[For previous blogs please visit “blog archive” to the lower left of this screen. Click on the small black arrows for a drop down list of all the blogs.]
Many of us bask in the glory that we are descendants of fine immigrant families that sold their little farms somewhere in the world, hopped on a boat, and landed on Ellis Island back in the late 1800s and early 1900s with their pristine identity documents clutched firmly in one hand and their sparse belongings in the other. They were all honest, hard-working, clean-living, and we are all proud to be from such stock. These folks all learned English in the first few days they were here and most of them purchased restaurants and small grocery stores and lived in charming flats in New York and had children who spread throughout our country like little flower petals falling from trees. And they are our ancestors.
Thank you Hollywood.
Truth be told, a great many of them were dirt poor, starving in fact. Large numbers died in transit because they were so malnourished and diseased. Many did not know how to read or write or do anything other than their previous subsistence living of “farming” on a patch of land that barely produced food. They begged, borrowed, and stole to obtain passage and documents, legal or otherwise. When they arrived here and found shelter they did odd jobs and tried to live under horrendous circumstances in ghettos [a poor densely populated city district occupied by a minority ethnic group linked together by economic hardship and social restrictions, WordReference.com] filled with others just like them. And they are our ancestors.
Crime in these communities was horrific and our police officials barely contained them and tried to keep them from burning the city down. The children ran through the streets like mad dogs and stole and fought and developed gangs. And they are our ancestors.
Getting through Ellis Island was much easier than our current immigrant methods for entering this country, but it was still difficult. All one needed was proof of identity and a “relative” to vouch for them. No computers. For illegals, it was simply a matter of finding a document forger who would prepare documents for an entire family with any name that would pass an inspector’s scrutiny, and then pay a tidy sum for the documents, usually every penny they managed to save. “Relatives” in this country could be paid to say they were their long lost uncles. The immigration inspectors often changed the names of families when they encountered names they could not pronounce or understand and Americanized names were born. And they are our ancestors.
The ship owners did medical exams before sailing because if the immigrants got to Ellis Island sick they would require quarantine and it could cause tremendous problems for other immigrants stuck out there until they were released. Some were sent back sick when their documents did not pass muster. But many came back with bigger and better documents and with fewer family members. Many men abandoned families to come here with the promise of sending for them later and/or sending them money once they established themselves in this great new land. Often that dream of a family reunited didn’t come true. The men moved on. And they are our ancestors.
Of the “legal” immigrants some were subsequently deported because of poor behavior after settling in here. Many left children and women behind in their new country when they were deported. And they are our ancestors.
A fair number of the people desperate to get here were criminals. Some were not criminals in the sense that they committed crimes but they were persecuted in their home countries by simply belonging to a particular cultural group. Just like today. But there were plenty of unscrupulous types that sneaked in here as well. As there are today, legally and illegally. They too are our ancestors.
People with money came here at that time too but they arrived on the grand ocean liners with their belongings packed in large trunks and they were sent through inspections in a genteel fashion. Many had political connections. People with money and connections continue to come here. Some of them take flying lessons in Florida.
We also had groups of anarchists filter in and they caused considerable trouble even though they were often fighting for the downtrodden. Anarchy isn’t pretty and often the cure is worse than the disease. They were yesterday’s terrorists. And they are our ancestors.
Many immigrants did not pass the astute inspection of the employees at Ellis Island and were temporarily imprisoned, then deported back to their homes where they most likely were arrested and killed. Immigrating legal or otherwise, is tough business and not entered into lightly.
The desperation of people throughout the world to escape horrific government and danger remains today, but on a much larger scale. However, with modern technology, it’s harder to obtain documents and they are more costly than ever before. Hence, we have more illegal aliens for lack of legal documentation.
Many of us are concerned about immigrants, legal or not, and do not want them to join us. We are distressed because these people don’t speak English, might be uneducated, are dirt poor, a drain on our dwindling and overburdened resources, diseased, and we fear they will take jobs from Americans. Most of those concerns were heard a century ago. Nothing has changed. There are simply more people in the world and a large percentage of us are still desperate. Having a large influx of immigrants is problematic but fearing the people trying to escape living hell is not the way to resolve the problem. Often people who flee to America become our strongest patriots and fiercely defend this new country.
The point to it all is, if I lived in Mexico, for example, I’d be climbing the border fences every single day of my life. Our country has been neighbors with Mexico for a very long time (before and after Mexico owned a large chunk of America and before and after it was all taken from native Americans) yet Mexico is still one of the world’s poorest and most corrupt nations. It’s 2009 and they are right next door to the greatest nation in the world and they are a complete and total failure. We do nothing to force them to take care of their citizens and provide what a modern nation must provide for its people. We are doing that in Iraq and Afghanistan but not in Mexico.
So their people are desperate to come here and try to find a better life. Let’s not be mad at the individuals climbing the fences. Let’s be mad at Mexico. And if I lived in the Middle East I’d be studying how to walk across desolate mountain ranges with limited water while carrying a backpack and hiking gear and wearing desert camouflage. I’d do whatever I had to do to escape that part of the world, legal or not.
We don’t have as many of our Canadian neighbors sneaking into the United States, though we do have some. We do have other countries’ citizens sneaking into our country through Canada. If people can’t get into this country legally there are dozens of ways to get here illegally and there are still ways to forge documents and papers if one has enough money. Terrorists seem to be able to get here legally so maybe we should start being suspicious of legal aliens and leave the fence jumpers alone.
