Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “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-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”– Inscription on the Statue of Liberty
The whole immigration debate going on in America seems a little odd to me. Not because of how divisive it has become, I’ve come to expect that. It simply seems like a huge shift from the cultural mentality that I grew up in.
Growing up as a child in a small, predominately white, mid-western town there were several ideas I picked up from the American cultural mentality about immigration:
- America is a land of immigrants and was built by their hands
- American culture is a ‘melting pot’ comprised of cultures from all parts of the world
- All of us come from somewhere and we should be proud of our heritage
- America has always served as a refuge to all who seek it
Such ideas are sometimes characterized as those of bleeding hearted liberals so you could imagine my surprise to discover who helped popularize those ideas. None other than the pillar of free-market conservatism, Ronald Reagan:
“America is really many Americas. We call ourselves a nation of immigrants, and that’s truly what we are.We have drawn people from every corner of the Earth. We’re composed of virtually every race and religion, and not in small numbers, but large. We have a statue in New York Harbor that speaks of this–a statue of a woman holding a torch of welcome to those who enter our country to become Americans. She has greeted millions upon millions of immigrants to our country. She welcomes them still. She represents our open door.
“All of the immigrants who came to us brought their own music, literature, customs, and ideas. And the marvelous thing of which we’re proud, is they did not have to relinquish these things in order to fit in. In fact, what they brought to America became American. And this diversity has more than enriched us; it has literally shaped us.”
– Ronald Reagan
It is perhaps an overly idealized picture of ‘America the beautiful’ but it seems like an ideal worth holding on to. That is why I find it concerning to see the dramatic shift away from this and towards a sealing of all our borders. We hear cries of how foreigners are stealing our jobs, making our communities dangerous, and polluting our values. From what I’ve dug up I’ve found that most of these claims are either imagined or greatly exaggerated but I think there is a bigger concern here. I wonder what our attitude towards immigration says about us.
What do our attitudes say about how we view our neighbors? Do we see them as unworthy of America? Are they a threat to our way of life? Do we only care about them as long as they are not here?
What do our attitudes say about how we view ourselves? Do we want to be the land of the refugee? Do we want to treat our neighbors as ourselves? Are we uncomfortable having different kinds of people around us?
One of the greatest assets of a free society is the ability for people to peacefully disagree with one another. It is what we are always touting as our treasured freedom. I wonder, though, if we are forgetting the rich history of diversity and the mixing of people who served as the seed-bed for such a society. Should we be so willing to throw away that treasure?
photo by William Warby
Restless Ones 