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The debate
over a wall separating the United States and Mexico goes to the heart of
American society. The wall itself is about preventing illegal immigration, but
the debate inevitably flows to the question of immigration in general, as it
always has in American history.
An Agonizing Experience
The
American nation was forged from fragments of other nations. The English,
Scotch-Irish, Swedish, Germans, Catholic Irish, Italians, Jews and Africans
joined together, or, better yet, were crushed together, to create the American
nation. It was a painful process. At any given point, Americans believed that
the way America was then was the way it ought to be. Thus the settlers from
England were appalled at the arrival of the Scotch-Irish, who were seen as
unassimilable and irredeemable brawlers, drunkards and thugs. When the Irish
Catholics arrived, many feared they could not assimilate to a predominantly
Protestant society. Indeed, the debate over whether a Catholic could become
president dominated the 1960 election, more than a century after the Irish
influx began.
Virtually
all immigrants who came to the United States were those being crushed in their
own societies (except, of course, for Africans slaves, who were brought to the
U.S. through no choice of their own). They left families, customs and all that
was familiar for a new start. The Jamestown and Plymouth colonies were built on
this process. It was the core American experience: suffering through being a
stranger in a strange land while being distrusted and even loathed.
The
nation-building process in the U.S. was an agonizing experience. Some have
romanticized it, forgetting that the melting pot was hot enough to dissolve
human souls, and that the pain fell both on the immigrants themselves and on
those with whom they merged. Yet immigration was essential. The first European
immigrants who arrived were too few to create a nation that could settle and
exploit the continent, spark industrialization, and win wars. Had the U.S.
remained simply an English nation, it would have been annihilated long ago.
Immigrants were indispensable to the creation of a viable country, and,
inevitably, most would come from “your tired, your poor, your huddled masses,”
as Emma Lazarus put it. The United States welcomed immigrants out of necessity
and even desperation, the same factors that drove immigrants to the U.S. in the
first place.
But the
reality of immigration lies not only in the broad story of the American nation,
where the agony is lost in the glory, but in the details. I immigrated with my
family to the United States from Hungary as an infant. We settled in a tenement
in the Bronx. The most important part of our story was not that we were poor,
but rather that our family was torn apart. My parents brought my sister and me
to the United States because they had no choice. Their home abandoned them in
World War II, and America welcomed them. For immigrants, however, America is a
mistress who gives generously of her pleasure but is ruthless in her demands.
You must be completely devoted to America to enjoy her pleasures to the
fullest. My parents had lived through too much and had grown too weary to pay
that price. They didn’t hope for the ecstasy America offered; they were content
with sanctuary, however meager.
My hopes
diverged from my parents’ needs. My parents were loving, yet, in a way, they
became irrelevant. They could not guide me on my path. In those years, many
immigrants settled in the Bronx. The Jewish kids banded together. So did the
Irish, the Italians, the Puerto Ricans and the African-Americans. They drew
strength from each other, rather than from their families. The cruel paradox of
immigration is that it divides parents and children. The children long for
America while the parents long for relief. And when the children band together,
they learn the first lesson of America: It has pity for the weak and respect
only for the strong.
You learn
this lesson on the streets, where you discover that pain is not the worst thing
in the world. Cowardice is. Winning is everything. Fighting fearlessly and
losing brings opportunity for redemption. Fleeing the field of battle to huddle
with your parents denies you pride and entry into America. America is for those
who have the strength not only to play baseball or to excel in school but also
to learn the lesson of the streets and to pay the price of entry.
Imagine
what the Bronx was like back then. Young thugs, or would-be thugs, roaming the
streets, seeking and fearing the moment when they must prove their manhood. The
boys and girls, driven by hormones, as much strangers to their parents as their
parents were to them, alone in a world to make what rules they could. The law
was what you made of it, and the cops were just another gang, albeit a very dangerous
one.
The Bronx
was once a genteel borough of New York, with stately apartment buildings and
vast parks. But it was at the bare limits of gentility. Those whose families
came a century before were now gone, and the children of the new immigrants
turned much of the Bronx into a nightmare. The parents of these children lived
their lives in terror, fearing every trip to the grocery store. The dream of a
little safety brought them back to the war zone.
A Predictable Response
Immigrants
tend to move to neighborhoods with low rents, and they often live together so
they have people around them who speak their language. They’re satisfied with
simply making a home in their new land. But their settlement can create havoc
for those who were there before – those who also live in low-cost neighborhoods
and now must compete for jobs and housing. As the new immigrant group expands,
word spreads that this particular group is uniquely dangerous, and the belief
grows that immigration must be stopped. For those who have the means to
insulate themselves from the fear and uncertainty, on the other hand, this
process isn’t a cause for concern. For them, immigration is a concept, not a
reality, and so they see it as a charitable endeavor.
The reality
is that the United States cannot survive without waves of immigrants. It’s
never been able to grow without immigrants, and there’s no reason to believe it
can now. But the process of immigration becomes more painful the closer you
come to it. The idea that those afraid of immigration are racist misses the
point. Immigration directly impacts many of those who fear its effects. Many of
those who don’t fear it live in well-off communities where new immigrants tend
not to settle.
Fear is a
predictable response to immigration. The English feared the Scotch-Irish.
Protestants feared Irish Catholics. And the cycle continues. Even a group as
disreputable and hated as the Scots made the transition, and now, fully
integrated for centuries, they loathe and fear new arrivals.
In two
centuries of debating immigration, both sides have been systematically
oblivious to the realities underlying the debate. The advocates of immigration
are oblivious to its disproportionate impact on those who live in poorer
neighborhoods. Those wary of immigration are oblivious to the impact of ending
it in a time of declining birthrates, and to the fact that immigration is
embedded in the nation’s soul. The beauty of America is that every American can
have an opinion that makes little sense. It is as charming as a gang brawl in a
schoolyard. But in the end, America has survived this debate many times, and
the outcome has always been the same.
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