Thoughts on Immigration by Larry Stopper

When our ancestors arrived on these shores, they often came with little more than the shirts on their backs. While many were escaping prejudice and persecution, the vast majority were economic migrants. They were searching for something better than the generally miserable conditions they were coming from.

Economic migration has been with us since the dawn of mankind. The earliest tribes of hunter gatherers were economic migrants and many was the time they crossed into another tribes territory in search of food, only to be met with great hostility. The American colonists who settled in Texas at the beginning of the 19th century were economic migrants. They didn’t go to Texas for the weather, but in search of cheap land. It’s amazing so few people remember that the American southwest was stolen from Mexico largely to offer greater land access to U.S. economic migrants. What do we think all those folks were doing during the 19th century when they traveled west in great wagon trains?

scene from the Texas territory

The undocumented immigrants at the center of our current debate are generally just what those Texans were: economic migrants in search of a better life. Though attention has mostly been directed at the Hispanic population, I have personally worked on job sites in New York City where everybody else spoke Polish and maybe one or two were in this country legally. One of my business partners swam the Rio Grande 20c years ago with $100.00 dollars in his pocket and a dream. Now he’s a citizen and a partner in a thriving business.

The United States has been a beacon to the worlds poor at least since the Irish started coming over during the great potato famine of the 1840’s. We have been the world’s economic engine for the past hundred years precisely because we were so liberal in letting folks into our country. Yet prejudice and xenophobia have always accompanied the influx of foreign born people into the U.S. It strikes me as painfully ironic that our Attorney General, Ken Cuccinelli, is leading the attack on undocumented immigrants in Virginia. How long has it been since Mr. Cuccinelli’s family came here in search of a better life.* 

Now, right here in Virginia, based on Attorney General Cuccinelli’s legal opinion, all of us will be required to carry papers proving we are in the U. S. legally. This opinion, in my opinion, is directed squarely at the Hispanic community. “Where are your papers” is a line from a bad World War Two movie, not something a Virginia state trooper should be asking anyone when they make a traffic stop.

Finding a solution to the immigration question is a difficult task that will require compromise on all sides. We can’t round up twelve million people, and who knows what the effect on our economy and country would be if all those hard working folks just up and left. We have to dig deep and find compromises we can live with. Blaming our current troubles on the latest group of people to reach our shores looking for a better life is a losing proposition and destined to hurt us without solving the question.

      -- Larry Stopper lives in Afton. He is a third-generation American and a proud, first-generation Virginian

* calls to Mr. Cuccinelli's political office and the office of the Attorney General asking for this information were not returned.

Yesterday's dueling protests . . .

Yesterday in Washington, DC, told the tale of two different kinds of protests.

The first was a gathering of a few thousand Tea Partyers opposed to healthcare reform. Overwhelmingly white and middle-aged, some shouted racial epithets and anti-gay chants at members of Congress forced to pass through them. For those of us who hoped the days of openly racist politics were behind us, it was a sad demonstration that they are not.

It was interesting to note that a few House Republicans stood on a balcony during the Tea Party demonstration, egging on the protesters, holding up signs saying "Kill the Bill." Other Republicans sought to distance themselves from the group.

 

Luke Sharrett/The New York Times

Yesterday's second Washington protest was staged by tens of thousands of  immigrants and activists (including four bus-loads of people who left from Harrisonburg) in support of immigration reform. They marched in their massive numbers and went home.

I followed both protests yesterday, interested not just in what happened, but in how what happened was reported. Those few thousand Tea Partyers were given lead coverage -- particularly once they started slinging their distasteful epithets. Coverage of the tens of thousands of Marchers for America was kept decidedly below the fold. That protest did not even make the front page of this morning's New York Times (at least, on-line).

I have no quarrel at all with giving the House's historic vote on healthcare reform the full Monty of journalistic treatment. But I do quarrel with the choice to pay more journalistic attention to a few thousand people's use of racial epithets than to the tens of thousands who staged the kind of orderly protest that makes this country great.

Inadvertent activist . . .

Today's Civic Soapbox is by Sandy Mercer. She sent me a first draft of her essay weeks ago. As is the case with a lot of the essays I'm sent, it was too long and kind of wander-y. Sandy was expressing feelings and opinions that mattered deeply to her, and it's hard to write a disciplined essay about something that has lit a fire in your heart.

Sandy's a public school teacher, and, before now, she's never been an activist. It's still not a comfortable role for her, but Sandy seems to have felt a call to advocate for passage of the DREAM Act -- DREAM being an acronym for the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act.  Sandy Mercer teaches writing, and she was convinced by stories written by her undocumented students that they deserve a chance to earn the right to stay in the only country they've ever called home.

Here's a link to her finished Civic Soapbox essay if you'd like to listen or read it.

Tuesday night I met with Sandy and a group of her fellow DREAMers for an hour or so at the Earth and Tea Cafe in downtown Harrisonburg. They've been getting  together once a week since October, trying to figure out what they can do in their community to educate friends, neighbors, fellow church members and colleagues at work about the advantages to America of passing the DREAM Act, and embracing undocumented minors who have a proven record of achievement.

I sat next to a young man who is, I think, a junior in high school. He was the youngest person present and the quietest. He didn't participate as the rest talked about what to do with the thick stack of petitions signed by hundreds of local people in favor of passage of the DREAM Act. Or about the four bus loads of Valley residents who are going to Washington to participate in Sunday's immigration reform March for America.

I'm southern, I'm social, I have a knee-jerk impulse to draw quiet, shy people into conversations. "So," I said, smiling at him, "is your immigration status secure?"


It may have been among the most insensitive questions I've ever asked anyone. Haltingly, shyly, the young man let me know that he didn't know how to answer it. Why? Because he didn't know if he could trust me. He was seventeen-years-old, doing very well in school, firmly a part of a circle of friends in the only country he's ever known, and he was afraid that saying the wrong thing to the wrong person could bring his whole life to a crashing halt.

It struck me at that moment how appropriate the acronym DREAM is for the Act this group hopes to see become law. When I was sixteen, it was perfectly plausible for me to dream anything I wanted. Perfectly okay for me to make plans to be anything I wanted to be. My future was in my hands.

My new young friend, however, can only dream, he can't plan. As things currently stand, his talents and his drive have very little to do with the shape of his future.

I found myself watching Sandy Mercer, the reluctant activist, whisked off the sidelines into the immigration reform debate by the power of her students' stories. And it seemed to me that each of us, before we make up our mind about this complex and contentious issue, should do as she did -- we should listen to a few stories of those whose futures are at stake.