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Thankful for Immigrants

Written by Beckerman PR |

I wonder if the Governors and Presidential candidates who have cynically exploited the legitimate fears of their constituents for short-term political gain took a minute over their Thanksgiving dinner this year to reflect on the country they want to lead, not the election they want to win.

The prevailing political discourse makes clear that few politicians today can live up to the example of Governor Ralph Carr, who led Colorado at the height of the refugee and internment crisis of WWII and took a stand against the fear and xenophobia of his era.

Embroiled in a civilizational war that pitted democracy against fascism, totalitarianism against freedom and racial genocide against racial pluralism, Franklin Roosevelt, bowing to public pressure, signed into law Executive Order 9066, which paved the way for Japanese-Americans, Italian-Americans and German-Americans to be deported to internment camps. It is a black eye on an otherwise sterling Presidency.

Carr, who was memorialized in Adam Schrager’s 2008 book The Principled Politician, urged his fellow Coloradans to welcome the Japanese Americans who were being sent to an internment camp in the state, saying:

They are not going to take over the vegetable business of this state, and they are not going to take over the Arkansas Valley. But the Japanese are protected by the same Constitution that protects us. An American citizen of Japanese descent has the same rights as any other citizen… If you harm them, you must first harm me. I was brought up in small towns where I knew the shame and dishonor of race hatred. I grew to despise it because it threatened [pointing to various audience members] the happiness of you and you and you.

The American antidote to radicalization of immigrants has always been acculturation and assimilation. Upon arrival at Ellis Island, the huddled masses of Emma Lazarus were not consigned to refugee camps, where distrust, barriers and resentment fester. Instead, customs officers dispatched these newcomers to cities and farms, factories and corporate offices, in the expectation that acculturating agents such as the workplace, civic, political and religious organizations, local government and community would transform the Irish into Irish-Americans or Jews into Jewish-Americans.

Acculturation is not just the antidote to political unrest: it has been the lynchpin of American ascendance. The Industrial Revolution, the economic jolt most responsible for America’s transition from world footnote to world power, would have been impossible without the contribution of 1st, 2nd and 3rd generation immigrants (Andrew Carnegie, for example, was born in Scotland and immigrated as a child). And WWII would have taken millions more lives had it not been for immigration: Albert Einstein was a refugee from Nazi Germany, and J. Robert Oppenheimer, who spearheaded the Manhattan Project, was the son of immigrants. Mortality rates would be much higher if not for the innovations of Jonas Salk (born to Polish Jewish immigrants), and the pioneering neurological breakthroughs of Oliver Sacks occurred after he emigrated from Great Britain to the US.

Immigrants are motivated by gratitude and fierce patriotism and enabled by America’s foundational values: freedom, economic opportunity and pluralism. Unlike contemporary Europe, where lip service is paid to immigrants but public policy confines them to a life of unemployment and cultural discrimination, America has lived up to its historical ideals of opening not only its shores but also its collective heart, pocketbook and culture. The results have been overwhelmingly successful – we are better for it culturally, economically and even on the national security front.

To be sure, there are legitimate security concerns about immigrants from a region of the world that is infected with the scourge of hatred and religious radicalism. But our intelligence agencies are the best in the world for a reason and have solved much more daunting security risks than conducting background checks on a few thousand refugees. And even more to the point, let’s be fully cognizant of what we are willing to give up if we succumb to the nativist impulse created by the risk of a few bad actors.