Learning English is one area we hear the most griping about. One of the reasons some people do not learn English successfully and quickly is they often don’t have to. Just like the Italians coming through Ellis Island and settling in an Italian neighborhood, if a Spanish speaking person comes to California they can live in a Latino community and it is not as necessary to learn English. They should so they can have more opportunities but often they settle in a familiar community and function well and do not learn as quickly as they would if they moved to say a small fishing village in Maine. If they move to another state where there are fewer Spanish speakers they are more likely to learn English more quickly. Their children however do learn to speak English. Just like the Italian children did. Or the German children. The next generation gets the benefit of the family sacrifices.
I’ve been studying Spanish off and on for many years and can understand someone speaking Spanish (if they speak s-l-o-w-l-y) and can choke out a sentence or two with vigorous hand motions, but if I had to move to Spain tomorrow I’d starve (Except they have many English speakers because that’s how it is over there).
It takes an English speaker 2700 hours to learn Spanish. That’s someone who is highly motivated with a boss who doesn’t mind that they study Spanish all day. That’s someone who can already read and write English proficiently so that they can make the language transition. I don’t know how many hours it takes to learn English if one is a Spanish speaker but English is a difficult language so I’m guessing it takes longer. My son has studied Japanese for years. He can understand it and can choke out a few sentences but it takes YEARS to learn Japanese. Learning a language is very hard.
When I was growing up we lived in what was then a typical California community with Mexicans, Italians, Portuguese, and a variety of other cultures, including Japanese. It was an agricultural community. Most of the women my grandma knew from working in a cannery spoke their native languages and no English. It was fairly easy to communicate between Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese, so my grandma and the other ladies each knew a little of each other’s language. She did not learn Japanese. There were still sad issues remaining from World War II and though learning Japanese may have helped everyone communicate and learn about each other when it was desperately needed, it didn’t happen.
We knew many Portuguese people grandma’s age and older who did not speak English. They never learned English. We thought it was fun to listen to them talk about things that we couldn’t understand. I knew quite a few swear words in Portuguese growing up. But their children learned to speak English. My grandmother discouraged us from learning Portuguese.
Because California isn’t near Italy, there weren’t as many Italian ladies as there were Mexican ladies. That’s the case today. Since we live close to Mexico we have more Mexican friends and it’s sensible to be a bi-lingual state. In fact, it’s something special for California that we have bi-lingual enrichment going for us. In Europe they are multi-lingual and it’s rewarding, not detrimental.
Another concern with immigration is the influx of gangs. It seems many gangs want to come to America. But these people are not immigrants. They are criminals and terrorists. It’s important to separate these people from the immigrants who just want to come here to have a better life. And within many of these gangs there are many members dying (literally) to find a way out of gang life. There are devoted people and organizations that try every single day to save people from gangs or remove them from gangs and often these saviors are former gang members.
It’s the same with most cultures that come here. Most cultures have gangs. Gangs are worldwide. It’s a worldwide problem, not an American problem. And it’s not specific to one culture. Ever hear of the Mafia? They’ve been romanticized by slick movies so they are not as fearful to us as gangs from Central America, Russia, or elsewhere, but that is foggy thinking. Violence and illegal activity is what gangs are all about. My Portuguese grandmother did not belong to a gang. Nor did my ship-jumping relative belong to a gang. But my American Revolution ancestor was a traitor fighting our King. That made him a criminal of the highest order and execution could have ended my family line had he been caught.
We often identify illegal alien gang members and deport them but they come right back. We cannot confuse these groups with people who are simply trying to live like we do. And we can’t keep all immigrants out to try to keep the gangs out. They are already here. We need to deal with gangs as a separate issue. Maybe when our people come home safely from Iraq and Afghanistan we’ll have resources to devote to our homeland security, on our own soil, i.e., our gang problem.
In the Ellis Island days when one culture came here and settled in it became possessive of its space and loudly protested those who dared come after them. There were horrendous turf wars between the immigrants. Yet many economists people believe that without that huge group of immigrants that came during the 1800s and early 1900s, not to mention the immigrants who came before and have continued to come, legal or not, we would not be the super power we are. Regardless of how these people get here, they work and spend money, share their culture and it makes us strong. And we are capitalists. It’s what we want and that’s how we get it. From people coming to our country and developing their families and businesses and working and consuming.
The argument that no one minds if the immigrants come here through legal channels is flawed. It’s tremendously hard to get here through all the red tape needed to leave one’s homeland and if the applicant is escaping a corrupt regime it’s impossible. If they’re immigrating from Sweden, it’s not so tough. Not so easy if they are from Darfur.
Some of our ancestors never learned English, never went to school, never obtained their citizenship or the good life, but their children did, and their grandchildren did, and our children did too. And it’s all because my ancestor fought for the right for all of your ancestors to come to America and fought for all of those who continue to come in search of freedom from oppression--with liberty and justice for all.
Got a dream to take them there.
They're coming to America.
Got a dream they've come to share.
They're coming to America.
-Neil Diamond
[The first link is the Ellis Island website. It’s a great read and you may look up your ancestors to see if they came through the processing system. The second link is within the site and is a history of Ellis Island.]
http://www.ellisisland.org/genealogy/ellis_island_timeline.asp
http://www.sharonstrawhandgarner.com
[No part of this content may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.]
