Tonight we watched an amazing PBS documentary on John Lennon in the 1970s called LennoNYC.  There are awesome studio clips, interviews, and scenes of love between him, Yoko and Sean.  But what struck me was this incredible Second Circuit opinion ending the 4-year INS crusade (started by Richard Nixon) to get him deported, and issuing him his green card:

Before closing with the traditional words of disposition, we feel it appropriate to express our faith that the result we have reached in this case not only is consistent with the language and purpose of the narrow statutory provision we construe, but also furthers the intent of the immigration laws in a far broader sense. The excludable aliens statute is but an exception, albeit necessary, to the traditional tolerance of a nation founded and built by immigrants. If, in our two hundred years of independence, we have in some measure realized our ideals, it is in large part because we have always found a place for those committed to the spirit of liberty and willing to help implement it. Lennon’s four-year battle to remain in our country is testimony to his faith in this American dream.
–John Winston Ono Lennon v. INS (1975)

When people talk nobly about a past we’ve lost, they’re often being disingenuously nostalgic.  But read a passage like that, and you just think, “wow”.