The Wretched Refuse

On a bronze plaque inside the base of the Statue of Liberty, this poem by Emma Lazarus is graven:

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!"

For me, and I think for many other Americans, this poem (especially the last stanza) captures the ideal of America’s acceptance — and welcoming — of immigrants. For the world’s most impoverished, most abused, most exploited…America is very profoundly the land of hope; the land where even the poor people are fat, and where anybody’s child can grow up to be president.

But for many people whose lives are described by Emma Lazarus' poem, the reality is much different. For reasons completely outside their control, their immigration into the U.S. is illegal. “The wretched refuse of your teeming shore” describes most of the Hispanic illegal aliens I’ve ever seen or met, but they are certainly not made welcome in today’s America — they can only get to the land of hope by sneaking in. Illegally.

Until 1875, there was no such thing as illegal immigration into the United States — anyone who showed up was welcome. How is it that we have illegal immigration today?

The beginning of it all was the “Chinese Exclusion Act” of 1882, which was aimed at preventing Chinese “coolies” and female prostitutes from entering the country. These people were lured by the huge numbers of jobs available for railroad construction, and the then-primarily Caucasian residents were unhappy (for various reasons both justified and unjustified) to have tens of thousands of very alien Chinese in their midst. That’s where it all started.

After that, a series of immigration acts more-or-less continuously increased the kinds of restrictions we put on immigration. Incrementally we have moved away from the spirit of Emma Lazarus' sonnet, to the point now where I doubt she’d feel motivated to write it. Today, if you’re a Cuban desperate to escape Casto’s hellhole, you can risk your life crossing the Carribean in a small boat — and if the U.S. Coast Guard happens to see you and pick you up 5 feet from shore, we’ll just send you right back to Cuba — you are not welcome here, bud, however wretched you might be, and however you yearn to breathe free. Today, if a high-tech employer in the United States wants to hire you and bring you to California from (say) Slovenia, chances are that you will be turned down. You’re not welcome, bud, no matter how much your education and skills would contribute to America, because the quota for the year was filled in March. There’s nothing about quotas or limits on our Statue of Liberty. The spirit that Emma so eloquently expressed has been lost somehow.

How did this happen? What’s different today than for the first hundred years of this country, when all immigrants were welcomed with open arms, and when there was no such thing as illegal immigration?

The answer to that is very complicated, and has many components. One of the major contributors to this, I believe, is modern liberalism and its desire to relieve the misery of the poor and down-trodden. Expressed as I just did, these goals sound wholly admirable and self-evidently good. But the long-term effect of the liberal programs and policies has done much to contribute to the situation today. Consider:

— In the first hundred years (and more, actually) of this country’s history, when someone immigrated to the United States, the only help they could count on was from relatives, employers, and the very few “safety net” kinds of charities. In the big cities there were some organized charities; in the countryside the help came from neighbors and churches. There was nothing even remotely like today’s network of assistance ("hand-outs") for everything from food to medical services. Generally (but not always) the children of immigrants were afforded an education equivalent to that of the citizens, but for just about everything else there was intense societal pressure on the new immigrants to work and to assimilate into the American way of life. They were expected to learn English, to work, and to earn their own way.

— Today, when someone immigrates into the United States (legally or illegally!), they have a vast array of assistance available to them. While it is certainly true that most immigrants still find work, they don’t actually have to do so. They can get medical care without cost; they can get free food; they have entitlements to education and job skills training. Their children are guaranteed access to free public education, and even special training programs. These are the programs and policies of modern liberalism — but look what the consequence has been: no longer do our immigrants feel pressure to assimilate; our society accepts their importation of language and culture. In parts of San Diego County today, you can easily imagine that you have somehow been transported to Mexico: all the signs are in Spanish, and the trashiness of Tijuana surrounds you. The people who live in these areas see no reason to become American — and in fact, many of these people would like to see California and Arizona returned to Mexico. And some of our institutions, including universities, support these notions!

