America's ambivalence: Do we want to be "a nation of immigrants," or not?
More than 80 million people have immigrated to the U.S. since we became a country. Sometimes, they were welcomed. Often, they were not.
"The contribution of immigrants can be seen in every aspect of our national life. We see it in religion, in politics, in business, in the arts, in education, even in athletics and entertainment. There is no part of our nation that has not been touched by our immigrant background. Everywhere immigrants have enriched and strengthened the fabric of American life."
John F. Kennedy, in an essay, A Nation of Immigrants
"We have no idea who any of them are. They come from Africa. They come from Asia. They come from South America. All over the world. They dump them on the border, and they pour into our country. They are ruining our country. And it's true. They are ruining the blood of our country. They're destroying our country."
Donald J Trump, campaigning in Iowa on Dec. 19, 2023
Photo credit: Brad Greeff
They are new to New York City; new to America. Some arrived as recently as a few weeks ago. Some have been here a year, a few even longer. Most of them live in neighborhoods far from Manhattan where housing is less expensive or where there is community from the country from which they came.
They come from all over the world. Europe. Africa. Asia. Latin America. The mix changes from month to month. Last spring, there were a lot of Ukrainians and Russians. Lately, there has been a large number of people from West Africa, in particular, Guinea.
Each weekday morning, they travel by bus, subway or ferry to the Riverside Language Program on Manhattan's West Side to learn English. Their classes start at 8 a.m. and end at 3 p.m. Just before lunch, they break into small groups of three or four and chat with volunteers. That's what I do. For an hour and a half, we just talk. It's an opportunity for the students to practice their English and to hear and get accustomed to the rhythms, slang, pronunciation and eccentricities of their new language as it's really spoken.
Many of the students are fleeing war or famine or poverty or political repression. Some are seeking a better life. Some come for reasons they keep to themselves. They may be here legally or not. We volunteers are advised not to probe, not to risk stirring unpleasant, possibly traumatic memories. But some of them bring it up on their own.
When we read stories in the news about migrants coming to America, we're often bombarded with numbers. The number of people seeking asylum. The number of unaccompanied children. The number of those apprehended and detained or deported. What can get lost in the quantification is that those numbers - each numeral - represents a human being, a life, a struggle.
Olga, not her real name, came from Ukraine about a year ago. She appears to be in her early 30s. She is cheerful but a little nervous, or rather insecure about her limited English. She lives in the Brighton Beach neighborhood of Brooklyn where she can get by just fine in Ukrainian or Russian. She works part-time as an aide to elderly people, Russian- or Ukrainian-speakers.
I asked Olga what she did for a living in Ukraine. She said she had been a photographer and videographer. I asked if she had any samples of her work. She pulled out her i-phone and showed me a video of a wedding. It was beautifully shot and edited. It was a first-rate production and she had done it all by herself. It occurred to me that she could get work in New York doing the same work within the Ukrainian and Russian communities, and expanding as her English improved.
"Did you bring your equipment with you when you came here?" I asked.
She said no, she'd left it in her home back in Ukraine.
"Why didn't you bring it?" I was curious.
She explained that when she left her home, she had expected to return a few days later. She has not been back. She may never go back. I didn't have to ask why.
"What did you bring with you?" I asked.
She said she left with what she was wearing that day. That was everything she had when she arrived in the U.S.
On another occasion, there was a woman in my group from Ecuador. I've written about her before. Let's call her Maria. She was probably in her late 30s. She had come to the U.S. alone and now lived on Staten Island. She awoke at 6 a.m. each weekday morning and traveled to the language program, a two-hour journey. After classes, she went to her job cleaning offices in a high-rise somewhere in Midtown. She finished at midnight and got home around 2 a.m.
I asked what she had done in Ecuador. She said she was a psychologist.
Last year, a young woman from Turkmenistan was in my group several times. It was astonishing how fast she was acquiring English. Just from one week to the next, she vastly improved. She said she aspired to be either a flight attendant or a doctor. After her six-week session ended, I expected to see her back for the next one. But she wasn't there when the next session began. I asked one of the teachers what happened to her. Her teacher shook her head in sadness.
The teacher told me the young woman she had applied for a job with one of the domestic airlines and been hired. But when she told her father - a taxi driver in New York - he was outraged by the prospect of his daughter becoming a flight attendant. He had quickly arranged for her to marry someone in her native country and she'd been sent back. Her time in America, her hopes and dreams, extinguished.
A few weeks ago, I met Abdulaye (a pseudonym) who came from a country in West Africa. He is soft-spoken with a shy manner, although he became quite animated and loquacious when I asked him about his Muslim faith.
Abdulaye agreed to meet me after class one day to tell me his story.
