freedoms and the enormous benefits of its diversity. Each one bringing eagerness for our dreams, diversity of ideas, attitudes, faiths, and beliefs which contributes to the miracles of our country’s accomplishments, showing equal respect for each other’s differences, for which I’m grateful, along with my children and grandchildren.

And yet, to my painful surprise and even chagrin, I read the statement of one of our fellow citizens who is even in a governing position at present to state: “We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies.” I found this statement malevolent in its articulateness disconcerting and painful. Since this official in effect declared that he resents being in our country — as in fact it is exactly the participation of many other people’s children in diversity that creates the miracle of the USA. Worse — it is not helpful since the statement aids and abets the inevitable amount of discord here and there (which is an auxiliary result of its diversity), as well the aims of terrorists with the tragic but extremely rare acts of violence. In addition, this official finds himself in the very wrong country as he declared, in effect, that this country should be made of children identical to his own!

I would like to bring some notable examples of “some other people’s children” that not only contributed, but protected and advanced our country: Albert Einstein, a Jewish man from Austria; Steve Jobs, a Muslim Syrian man’s son; Nichola Tesla, a man from Serbia; Elon Musk, a man from South Africa, who will take us to Mars; and N. Papanikolaou of pap smear fame who saved thousands of women from Cancer — a man from Greece. These are a few out of the millions that make up us — all somebody else’s children, mind you.

The occasional inevitable amount of discord that, as we mentioned, is the result of the diversity of our people, needs to be discouraged and the officials’ duty is to promote harmony and accord to our country, blessed as we are in sharing its benefits.