Watching the anger on both sides of the immigrant issue boil over in Morristown on Saturday, with police reinforcements trying to keep the peace, made me wonder if cooler heads and common sense couldn't have prevented this blot on the historic town's reputation. Mayor Donald Cresitello's application to the Department of Homeland Security to participate in the so-called 287(g) program, which would provide training to the police in enforcing immigration laws, has provoked a storm of controversy. Perhaps, looking at the big picture might help

One of the primary responsibilities of local political leadership, especially in times of social and cultural change, is to ensure that newcomers feel that their presence and voice are respected, that their need for safety and security, as that of their neighbors, is not ignored.

A hundred years ago, the majority of New Jersey's immigrants worked in factories and lived largely in cities. Now, the shifting needs of our economy are dispersing immigrants to suburbs and rural areas, not only in New Jersey but all over the country. The traditional suburban middle class enclave, especially in a state like New Jersey, where land for development is fast disappearing, and affordable housing is in short supply, may be a thing of the past. People from different ethnic, racial, and class backgrounds must learn to live together, and political leaders must show the way.

Some are doing just that. And the work isn't Democratic or Republican, it's just good governance. Here in New Jersey, the Republican Mayor of Hightstown, Robert Patten, faced with a surging Latino population, created a special Latino Advisory council to help him understand and respond to the needs of this community. In Keyport, members of the police and civic and religious leaders came together to form the Keyport Cultural Harmony Program, which is helping the local Mexican population learn English and adjust to American life.

Out in the heartland, in the all-American cities of Nashville and Indianapolis, which until recently had few immigrants, energetic and far-sighted mayors are weaving a new and colorful tapestry out of the new immigrants that are settling in those cities. In Nashville, metropolitan government entered into partnership with Vanderbilt University and local community groups to conduct a comprehensive study of the needs and concerns of Nashville's burgeoning immigrant population. Mayor Bill Purcell plans to use the study in a performance audit of the city/county Social Services Department to improve the level of services to foreign-born residents.

In Indianapolis, Mayor Bart Peterson has just recently established a Welcome Center for New Immigrants, which works to recruit volunteers to serve as mentors to new immigrants. Peterson doesn't care whether immigrants are here legally or not. He leaves the enforcement of immigration laws to the federal government, where it belongs.

Can the Mayor of Morristown show the same leadership in dealing with his town's new immigrants? Perhaps, it's not too late. Certainly, the name-calling would have to stop. Labeling his opponents as communists and suggesting that unauthorized workers have a greater disposition to criminality than other residents are tactics that should be given up. While there are fringe groups on the pro-immigrant side and while there are some unauthorized workers who have committed crimes, most undocumented immigrants are upstanding people and most of their supporters are people of faith and conscience.

On the pro-immigrant side, advocates would have to understand the Mayor's commitment to enforcing the rule of law, which allows him to consider using unorthodox methods to fight crime, even as he supports a federal legalization program. If both sides would step back from the brink and realize that they have more to gain by working together than against each other, than everyone in Morristown would be the winner. As a good faith gesture, Morristown should withdraw its application, at least pending the outcome of a new approach, and look for ways to promote meaningful dialogue and problem-solving. The creation of an independent, bipartisan study commission, with the participation of Morristown's Latino community and perhaps the support of a local foundation or United Way, would be a good starting point. Crime-fighting and continued prosperity require community cooperation, not antagonism.

Reading Brian Donohue's column in last Sunday's Star-Ledger reminded me of my early days at the International Institute of New Jersey, when Italian and Yugoslavian "illegals" were common on the streets of Hoboken. They didn't sneak across the southern border; they just jumped ship, after a stint in some foreign merchant marine.

Donohue reminds us that illegal immigration is nothing new in American history. Prior to immigration restriction in 1924, numerical limits, except for the Chinese, didn't exist; however, certain groups were excluded. These included: contract labor immigrants (1885), people with a "loathsome or dangerous contagious disease" (1891), anarchists (1903), illiterates (1917), vagrants and chronic alcoholics (1917). Likewise, you needed a male escort if you were a woman alone, as well as some money in your pocket, to ensure that you wouldn't become a public charge. If you don't think a lot of immigrants evaded even these laws back then, you're quite naïve.

