Things have been very quiet lately in the national discourse regarding immigration. Poll results this past week indicated it placed last among the currently hotly burning topics in the Republican debates, and that was one of the few references made to it in the national media. It's quite a contrast with just a month or two ago, and a welcome respite, though I'm sure it will return before the election. It's somewhat unusual, since it's a topic Americans have argued over since the country was founded.
Possibly the first debate over immigration policy was between Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, who disagreed over the desirability of admitting the Scots-Irish; Franklin thought them dirty, unruly and prone to fighting, while Jefferson felt they had the adventurousness and vitality the new country needed. Jefferson, and the country, won that one.
Franklin and Jefferson were of course quite civil in their disagreement, but many American debates on the topic have been far below their standard. Nowadays, people from Arizona sheriffs to forrmer Massachusetts governors make clear their dislike of "illegal immigrants", and the discourse gets ugly. When the heat starts climbing in discussions of which I'm a part, I like to cool it (sometimes) by commenting, "You know, I'm the descendant of a number of undocumented aliens, and proud of it." It tends to introduce a little more caution into the remarks made, and it's quite accurate.
I've done a lot of genealogical drudge work over many years to discover that all branches of my personal family tree entered the country before 1820. That's a magic date in immigration policy, because that's the year America first began officially recording the entrance of immigrants into the country. One of my ancestors was, probably, an English yeoman thrown off his land by the enclosure movement that began the industrial revolution; another a German cobbler perhaps escaping the draft, whose son became a scout for Andrew Jackson in the Choctaw wars; another was an Irish brawler, possibly running from the law; another a Scot, probably fleeing the English army after the defeat of Bonnie Prince Charlie, and so on. You'll notice I say perhaps or probably a lot, for they were all undocumented, by definition, and glimpsible only faintly through the mists of history. I also say escaped, fleeing and running a lot, because immigrants come to this country for a variety of reasons, not all of which necessarily include taking American jobs, though that happens.
The Chairman of the Federal Reserve says we need millions of immigrants each year to take American jobs and support the economy. That's among many rational reasons to support immigration, though we rarely debate the subject rationally. We get only a fraction of the number needed "legally" because of immigration quotas (which began in 1920 from fears of "radical eastern europeans" after the Russian Revolution; the preferred alternative at that time were immigrants from Mexico, who were deemed hard-working and politically safe.) The remaining immigrant influx we need comes illegally and through all the other barriers immigrants have traditionally faced. For it takes a lot of desperation and guts to take off with your family forever to an unknown land, particularly when that land makes clear you are not welcome. A little known fact is that historically a third of those who come to America pursuing their dream, or running from their desperation, eventually turn around and go back, unable to live without their native land. The beautiful Irish song, "I'll Take You Home Again, Kathleen", written in Chicago, provides a poignant reminder of that.
They come as bricks, unable to speak the language, tied into close-knit communities of "aliens" who are suspicious of strangers, particularly strangers representing the kind of oppressive law they fled from in their native land, and anxious to handle any work available. Their children or grandchildren acculturate into Americans like any others, move, intermarry, and become part of the mortar that ties America together.
On a trip a few years ago to northern Italy, I discovered the great tension between northern and southern Italians, that was leading some to talk of converting Italy into a confederation instead of a republic; our hosts noted that the tension came partly because Italians still are tied as much to their home city as to the country, and movement between north and south is limited. Close-knit Scotland to this day includes a separatist movement that would love to see Scotland independent of England. In America, everyone has lived in or has relatives in every other part of the country and about 25% move each year. That is the invisible bond that ties us together, and that is our inheritance from immigrant ancestors who moved anywhere they could, and ignored any barrier, to find a better life. To them and to their current incarnations we owe our gratitude.
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