Immigrants Are US

The two people pictured above are strangers to me, but their choice to come to America made my life here possible.  They were my grandparents, Theresa and Victor Monti, my mother’s parents.  I never met them.  They came to America in the great Italian migration of the early 20th Century, settling in Philadelphia.  Like thousands of Italian immigrants before and after them, they suffered horrific discrimination, poverty and alienation from an American society in which their hopes for assimilation were often dashed by extreme prejudice.

Like many first generation Italians in this country, my mother shied away from her heritage because of the intense discrimination she and her parents experienced; she refused to learn the Italian language, and did not spend time thinking about that part of her identity.  She married a handsome and good first generation Irish man — his family had their own stories of anti-Irish woes — and they settled in the Philadelphia suburbs to raise their “mixed” Irish-Italian-American family.  When, at age 75, mom reluctantly joined me on her very first visit to Italy, she was stunned to realize the beauty, wealth and extraordinary history of her heritage nation.

In the last few days, I’ve been thinking about the grandparents I never knew as the latest wave of immigrant hatred spews forth from our current political administration like a blowtorch destroying everything in its path.  The story of America is a tale of immigration from the earliest days, and each successive immigrant generation and nationality suffered intense hatred and prejudice from those who rose to power before them.  And, yet, immigrants persisted, rose above the forces of oppression and contempt, and managed in each generation to contribute to building this great nation.  Immigrants made America great.

When the president of the United States shamefully uses the word “garbage” to describe immigrants from Somalia, he is dishonoring America’s immigrant history and exposing his long roots in the worst, most corrupt and evil instincts of American racist and nativist history.  Italians, Irish, Polish, Japanese and more — all have their stories of immigrant oppression, stereotyped as violent, criminals, dangerous, drunks, dirty, evil.  Catholics, too.  And those who suffered even more — those who did not choose to immigrate but were forced here in chains — the slaves and their descendants in the Black community who sadly learned that emancipation did not eliminate the horrors of racial and ethnic hatred in this nation.

The current president and his administration repeatedly have demonstrated a level of moral bankruptcy toward immigrants that should shock every American with an immigrant heritage into action.  Sadly, however, too many Americans are in denial about their own histories, and too many are susceptible to the hatred, suspicion and vengeance that characterize the administration’s ugly rhetoric and contemptible policy actions toward immigrants.

Yes, it is true, some immigrants commit crimes, sometimes horrific crimes.  The murder of Sarah Beckstrom, the young National Guard member who was shot while on patrol in D.C., is indefensible, a truly awful tragedy.  The fact that her alleged murderer is an Afghan national, however, is no reason to launch a broad campaign to investigate and deport tens of thousands of Afghans to fled to the United States and were legally admitted in the wake of the end of the war in Afghanistan.

But it’s not just Afghans.  The president’s disgusting comments about Somalis reveals his true hatred toward people who are not on his list of favorite races and nationalities — he is on record as protecting white South Africans while overseeing a truly devastating campaign against immigrants from central and South America, the Caribbean, many African nations and other places where poverty and violence push people — mostly people of color — to flee to the U.S. in search of a better life.  The administration is now halting immigration processes for people from 30 countries on its list of those who are treated as suspects without any evidence beyond how they look, dress, speak and worship.

Today, tens of thousands of immigrants, both legal and undocumented, are living in fear in the nation they once saw as offering a chance for new lives and opportunities.  They came here inspired by the “American Dream” that inspired generations before them, people like my grandparents who did not live long enough to see the triumph of their dreams.  But, now, today’s immigrants are seeing their dreams obliterated by a government that has truly lost its moral compass, that seems to have little concern for the long-term effects of losing the talents and commitments of new generations of immigrants who have as much to offer if not more than the prior generations of immigrants who actually made America great in the past.

We need look no further than our own immigrant students here at Trinity to see the tremendous talent and future potential, and also to see and hear the fear as some students wonder if they can leave campus, travel on Metro or go home for Christmas because ICE is lurking in public places ready to detain and deport.  Their fears are well-placed; a Babson college student trying to get home for Thanksgiving was detained and deported at Logan Airport.  She has been in this country since she was 7 years old and did nothing to warrant any special attention from authorities.

Shame on us!  Shame on the US!  Those of us who are here thanks to the bold and brave choices of immigrants one or two or more generations ago should be standing strong against the rampant oppression, cruel and inhumane policies and practices of this political era.