A realistic depiction of the ways in which immigrants of the time were willing to break the law may be found in the marvelous Italian film Golden Door, which traces the experience of a boatload of Sicilian immigrants bound for America in the early days of the 20th century. The characters in the movie include an an unescorted women who hooks up with a Sicilian peasant to get through the Ellis Island inspection, and a mother who pretends that her mute child is unusually shy.

We certainly need to find a way to regulate immigration that is realistic and humane, as well as deal with the dilemma of undocumented immigrants already in the United States, but acting as if today's Mexicans, for example, are somehow less worthy of respect than immigrants of the past, because they illegally crossed the southern border, as their countrymen had been doing for generations with the support and connivance of public officials and commercial interests in the United States, is a poor starting point for discussion. Let's stop making moral distinctions between people.

Three cheers for the Edison, New Jersey, school board for its decision to get special funding to introduce the study of the Hindi language into the Edison school curriculum. School officials responded to a campaign spearheaded by a local organization called HindiUSA, which currently runs private classes in Hindi in a number of locations throughout New Jersey. Hindi, the official language of India, is the second or third most spoken language in the world, depending on which authority you cite.

Not everyone in Edison is happy about this decision. Judging from some of the comments on local blogs, Edison is caving into pressure from Indian nationalist groups who are more concerned to preserve Indian culture than to assimilate into American. The district, they believe, is also abandoning its mission to foster English as our national language and to build a common American culture. Unlike immigrants of previous generations, who gladly gave up their languages and culture for the opportunity to live in the United States, today's immigrants, the critics argue, are seeking privileges that could undermine our unity as a nation.

The only trouble with this story line is that it isn't true! Just about every major immigrant group in New Jersey, going back to the Germans in the 19th century, was successful in having its language introduced into the school curriculum. Immigrant support for the creation of parochial schools often had less to do with religion and more with the willingness of those schools to teach the languages of immigrant children. Although most immigrants did not attend public high schools until the thirties, Italians and Jews were instrumental in introducing Italian and Hebrew into the high school curriculum well before 1940. By that year, there were more than 15,000 students studying Italian, and 2,500 studying Hebrew, in the high schools of New York City.

Then and now, immigrants and other Americans recognized that language was a precious resource that should be preserved and nurtured, that learning a second language did not weaken the attachment to America, and that indeed the ability to function in two worlds was a quintessentially American skill. How much more important is that skill in today's globalized society!

The arrests in Great Britain last week again cloud the debate on immigration in the United States. The fact that the perpetrators of the failed car bombings were immigrants from professional backgrounds, indeed doctors and other medical professionals, suggests that the foreign Muslim population in the United States, largely professional and well educated, may not be as immune to radicalization as many had thought. Was the recruitment of doctors a deliberate tactic on the part of Al Qaeda to show that they enjoy broad support within all segments of the Muslim community and to send shock waves not only through British society but also through American? In the new rules of warfare, the damage done by a single terrorist act -- in this case one that failed -- may be dwarfed in importance by the psychological damage done to the general public and the possible overreaction by authorities to the new perceived risk. If the equation "immigration restriction = protection from terrorism" is valid, then the debate on immigration would be largely closed. A return to some form of isolationism would be the only way to guard against the terrorist threat to the American homeland.

This is not the first time in our history that immigrants have been implicated in acts of terror. During and after the First World War, and in the aftermath of the Communist Revolution in Russia in 1917, many southern and eastern European immigrants were suspected of aiding and abetting the revolutionary cause in the US and engaging in subversive or criminal activities. Many known radicals, whether guilty of revolutionary acts or not, were rounded up and deported in the infamous Red Scare of 1919-1920. The fear of imported radicalism contributed to the passage of the National Origins Quota Law in 1924, which severely restricted immigration for the next 40 years. According to some scholars, closing the door both to immigrants and imports (tariffs were also raised a short time later) may have triggered the Great Depression of the thirties.

Are we heading down the same road today? If so, I fear for the future of the USA. Isn't it right to think that in our highly connected world, where people, information, and goods move at ever-increasing speed, and where such movement is critical to continued prosperity and democracy, that a policy of restriction would deal a devastating blow to our nation? Isn't it right to think that any effort to condemn an entire religious community for the misdeeds of a few runs contrary to American ideals? Isn't it right to think that Al Qaeda would consider both immigration restriction and any effort to scapegoat the entire Muslim community victories that would seal the eventual doom of the United States and what we represent in the world? Certainly, we need to gain greater control of our borders, but let's not forget that the border is not the main battleground in the war against terrorism.