The moral abomination who currently
occupies the oval office has done it again. He has appointed somebody to an
important government position who hates the very service that his department
has always provided for the betterment of the nation.
What
does his latest 'pick-a-stooge' appointment to high federal office--acting
Director of Citizenship and Immigration Services Ken Cuccinelli -- fail to
understand about "a nation of immigrants" and the history of this
country's founding and subsequent growth, development, and astonishing success.
Or
rather what doesn't he fail to
understand?
According
to the US Census Bureau, 2 percent of our country's population consists of Native
Americans (6.6 million as of 2015). That means 98 percent of of census-counted
Americans came from somewhere else -- i.e., we are (almost) all of immigrant stock.
In
the service, however, not only of historical amnesia, but of his enabler's
sadistic taste for punishing those in need, the new immigration services boss
decided to rewrite Emma Lazarus's famous poem that celebrates the Statue of
Liberty and concludes with the oft-quoted nation-building lines:
"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
But
according to the new Tumpetty-puppet's rewrite, those lines should read: "Give
me your tired and your poor, who can stand on their own two feet and who will
not become a public charge."
New
immigrant boss Cuccinelli's ignorant, racist assumption drew a quick rebuke from Pulitzer
Prize winning journalist and author Sonia
Nazario, who pointed out, correctly, "The reality is that immigrants who
come here legally are no more likely to be on welfare than people who are born
in this country. ... The reality is that immigrants who have come to this
country, whether they are poor or rich, are what have made America great."
Let's
look at some famous instances. The Pilgrims who arrived here from England and
the Netherlands in 1620 could well fit the apt and stirringly eloquent
description of the immigrant population in Lazarus's poem: "..your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe
free.."
Since
Trump's appointees are famously ignorant of history or the mission of the
agency they've been given stewardship of in order to further the occupant of the White
House's nasty, small-minded prejudices, let's look at the history of how the
United States came to be. Whose view of immigration is better supported by the
facts -- that of Lazarus's beloved poem? Or Cuccinelli's Trump-twisted version?
The
nation's most famous European immigrants, the Pilgrims, were surely 'tired'
after the hardships of a 17th century Atlantic voyage. They were 'poor' after
spending whatever funds they had assembled on commissioning and provisioning a
ship for the voyage. They had "huddled" beneath decks of their not
terribly ocean-worthy vessel during the storms of the North Atlantic. And I'm
sure they were yearning for a breath of fresh air, though they would have been
happier about the New World's open-air accommodations if they hadn't arrived in
winter. And they were literally a match for another of the famous poem's
depictions: "homeless" and
"tempest-tost."
As
for 'standing on their own two feet,' many of them could barely walk off the
ship. Some remained on it all winter. The group's survivors soon received valuable
assistance from Plymouth's indigenous residents who, despite suffering terrible
losses of their own from plague germs brought by prior contacts with Europeans,
taught the new arrivals what crops to grow and how to grow them. And at that
famous harvest-time "first Thanksgiving," it was the Indians who supplied
most of the food.
In
the wake of the first scattered immigrant societies in New England, New York,
and Virginia, migrants from England, Scotland, Holland, Germany and other
European countries founded the colonies from which grew the nation that became
known as the United States of America. Some of them arrived with sufficient
wealth to 'stand on their own feet' economically, perhaps after the
sea-sickness wore off. Many others relied on the assistance provided by religious
or national communities already here.
No
'immigrant policies' decided whether they would be granted admittance or not. They
took their chances, risked their lives, in coming to a foreign shore. Some
prospered; some faltered. But you certainly could not predict who would or would
not become valuable contributors to society based on what was found, or not
found, in their pockets on the day of their arrival.
The
immigration policy apparently favored by Trump and his latest mean-spirited
acolyte -- requiring new immigrants to demonstrate that they had the means to
support themselves in their new country; a requirement generally known as "a means test" -- flies in the face
of history.
Unlike
the spoiled occupant of the White House, who was born rich and therefore
assumes only rich people are valuable members of society, the majority of of
this nation's most important, famous, creative, patriotic and otherwise valuable
contributors would not have passed
"a means test" when they arrived in America.
If
a means test were applied to immigrants in those early days, would David
Carnegie, a poor Scottish immigrant, have been allowed off the boat? JP Morgan
was a 19th century financial tycoon, railroad baron, and symbol of wealth in
the first Gilded Age (we're unhappily enduring the second one right now), but
his early immigrant ancestor was just another soldier of fortune when he arrived
from Wales in 1636. Ben Franklin's ancestors were 17th century English Puritans
seeking religious freedom in a new land; they did not arrive with full
purses.
