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Brainstorm: Lives of the Mind Stephen Joel Trachtenberg

Ellis Island, the Sequel


Government-archives image of newcomers to Ellis Island


Sometimes life comes full circle. Saturday night I found myself sitting in a tuxedo, drinking a glass of red wine, and looking out at the New York skyline from the Great Room on Ellis Island. Yes, that Ellis Island. The evening’s event was a fund raiser for an organization established in 1986 known as the National Ethnic Coalition (NECO). Each year the group honors about 100 people, paying tribute to the many groups that compose the American population. The organization raises money and tries to do good, building as they put it, “strong leaders for the future,” they support the educational programs at the Ellis Island Immigration Museum, ethnic and cultural events around the country, health and education services for children and emergency relief efforts worldwide.

They celebrate the immigrant experience and they actually do it on Ellis Island, which as you know was the gateway through which more than 12 million people passed from the Old Country to our shores. There is something strange about holding a black tie event on the spot where so many people, many I suspect fearful and modestly arrayed, once stood anticipating processing by U.S. officials who had the power to allow them into the United States or, for a variety of reasons, send them back home. And 80 years ago — in June of 1928, my mother was one of those immigrants. She was a young woman, with a visa in hand, coming from Palestine with papers that said, “Good for one way voyage only. Not valid for return.” How frightening it must have been to land on Ellis Island knowing that if she was not admitted she had no place to go. And now, four score years later, her son was being honored for his public service to this country — and instead of a visa in hand, he was given a medal.

There we were, from every conceivable background, men and women, all races and colors, persons from every country I’ve ever heard of and some I was less informed about. Everyone seemed remarkably sentimental, touched, and humble. Many, like myself, were second generation, whose parents and grandparents had come to America, most fortunate in my case, given what happened to those of my people who remained in Europe during the Second World War. And there were others who were, themselves, first generation, acknowledging their emotions in English that still retained the accents of their native lands. I couldn’t help but think of my father’s father who arrived early in the 20th century, accompanied by my grandmother, my father and my three aunts. I wonder what it was like in that room. No choice of wines, no roast chicken dinner, no sweets, probably not even a cookie.

In the time I spent with my associates in this enterprise, people who work in a great cross section of professions: physicians, attorneys, unions officials, educators, civil servants, and law enforcement, men and women in uniform currently serving in the armed services, entrepreneurs and business leaders, most often the conversations focused on the power of education, about how America changed their lives by giving them the tools and opportunity to do good and often well.

One speaker, a choice that seemed curious at first, was former Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell, who is famous in part for being the second American Indian to serve in the U.S. Senate. It turns out that in addition to being an American Indian, Senator Campbell also had a parent who was Portuguese. He spoke movingly about the first Americans and advocated on their behalf, imploring the rest of us to reach out to them even as they welcomed the new Americans, back in the day. His references to conditions on the reservations today were powerfully phrased and were a plea for assistance.

The mosaic of faces and peoples assembled for this occasion came from all cultural and ancestral backgrounds; I found the spirit uplifting. It was nice to be engaged in this reaffirmation of the courage of our ancestors and to be reminded that the American dream has worked for many. I am recommitting myself to do what I can to make it work for others. Remembering Emma Lazarus’ poem, The New Colossus, on the base of the Statue of Liberty, I’m wondering why we seem as a nation so ambivalent about contemporary immigration policies.

Posted at 08:09:01 AM on May 12, 2008 | All postings by Stephen Joel Trachtenberg

Comments

  1. Of course, all of us, even Native Americans, are immigrants if you go back far enough. The waves of immigration in the late 1800s and early 1900s brought people who were largely ignorant but aspired to better themselves and the socioeconomic conditions of the times gave them the opportunity to do that. Immigrants also provided needed labor for the industrialization going on at the time. Conditions today are very different. We have globalized and outsourced to an extent that makes it difficult to maintain a blue collar middle class. The rich are getting richer and the poor, poorer. Can we economically absorb large numbers of unskilled immigrants at this point in time. We are economically overextended with respect to social and medical services. We simply can’t take on the care and feeding of the global poor. We are also busily creating our own poor,undereducated, unemployed and largely unemployable underclass of young people who will never be well integrated with anything other than the welfare system. Uneducated immigrants will merely add to that social burden. Another question is what kind of country we want to live in. There are far too many humans on the Earth already. Do we want to turn the USA into a third world, over-crowded “Blade Runner” lookalike environmental nightmare such as we already see in many parts of the world, where the wealthy barricade themselves in gated communities and the rest of us fester in the slums outside? I don’t think so. We don’t need more people; if anything, we need fewer.

    — Michael F · May 12, 12:33 PM · #

  2. The United States has a smaller fraction of the world’s population yet consumes the largest fraction of the world’s resources. I haven’t the exact figures at hand but they are awe-inspiring.

    There was/is a “game” played out on the floors of gymnasiums, etc. called “The World Game” which drives this point home visually.

    Based on those population and energy facts alone, just who, exactly, should be having more of what, and who should be having less of what? Go figure.

    — Anti-hypocrisy advocate · May 12, 01:28 PM · #

  3. I went and figured and I came to the conclusion that AHA consumes more than the average, or median, citizen of the world. And I’ll bet he ain’t taking in homeless immigrants to kind of even things out a bit. Anyway, China and India will shortly overtake us in the resource-consuming department. Tata Motors, in India, now owns Land Rover and will presumably happily go on having them manufactured, and sold in the U.S.