It’s instructive, I think, to look at individual examples. I know many immigrants and some very well; California is quite a melting pot. I can, by and large, make a dichotomy from the immigrants I know: there are those who want to become Americans, and there are those who want to exploit America. Those are two very different mindsets, but in today’s America, both are equally welcomed. This is one of the bitter fruits of liberalism; the good intentions gone rotten. But here are a couple of examples that will serve to illustrate my points:

A couple who are friends of ours are immigrants from Estonia, which was part of the Soviet Union until 1991. They are roughly my age, so they grew up and became adults under the Soviet system. They immigrated into the United States in 2000, with some family members already here to act as a safety net. They were quickly gainfully employed; both have done very well. They have learned English, and continue to improve their English skills. They have — very deliberately — assimilated into American culture. They have not forgotten their own background and culture, and they continue to cherish things Estonian (and Russian, for they are ethnic Russians). Last year, they became U.S. citizens. As a lifelong American, I look at this couple and applaud them — and I am confident their arrival here is a good thing for my country. They are not exploiting America; they are enhancing it.

Another family I know lives in the same valley that we do. They came to the United States illegally, though I do not know what their current immigration status is. They have made almost no attempt to assimilate into American culture. The father speaks only rudimentary and limited English; not even enough to get by in the workplace. The wife speaks only Spanish. Their three children were educated in American public schools; the entire family’s medical care (including one episode of cancer) is paid for entirely by the U.S. taxpayer. The family has been on food stamps for most of their 15 years in this country, again at taxpayer expense. And in my most recent conversation with the husband, I discovered that he is very supportive of the efforts to have California become part of Mexico “again”. As a lifelong American, I look at this family and I am appalled. I am appalled at their miserable life — in America! — and at their lack of initiative to change that fact. And I am appalled that we Americans have created the conditions that allowed such families to be welcomed here. By that last sentence I do not mean that I favor stopping them at the border. Rather, I would like to see the return of the societal pressure to assimilate, and the removal of the modern liberal programs and policies that aid and abet the unassimilated immigrants. Yes, I really mean what I’m saying there, and I’ll say it more bluntly — I want to make life more difficult for immigrants. I want them to work, pay taxes, learn English, and…to have the freedom to fail. I want there to be consequences — economic and psychological — for the failure to assimilate and the failure to contribute.

And I want America to welcome all immigrants — again. I want Emma Lazarus' sonnet to describe my America — but only if the immigrants who yearn to breathe free want to breathe free as Americans. I want to see a return to the day when immigrants come to America, by and large, to become Americans and to enhance America, rather than to exploit America and its generosity. I would like to see a retreat from liberalism on this front, and a return to nasty old social Darwinism. I believe that would be very good for America, and that it would be quintessentially American.

But I don’t think it’s very likely to happen, sadly for me. Today’s liberals are promoting open borders with ever more liberal programs and policies that almost seem designed to entice immigrants away from assimilation and away from become Americans; these programs and policies positively encourage the exploitation of America. Our conservative politicians seem focused on border control and enforcement of our existing (stupid) immgration laws, probably for no better reason in general than political expediency — because many Americans seem to believe that building a fence is going to “solve” the immigration problem.

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!

This is a lovely ode to an equally lovely idea. Today it is just words; mere political “spin”. In truth our welcome mat is no longer out. We routinely slam our door to the wretched, even to the point of returning them to regimes that execute them. We say to these people yearning to breathe free “Go away. Die; we don’t care."

As an American, I am deeply ashamed of this.

But I am angry at the exploiters, and angry at us for creating the conditions that encourage the exploiters. And frustrated that the fact of the exploiters — the fact that they exist, I mean — is driving many Americans to try to keep immigrants out. If the vast majority of immigrants were in the first part of my dichotomy — hard-working, contributing people who assimilate into and enhance America — then I believe the vast majority of Americans would welcome them with open arms. The exploiter immigrants — tolerated and even encouraged by us and our liberal policies and programs — are the driver behind the “build a fence” movement. No American that I know of actually wants the exploiters to be here, not even liberals. But our liberal policies and programs are like an irresistable bait — of course the exploiters are going to come here when we treat them as we do.

Can we change? I am, I’m afraid, not confident…