3/8/20

By Lee Goodman

The grocery clerk asked about the “Free Them” button I was wearing. I explained that it referred to people who are trying to claim asylum but are being denied entry to our country. He told me lovingly about his father, who years ago swam across a river to get here from Mexico. But the clerk was not sympathetic to people who are trying to get into our country today.

Contrary to popular mythology, we are not a nation of immigrants. Maybe we once were, (not mentioning for the moment the people who were here first) but today we are something very different: a nation of people descended from immigrants. The immigrant experience is predominantly now just a family story, not a personal memory. Most people who are here today became citizens the easy way. We didn't have to pass tests about the Constitution, undergo medical screening, fill out forms, pay fees, wait to be processed, or fit into a quota. All we had to do was be born here.

We weren't embarrassed by our incomplete grasp of the English language. We weren't steered into neighborhoods with people who came from the same countries we did. We weren't dependent upon sponsors.

We never had to be anywhere else, where conditions impelled us to leave. We were never separated from family members who came here before us. We never lived with the fear of being returned elsewhere. We may have a mental image of our ancestors getting off a boat clutching a parcel, but we have little appreciation of what it took to get onto those boats and less understanding of what it takes to get here today.

Many Americans today have little empathy with people who want to come to this country. We are living our ancestors' dreams without having had to live our ancestors' nightmares. That is part of what our ancestors wished for us – to live free of hardship.

But perhaps our ancestors expected more from us. Maybe they hoped we would be the kind of people who would include rather than exclude; share rather than hoard; welcome rather than reject. The kind of people who gave them the opportunity to live and participate in the American experience.

Today, free of the daily insecurities our ancestors faced, we can dream more broadly. We can transform our country from a nation once of immigrants into a nation once again for immigrants. We can see in others what our forebears hoped America would see in them.