Immigrants Everywhere

Immigrants Everywhere

This morning, two of my friends, Kevin and Roger, are on a motorcycle ride in Mexico that they wanted me to join them on. My teaching obligation made that impossible, but that hasn’t stopped them from sending me their usual array of inane texts with sophomoric humor and political undercurrent. This morning they are preparing to head back home so I got a string of emails making fun of how much money they could collect from the U.S. Government if they were immigrating into the country instead of just returning. They are referencing the news being reported on Fox and elsewhere that the Biden Administration is planning to pay illegal immigrants $450,000 or up to $1 million per family as reparations for separating their families during the Trump Administration era. What they failed to cite was that these talks are in response to a settlement on the many lawsuits filed with the help of organizations like the ACLU on behalf of families harmed by separation during the Trump “zero-tolerance” policy days. Donald Trump and plenty of other Republicans are generally big supporters of the use of the civil court system of the United States to settle grievances. Furthermore, settlement without blame per se is one of the most often outcomes that trump and all of these business people benefit from in order to minimize legal liability and simply get on with things. If these tort claims were frivolous there is a court-sanctioned method for summary dismissal, but this seems not to be the case, so the Biden Administration is simply taking on the burden of cleaning up another Trumpian mess and is getting called out on it. The detractors are sore that the courts are siding with, or at least not dismissing these claimants, but God knows Republicans have spent more than twenty years packing the court with conservative judges, so its hard to see what they have to complain about.

The not-so-subtle attempt at humor was to suggest that we are subsidizing immigrants, so why shouldn’t they themselves cross the border illegally and lay claim to their piece of the American litigation pie? I imagine that while they are at it, they might want to be sure to cross the border in Texas so that while passing through they can keep their ears to the ground to file civil claims of up to $10,000 apiece against any women they hear of (even second hand) that are seeking abortions for pregnancies that have run beyond the self-ordained six-week standard that Texas has unconstitutionally established as the limit on legal abortion. I know they are just trying to be funny, but I just don’t find so much humor in a place where so much human suffering is occurring. By that I mean at the border and in Texas in general.

I have an iTunes playlist that I call “Upbeat” and when I composed it I just ran down my list of songs in my library looking for ones that made me generally feel good. On that list were two that related specifically to the topic of immigration. One is Neil Diamond’s America. “Far, we’ve been traveling far, without a home but not without a star. Free, only want to be free, we huddle close, hang on to a dream.” It is one of the more upbeat and inspirational and most patriotic songs I know. It always brings a lump to my throat as I think about my grandfather and his brother doing exactly what the song describes back in their childhood in the late Nineteenth Century. The other lump-in-throat song in the playlist comes from the movie An American Tale and was sung by Linda Ronstadt. It gives us the reflections of a cartoon mouse called Fievel that has been separated from his mouse family when they entered the country through Ellis Island. He laments that “Somewhere out there beneath the pale moonlight, someone’s thinking of me and loving me tonight. And even though I know how very far apart we are, it helps to think we might be wishin’ on the same bright star. It helps to think we’re sleeping underneath the same big sky….if love can see us through, then we’ll be together somewhere out there, out where dreams come true.”

Is it any wonder that immigrants who were raised for most of their lives in the United States even though they were born to illegal aliens are called Dreamers? Dreaming is the basis of most immigration. Dreaming of a better life, a life free from persecution, whether physical, mental, sexual or religious. Immigration has been the means for people of high aspiration and ambition to better themselves and their families at the risk of casting themselves adrift in the sea of uncertain sovereignty. This is the sort of ambition that builds nations and greatness and we as a country recognized this for many years. I will not claim that everyone was always pleased about immigration of Protestants, Germans, Irish, Catholics, Italians, Chinese, Polish, Russians, Jews, Africans, Japanese, Vietnamese, Cubans, Mexicans, Central Americans or Haitians. Go down to the Tenement Museum on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and see the recreated conditions that awaited these never ending waves of immigrants over the years until not so long ago. For those of us who lived in New York CIty over the last fifty or more years, we’ve seen them on the pushcarts and street vendor tables, not to mention in the yellow taxi cabs. They are a part of the fabric of America and may be the strongest part of that fabric. They certainly endure more hardship than most of us have ever dreamed about for ourselves or our families.

While I have much less respect for our litigious society, the truth is that if that vehicle exists for members of our economic ecosystem, then it needs to be equally available to all to redress grievances. Having your child taken from you when you are seeking legal asylum at the border or even if you are just trying to get across at any cost is absolutely a valid grievance. Having them separated and lost forever is beyond unconscionable. Do people have a right to seek reparations for this sort of pain and suffering, I certainly think so. It’s unfortunate that like the debt ceiling, that Biden has to bear the brunt of the Trump policies, but that is how our country works and he must honor them just like he has to honor Trump’s tax cuts unless and until Congress changes things. I don’t like that either, but I do believe in fair play.

At this very moment, my gardener Joventino is out in the yard weeding and trimming the vast array of succulents and cacti across my property. He comes every third week and spends from 7am to 5pm with an ever-so-short break for lunch in the shade. He works non-stop. I purposely pay him 50% more than his normal wage and its still a great bargain. He got his clients and contacts from his father, Benito, who I have mentioned before. When Joventino, who must be 45 years old, got ill and had to return to Mexico for surgery, his father pitched in and worked just as hard and just as long as Joventino does. That apple did not fall far from the tree and that tree remains ever so strong. If all the employees I had on my teams over the years worked half as hard as Joventino works and complained more than Joventino does (he actually doesn’t complain at all), I would have had businesses that were more productive by a quantum. I am reminded every day out here in Southern California that immigration is one of the driving forces that made this country so strong.

I, for one, wish we had immigrants everywhere in our economy because I think it would boost our overall productivity and continue to make America great again.