    — LuckyJim · May 12, 02:24 PM · #

  4. The U.S. will be over-taken in resource consumption per capita? Reference, please.

    — Anti-hypocrisy advocate · May 12, 02:31 PM · #

  5. AHA said that the US “consumes the largest fraction of world resources,” no per capita mentioned. Reference? Same one AHA gave.

    — LuckyJim · May 12, 02:37 PM · #

  6. Context: The entire content of Comment 2 was a population in relation to consumption exercise. Without the exact figures, I couldn’t give the exact ratio — but ratio is what was being invoked.

    Apologies for any miscommunication – but I take it the U.S. is still the current “champion” in the consumption game regardless.

    — Anti-hypocrisy advocate · May 12, 02:45 PM · #

  7. AHA. Speaking of hypocrisy, you probably are who you are in part because of your parents’ quest for MORE. It’s a bit like Al Gore getting a speeding ticket in Oregon while driving a rented Lincoln.

    — bill · May 13, 07:30 AM · #

  8. On Comment 7:

    Actually, for example, I can remember when I was a teen about to sit for a college scholarship examination: my father told me that I shouldn’t stress over it, that there were lots of really good students taking the test, and that there was no shame in losing. (Mind you, I needed it to be able to afford to go to college at all; luckily, I won.) He was the child of Ellis Island immigrants and not me.

    Moral of the story: Let’s just stick to the words on the page by all of us pseudonymous writers. All the rest is just “blood under the bridge”, as Edward Albee would say.

    — Anti-hypocrisy advocate · May 13, 08:48 AM · #

  9. The anti-immigrant sentiment expressed above and below are all-too-familiar to those who walked out of Ellis Island into a hostile sea of reactionary Americans who dreaded their arrival. The Irish were portrayed particularly harshly, much as Latinos are today.

    The common thread of this anti-immigration is that we—the “true Americans”— are being overwhelmed and degraded and that ultimately we will be dragged into poverty by these poor and wretched. The Republicanazi Party encourages this nasty sentiment. But the truth is, there are more jobs in America than there are Americans who can take them. Even with 20 million “illegal” immigrants we have full employment (<5%). Our problems are not caused by welfare for our newly arrived, they are caused by welfare for the kleptocracy of the ruling class which cynically exploits immigrants financially while at the same time using them as public whipping boys to distract Americans from the great crimes the ruling class rackets are conducting right under our noses.

    — original marci · May 13, 12:48 PM · #

  10. I’m basically a liberal and don’t like the nativist sentiment behind much “anti-immigrant” opinion. But the second paragraph of “original marci’s” comment makes me cringe. Such epithets as “Republicanazi Party” cast about as much light into the debate as “Democommie Party,” and to attribute the debate itself to a mere “distraction” cooked up by the “ruling class” (though there is that element in it) is to disregard the genuine concerns of a great many working-class Americans…of all colors and ethnicities. For instance, Americans (citizens and other legal residents) “can’t” take all the jobs available not because they’re too busy or consider the labor demeaning, but because the presence of so many illegal immigrants (I’ll do away with the scare quotes, because “illegal” is a fact) has driven the wages for them down so low. That’s exactly how, incidentally, the “original marci’s” ruling class exploits illegal immigrants: using their willingness/desperation to work for so little that companies don’t have to offer living wages to anybody else.

    Anecdotal evidence doesn’t prove anything but I do know a) a local craftsman who can’t find work at his (to my mind) reasonable rate because he’s undercut by half by illegal immigrants in the area, and b) an elementary school teacher in a major city who’s on the verge of quitting because of the unbearable strain on the system caused by the huge numbers of illegal immigrants flooding into the school. The craftman’s and the teacher’s stories are symptomatic, however, of a large problem that does exist. Yes, there is a similarity between some people who favor stricter enforcement of the immigration laws on the books and those who were racially hostile to Ellis Island immigrants a century ago. But there’s also a difference in the immigrants: namely, Ellis Island. Which is why, in the immigration debate, the word “immigrant” is so often used unmodified by those of “original marci’s” persuasion, as a sentimental blanket term implying that there’s no difference at all between an immigrant who enters this country via the current-day equivalent of Ellis Island, and one who, not to put too fine a point on it, sneaks in. While I don’t think it’s honorable or even feasible to put millions of illegal immigrants on deportation buses, I do think a flat-out amnesty will only exacerbate the problem. The last time one was instituted, there were about 4 million illegal immigrants in this country; now there are 12 million or even—according to “original marci”—20 million.

    Here’s a basic question for the “original marcis” out there: Should there be any immigration control at all, or should the borders simply be open, come one, come all?

    — LuckyJim · May 13, 06:34 PM · #

  11. Although I am a third generation American, I would not be here – more likely in an oven – were it not for my ancestors who ran the horrible gauntlet at Ellis Island. Gauntlet indeed – the immigration folks then were the same sweethearts we have today when some poor and desperate bastard risks his life to cross a desert – and soon to climb a fence which will possibly electrocute him or her.
    Get ready to get out there and pick your own lettuce.
    Anybody read the Statue of Liberty lately?

    — AW · May 14, 09:36 AM · #

  12. So, is AW in favor of a) totally open borders so that nobody will have to risk his or her life to cross a desert, b) desperate, underpaid illegal-immigrant lettuce pickers so that AW won’t have to do it and/or that the price of lettuce won’t get too high, and c) retroactively making Emma Lazarus INS head so that her poem on the Statue of Liberty constitutes official policy? Just asking.

    — LuckyJim · May 14, 11:18 AM · #

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