I regularly interact with immigrants and the children of immigrants. One of the popular misconceptions about university life in America is that most students are effete “elites” who have never so much as looked at an unpaid bill. As an English instructor and tutor, I’ve met young men and women from Ethiopia, China and Nigeria, and I have taught students whose parents emigrated from Mexico to the United States “illegally." If I were an insecure coward afraid to compete in a multicultural society, and convinced my future children would become deadbeats without the full force of white privilege to catapult them into success, I would advocate for the deportation of immigrant families similar to those of my students, and I would repeat mindless bromides like “America First” and “Build that Wall.”
One of the costs of racism, xenophobia, or any form of pathetic provincialism is that freezes the prejudicial person in a permanent state of mediocrity. I have grown and gained from my experiences with foreign-born students. Without their influence, I would be slightly less intelligent, informed and interesting.
President Donald Trump’s decision to end DACA, and his demand that Congress “fix the” nonexistent “immigration problem,” demonstrates a stunning streak of sadism, projecting yet another signal to his rabid and anti-American base of closed-minded losers.
Many eloquent and passionate thinkers and leaders have emerged to oppose Trump’s latest move of hostility against basic decency. Their arguments are cogent and necessary, but they are also troubled by a counterproductive concession to the increasingly nativist right wing. Fareed Zakaria cited the biblical injunction against “holding the sins of the father against the son” in his statement supportive of DACA. Former President Barack Obama, who signed the executive order permitting “Dreamers” to remain in the country, has the most important political perspective on the issue, but even in his brilliant and moving essay, he continually reminds readers that Dreamers are in the United States “by no fault of their own.”
Language of guilt provokes the questions What are the sins of the fathers? By whose fault are the children of immigrants contributive members of American society?
The lack of coherent answers to those questions leads one to the obvious conclusion that Americans of intelligence and “heart,” as Trump likes to say, should tap dance alongside the third rail and forcefully argue for open borders.
At a minimum, thoughtful and moral Americans should advocate for a robust guest worker program similar to that which existed in the 1940s and ‘50s. During his inane campaign rallies, Trump often enjoyed referring to the crudely named “Operation Wetback” of the Eisenhower era. As is often the case, he exposed his own historical illiteracy by omitting that in conjunction with the deportation debacle, Eisenhower also authorized the broad and liberal issuance of guest worker visas for Mexicans. Many of the immigrants were legalized on the spot, and in keeping with the derogatory terminology, the U.S. government would call it “drying them out.”
The decline of cultural discourse, lingering trauma from the September 11 attacks, and the Republican Party’s slip into insanity prevents America from having a strong constituency in favor of open, or minimal, borders. The absence of a truly liberal position on immigration weakens potential for American development and improvement.
A popular cliché many Americans obnoxiously vomit is “get in line!” The line has millions of people, snakes through an obstacle course, and often ends at a steel door, bolted from the inside.
The American Immigration Council describes the challenge of legal immigration in even harsher terms: “There is no line available for unauthorized immigrants and the ‘regular channels’ do not include them.”
Without a guaranteed job offer in a high-skill field, an acceptance letter from a university, an intimate family member with citizenship, or a qualified lawyer, aspiring immigrants have little choice but to enter the United States without documentation. Low-level workers must have an employer actively petition for their entry.
Considering that many undocumented immigrants enter the country to provide for their families, it seems unlikely that a father will tell his children, “We can’t eat this year, because the U.S. government rejected my application.”
Jeb Bush became a right-wing punching bag, with Trump acting as the heaviest hitter, when he described undocumented immigration for the improvement of one’s familial economics as an “act of love.” Only a political party, and electorate, incapable of even the slightest hint of empathy would reject Bush’s characterization. Even the Americans who choose to abolish all morality from their political calculus should welcome increased immigration.
Studies routinely show that immigrants, documented and undocumented, commit crimes at lower rates than the native population, are far more entrepreneurial than natural-born citizens, and are far better educated than ever before. The practical enhancements of the American economy are adornments to the cultural vitality and energy made possible by America’s rich diversity.
Americans who would like to whiten the face of the country are unknowing advocates for commercial and cultural mediocrity. Immigrants, as the nation’s history and contemporary statistics both demonstrate, often provide a greater service to the country than the “real Americans” of predominately white small towns, who are becoming less educated, less entrepreneurial and increasingly burdensome on the country’s finances and politics.
If the “real Americans” are afraid to compete with immigrants for jobs, prestige, or cultural authority, they only indict themselves as weak, self-entitled and easy to panic. In a word, “snowflakes.”
A bureaucratic permission slip is trivial compared to the imperative of human freedom — freedom that should transcend what are largely artificial borders. The full force of freedom, receiving the animation of people who feel it urgently in their bones, will only elevate, and never undermine, America.
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