A New Meaness in America

As a child growing up in mid-fifties/sixties New York City, many of the people I interacted with were immigrants or children of immigrants. The school I attended, Nativity on Classon and Madison in Bed Sty, was both racially intergrated and immigrant friendly. My classmates were children of Cuban exiles, young Hungarian political refugees, immigrants from West Africa,  offspring of African American migrants from post-World War II South and Puerto Rico....whom, by the way, were and are American citizens  I clearly remember one family whose father owned and operated a chain of Chinese laundries himself having escaped China after the Communist take over, and his strikingly beautiful and brainy bi-racial wife, African American and Irish, who kept both him and the books in line. Their five off spring were stellar students.

Fast forward to my years at Hunter College where I sat in classes with a wild group of Italian immigrant boys who played a wicked game of soccer and spent many hours off the field and out of the classroom convincing as many "American" girls as they could into "tutoring" them in their use of English slang. Other classmates were children of Ukrainian immigrants on the Lower Eastside and Haitian immigrants in Brooklyn learning to speak proper English as we studied to become teachers in the polyglot culture and halcyon days of New York City in the early seventies.

In one of my first post-college jobs I worked at a bank with an French girl whose family ran a restaurant in Hell's Kitchen, a very Irish colleen whose brogue was so thick I was often called on to translate what she was saying, and the branch manager, a refugee from eastern Germany and the Iron Curtain. It seemed that my life in New York City was crisscrossed many times over by interactions and encounters with immigrants of all stripes from Europe, Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America.

Up until the 1920's there were no immigration limits in this country. My paternal grandparents arrived here about 1913 immigrating from Ireland.  Family lore has it that my grandfather left Ireland using his brother's passport, not sure how true that it (and my cousin who is into genealogy will set me straight). Quotas were placed to limit "undesirables"...Asians, Eastern Europeans and Jews...from having easy access to settling in the United States.

During the tenure of my career as an educator, I have encountered more and more immigrants, most of the students were from the former Soviet Union, Africa and Latin America.  Many entered this country legally, and others did not.  In New York City, which is one of those "evil sanctuary cities" that some folks rail against, the policy of the school system was quite "laissez faire". We were in the business of educating children, not reporting them. That is exactly what we did. Most of the immigrant families I dealt with were serious about the children learning English, getting educated and at the very least, finishing high school. I found these students to be hard working who were not ashamed to be hustling on the weekends working in restaurants washing dishes, mowing lawns and bagging leaves, shoveling snow or doing whatever they could to provided more income for their families. Most of the parents of these children seemed to be doing jobs that most other folks did not want to do.  Many mothers were cleaning houses and fathers were employed by landscape services or worked on heavy manual labor work crews as day laborers. Some of the parents arrived under visitor visas and overstayed the time allotted, but the children were not the ones who purchased the tickets, made the trip and decided to stay. They were and are caught in a vicious cycle.

Which brings me to the decision today of the present administration to recind the Executive Order referred to as DACA, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, commonly referred to as "The Dreamers' Act", offering a pathway for children who arrived with their parents to remain in this country, usually the only country they have ever known. Most elected officials, economists and industry leaders agree  that these 800,000 people should remain; they are overwhelmingly productive adults or students in high school and college, none have any history of arrest or wrongdoing, and many are married to Americans; some are even serving in the military. But our Commander-in-chief did not agree; these folks are fodder for his ongoing feud with Congress; DACA must be ended...down the road a bit, but ended, unless, that is, Congress does something; that way he is off the hook. Our Chief Executive did not even deliver this decision on his own, he had the Attorney General do it for him.  And as usual, in a written statement, he blamed the former president and Congress for his actions.  It's their fault; they should have done their job; his predecessor is at fault; don't blame him, he just got into office; he is just the messenger. His press secretary spent more than her fair share of time this afternoon trying to convolutedly defend this action. She was dancing as fast as she could
claiming it was a campaign promise he intended to keep, to get meaningful immigration reform, to strengthen our borders, and to rid the nation of "bad hombres".

I just wonder what Emma Lazarus would think of this. You remember. She wrote the poem that is inscribed n the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty, "The New Colossus":

"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-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”