IMMIGRANTS DESERVE A LAMP OF WELCOME,

NOT OF HATE!

by

Chuck Cascio

     Wake up America and embrace the reality! We are a nation of immigrants, and the constant barrage of anti-immigrant rhetoric spouted by bloviating politicians (most of whom are also from families who migrated here decades or centuries ago) does a disservice to what we have accomplished as a country and harms the latest immigrants seeking a new life in the USA. For me, as for so many, it is personal, and I urge everyone to look at their own history and to think about how the people in it contributed to where we are today...and to recognize that most of the people immigrating here today share similar goals.

      My grandparents were immigrants. They came to the U.S. from Italy on their own. Two were married as teens just before they boarded a ship for America in the early 1900s. Two others met and married here. For my grandparents, theirs is an immigrant story that I have always loved hearing. 

     Italian was spoken throughout the tiny Brooklyn apartments where I and my family members all lived just a few blocks from the other. My grandparents went through the necessary processes at Ellis Island to enter their dream country, and they pursued that dream aggressively. They took jobs--printer, seamstress, apartment manager, and others--whatever was needed to establish themselves and the families that they eventually raised. They started with nothing. They developed their families with little. They made do, created happy scenarios, encouraged their children--my parents, my aunts and uncles, who all had Italian names as kids: Modesto, Bianca, Giuiseppe, Salvatore, Luigi, and others--to achieve, to contribute, and to stay together.

      Naturally, it did not all turn out that way, with some of the family moving out of Brooklyn, others in the family staying and creating their own lives in their own ways. But the bottom line is that there was always a profound sense of family and a realization that everyone was supposed to contribute.  

     When I hear politicians today denigrate immigrant families, it angers me because it is so narrow-minded. Sure, that type of vitriol existed in the past too--my grandparents and their families heard the smears and taunts about their heritage. However, the constant blast of social media to amplify the hatred and the lying rhetoric did not exist then. As a result, in the past, the achievements of those immigrants and their families had the opportunity to speak for themselves and to blend into society. They showed what they could do, how they belonged, how they could contribute to this vibrant country.     

     Today the hateful vitriol erases the current and past achievements of the people who have come here to improve their own lives and to embrace life in America. 

     Now I know there are people who are spouting disgusting versions of the lies: "Oh yeah, well what about the illegals, the undocumented immigrants ruining our cities." Well, to that I say: 

1) Provide more opportunities for these people to become legalized citizens rather than hurling obstacles in their way.

2) Acknowledge that once they start paying taxes they are actually paying into the growth of America and, in return for that, their citizenship should be a simple process. 

3) Recognize that the kinds of jobs they perform--like the jobs that my grandparents and their children took on when they arrived here--are often ground-floor jobs that contribute directly to the overall economy. 

4) Stop the lying, exaggerated stereotyping claiming that immigrants are prone to violence, cheating, stealing, etc. Those lies are as old as this country itself, and we should recognize that the root cause is NOT simply because they came here from another country. It is completely unfair to castigate an entire group of people based on some outliers.

     We are all familiar with these words on the Statue of Liberty from the poem "The New Colossus" by Emma Lazarus, a Jewish poet whose parents' families migrated to America from Spain and Portugal:

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free...

     Those words certainly deserve the recognition they have received, but the rest of the brief poem captures the emotional reality Lazarus experienced as the persecution of Jews in Europe persisted and grew. Taken in its entirety, the poem captures the full spirit of welcome that the U.S. represented then...and should represent now:

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

     So when you hear the lies, stereotyping, and xenophobic slurs aimed at immigrant communities today, reject them by remembering your own ancestry, the stories that precede you, and the contributions that immigrants have made to build this country, a country that is to be "The Mother of Exiles" the country whose acceptance of others should make us "lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

     So lift the lamps in welcome…rather than lighting the lamps of hate!!!

Comments? write to chuckwrites@yahoo.com

copyright: Chuck Cascio; all rights reserved.