Wednesday, June 20, 2018

A Nation of Immigrants Like Me


I am presenting two blogs today, one political and both personal. I want to stick with personal stories. I want to entertain you, to be a proper storyteller and not a pundit, but sometimes you just cannot ignore the world around you. This is, profoundly, one of those times. I think about this a lot lately. I am an immigrant. My parents came from a “good country,” as “proper Northern European stock.” They were not refugees fleeing from an existing terror, rather, they were fleeing a place still recovering from massive terror and where the fear that such terror could recur was still palatable. They had a sponsor; they went through the proper channels; they waited the requisite amount of time between application and invitation. Assimilation was easy, virtually automatic. Hell, my countrymen helped forge this nation and gave America the principles of liberty and tolerance etched into the fabric of our founding document, the “Declaration of Independence.” I was two years old. I had no choice in the decision, no say. My parents came seeking a better future for my brother and for me. Had I been able to rationally understand what was happening I would have agreed, but I was too little. That decision was made for me. Looking back now, I see that there are so many things that would not have happened had I not been born and had I not been brought to America. I do wonder what we all would have felt if, at Ellis Island for however long it took to check our papers and establish the authenticity of my parents' claim to enter the United States, the officials in charge ripped me away from my parents until the dicision was official. It was a different time, a different place. Yet, had we been asylum seekers—a legal request so many today are trying to make legally, declaring their wishes at the border and awaiting review—only to be separated and our family unit torn apart by the US government, well, we would have thought Adolph Hitler had survived the war and was living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

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