Henry
Knox, whose brilliant military leadership was responsible for driving the British out of
Boston in 1776 and who later became George Washington's Secretary of War, was the
descendant of Ulster immigrants. His father was a ship builder who came to
Boston in the early 18th century, because
he went broke back at home. Not likely, then, to pass a means test. But
America's Revolutionary War might have played out differently without his son's
contribution.
So
many of America's essential nation builders descended from people who not would
not have been permitted to enter this country if arriving with a sufficient
nest egg were the criterion for entrance. Andrew Jackson, a scourge to Native Americans but
an apostle of universal male suffrage -- back when that goal was the definition
of democracy -- grew up in poverty. Abraham Lincoln, still the greatest of the
nation's public servants, grew up in legendarily humble circumstances. Lyndon
Johnson, whose political leadership assured the country's only meaningful Civil
Rights legislation, also grew up poor.
Delving deeper, among
the major 19th and early 20th century immigrant groups, the migrants from an
economically devastated Ireland, to take a justly celebrated example, would not
have passed a means test. A few decades later the descendants of those who
endured poverty on both sides of the Atlantic, were serving as mayors and
governors of major cities in states such as New York and Boston. John F. Kennedy
may have grown up in wealthy circumstances, but his ancestors did not.
The
same general truth applies to the Italian, Jewish, Russian, Polish, Hungarian,
Slavic and other Eastern European immigrants who migrated here in the second
great wave of immigration from 1880 to 1920. Both farm prices and the fishing
industry were collapsing in southern Italy, when millions of Italians arrived
on these shoes. Jews were escaping violent repression in Russia and Poland and
other European countries.
Chinese
immigrants came here -- like their European counterparts -- fleeing famine and seeking work. They
found it digging the rail beds for the first continental railroad, as the Irish
before them dug the Erie Canal and worked on the early East Coast railroads.
Political
and economic oppression, the absence of opportunity, drove the poor and the
vulnerable from unfriendly societies to the country that most singularly
represented the availability of freedom and opportunity. People
do not leave their homes on a whim but because they are driven by poverty, political
oppression, and in many cases by clear existential threats to their future
survival.
Beneath
the Statue of Liberty, whose meaning was so lastingly interpreted by Lazarus's
poem, New York City's Ellis Island received millions of newcomers who would not
have passed "a means test" to prove that they could 'stand on their
feet' upon arrival.
Irving Berlin, a
Russian Jewish Immigrant, arrived on Ellis Island in 1893. Where would popular American music
be without “White Christmas” and “God Bless America,” his 19 Broadway shows, and
many movie scores?
Ettore
Boiardi arrived from his home town of Piacenza, Italy and found work at New
York’s Plaza Hotel in 1914. He eventually pioneered the product line of canned
Italian pasta and sauces through his company known as "Chef
Boy-ar-dee."
Mother
Cabrini arrived at Ellis Island in 1894, sent by the Pope to better the lives
of poor Italian immigrants, and succeeded in establishing orphanages, schools
and hospitals across the country. It was not because she brought bags of money
with her. Miracles happen when a society permits talent, creativity,
intelligence, diligence -- and, perhaps, faith -- to go to work.
That
society does not at first demand, 'Let me see your bank account.'
Albert
Einstein left Germany and immigrated to the United States in 1921. He wasn't
there for the Nazis; he was here for Roosevelt.
Who
will be there for us in the future, if the rules of the Abominable Regime hold
sway over American immigration policy, as they have already flouted all human
decency on the Southern Border?
We
should take care to remember the poem, Emma Lazarus's poem, the way she wrote
it, and bury the Trump-dummy's revision with the scorn it deserves
The
poem is an icon of American values. Those values are what makes America
'great' -- not its bombs or the billions piled up by the corporate oligarchs. The
market value of Amazon or Facebook -- or Trump Enterprises, if in fact that
entity has any value -- are worth little or nothing in the long run. Material fortunes
bloom, and disappear.
The
words, and meanings, of Emma Lazarus's poem are worth everything. We forget
that at our peril.
If
the current regime of the small-minded hater-in-charge holds sway much longer, the
good ol' USA runs the risk of becoming just another authoritarian corporate
state. Where 'the means' matter, and the meanings don't -- like Russia, or
China, or North Korea or Saudi Arabia.
Who'd
want to immigrate there?