He had worked in a milk factory in the capital city of his country. He was 34, unmarried, and lived with his parents, sisters and brothers. With money he saved and help from his family, he left his country to go to America. He was vague about his reason for leaving other than to say the situation was bad, which of course could mean almost anything.
"America is a big country," he said in French. "I felt I would be better protected there."
He told me he paid the equivalent of about $5,000 - roughly double the average annual income in his country -- to buy an airline ticket from Dakar, Senegal to Istanbul to Bogota, Colombia to El Salvador. Once he got to San Salvador, he embarked on a labyrinthine journey that took him by varying modes of transportation to Nicaragua, Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico and ultimately to Arizona. He traveled by plane or bus. Once by boat. Sometimes he walked. He spent a few hours sleeping in a forest, he said. Three weeks after leaving Africa, he crossed into the U.S. illegally in July. He was again vague about where and how.
Like many immigrants over many generations, Abdulaye decided his best shot at forging a new existence in America was in New York City, so he flew there. He has little money and meager belongings. He has no job. His English is minimal. He's been living in the shelters where the city, overwhelmed by a surge in migrants, has been housing people. He said the shelters are crowded and noisy. Sometimes, he sleeps on the floor. He said he's lived in four different shelters because the rules limit stays at any one shelter to a month.
I asked Abdulaye what his plans are for the future, his second act.
He said he wants to learn English, get a job, follow the law and help other people.
"I want to be accepted in this country," he said. "It's been difficult but I don't get discouraged easily."
America - this nation of immigrants - has a long history of ambivalence toward people arriving from other countries. At various times, they've been welcomed and rejected. Legal restrictions and bans were imposed on immigration from Africa, Asia, Southern and Eastern Europe. Hundreds of thousands of Irish - including Kennedy's ancestors - came to America fleeing the Irish potato famine in the mid 19th century. In many places, they were unwanted and unwelcome.
"The discrimination faced by the famine refugees was not subtle or insidious," wrote Christopher Klein for history.com. "It was right there in black and white, in newspaper classified advertisements that blared 'No Irish Need Apply.' The image of the simian Irishman, imported from Victorian England, was given new life by the pens of illustrators such as Thomas Nast that dripped with prejudice."
During the Civil War, immigration was again encouraged, in part to provide labor for war-related industries. In 1864, Congress passed the Act to Encourage Immigration, allowing private employers to recruit foreign workers.
"Our immigrants (are) one of the principal replenishing streams which are appointed by Providence to repair the ravages of war and its waste of national strength and wealth," President Abraham Lincoln said.
The U.S. and China signed a treaty in 1868 that allowed Chinese to immigrate to America.
The pendulum would swing back later that century and into the next. Restrictions and bans were placed on immigrants from Africa, Asia (including China), Southern and Eastern Europe.
"During the 1900s, many Progressives argued that immigrants impeded the achievement of an ideal society, committed crimes and abused welfare," wrote Andrew Baxter and Alex Nowrasteh in a report for the Cato Institute. "Others proposed that the government had a duty to protect natives from immigrants who supposedly depressed innovation and lowered native-born American wages. Scholars of the era contended that certain ethnicities possessed immutable intrinsic characteristics that would prevent assimilation into American society."
Over the next century right up to today, popular sentiment toward immigration would swing back and forth. Sometimes, immigrants were admired for their courage and industriousness. Sometimes, they were vilified and mistreated for their otherness. Often, these two views co-existed.
Vintage engraving of late 19th century European immigrants arriving in New York City, Photo credit: Keith Lance
In 1885, there was a surge in immigrants coming to America from Germany. One million arrived in that one year. One of them was a 16-year-boy from the town of Kallstadt who had left to avoid having to serve two years of compulsory military service. On his immigration records, his profession was listed as "none."
The boy quickly found work with a German-speaking barber shop in New York City. He would later move to Washington state and open a restaurant that, by some accounts, may have doubled as a brothel. He sold that and built a boarding house for gold miners, employing a legal trick to claim title to the land without having to pay for it. From there, he started and ran various restaurant-boarding house-brothels in British Columbia and the Yukon. The young man became wealthy and decided to move back to Germany with his wife, a fellow German immigrant.
In 1904, they returned to his native land. But Bavarian authorities said he was a draft dodger and ordered him deported. He returned to New York, where he became a U.S. citizen, got into the real estate business and became even wealthier. It's the familiar tale of an immigrant arriving in America with nothing and achieving success. It's the dream that has drawn more than 80 million immigrants to America since 1783. People like Olga and Maria and Abdulaye.
That German immigrant's name was Friedrich Trump. His grandson was Donald Trump.
You made me gasp twice with this piece: once at “ She was a psychologist “ and again at “ His grandson was…” Even though I knew the punchline to that one, it still hits hard.
Ron....You ask enlightening questions. People feel seen.
Thank you!