Some of those turkeys made it to the market because Ms. Bail, and other workers like her, put in long hours of grim, stomach-churning work for little pay, all the while facing the threat of deportation.

   Ms. Bail is an undocumented immigrant. Her American-born son, Carlos, is a 6-year-old U.S. citizen.

   She hasnât seen Carlos since the day in May 2007 when the Barry County chicken plant that employed Ms. Bail was raided by agents of the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
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   The Pilgrims, of course, were immigrants to a land where they were vastly outnumbered by people who had been here for centuries. In the mythological version of Thanksgiving weâve devised today, built around turkey and pumpkin pie, those details get glossed over.

   âThe Wampanoag, we sometimes forget, were the majority population,â Nancy Brennan, former director of the Plimoth Plantation museum, told The Christian Science Monitor in 2002. âIn the 19th and 20th centuries, Thanksgiving was really a tool for Americanization amid the great influx of immigration. It was supposed to bind this diverse population into one union.â

   The nationâs most recent presidential election, which was quite divided along racial lines, suggests our union could use some more binding.
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   The 2007 raid on the Barry County plant took place in the walk-up to the 2008 presidential election. Then members of both parties were busy trying to demonstrate their tough anti-immigrant bona fides by screaming âbuild the border fence.â Raids like the one that ensnared Ms. Bail were common.

   Families were torn apart as parents were deported and their American-born children stayed behind. Companies, for the most part, got a pass.

   This Thanksgiving, the trend is the opposite direction. On June 15, in one of the most important acts in his first term, President Barack Obama signed an executive order allowing children of undocumented workers, who were brought to the country through no fault of their own, to delay their deportation.

   It mirrored the DREAM Act, which Congress refused to pass. It allowed those young people, most of whom have been educated in American schools, to continue to contribute to the only country theyâve ever called home.

   Since the president signed that order, more than 53,000 young immigrants have been able to put off deportation. Hundreds of thousands of others are in the pipeline, beginning the process to eventual citizenship.
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   Which policy is more likely to rekindle thoughts of that first Thanksgiving: The one that divides families, and the nation, or the one that keeps parents and children at the same dinner table?

   America needs a bigger table. It needs to rekindle that simple spirit expressed in the Latin phrase that appears on the official Seal of the United States: E pluribus unum.

   Out of many, one.
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   Hi-Pointe Theatre 

One Show Only!! "Rednecks & Culchies" A startling look at the American working class from the perspective of Irish working men.

   Friday, November 8 - Thursday, November 14