This Thanksgiving, I want to give thanks for immigrants.
Not so much the early European immigrants that are the
holiday’s historic roots, but the immigrants who are here today. I have to say that I don’t really understand
the intensity of anti-immigrant feelings held by many Americans, particularly
since most of us here (the non-indigenous ones) are descendants of
immigrants.
I look at the immigrants I know, and I am glad they are
here. Do people really want to get rid
of, kick out, send back to their countries of origin my friends and colleagues? Do they really want to deport the attorneys I
work with who came from Nigeria, South Africa and Iran? And my past and present
co-workers from China, Russia, Afghanistan, Philippines, England, Turkey, France and
Germany? And the parents of my daughters’ friends? They are all immigrants.
Maybe this is still too abstract. Are you telling me that you want Noel and
Nicholas, Rebecca and Elizaveta, Phillipe and Cecilia to be gone? Then tell me why, and it had better be good. And don’t try to distinguish them because
they are already here and you just want to keep out the ones who aren’t here
yet. If that had been the policy, then
my friends might not have been able to come here, and I would never have met
them - and that is how you are saying you want the future to be. With the next batch of friends missing.
And don’t try to say you only want to keep out the poor and
uneducated Mexicans and Guatemalans and Salvadorans, like the ones who are here
now, washing our dirty dishes in our trendy restaurants, building (and
cleaning) our million-dollar houses, picking our organic lettuce and tomatoes
and strawberries, slaughtering our pigs and cows and chickens, and washing the
asses of our parents and grandparents in their assisted living facilities. Why do you want them gone? Do you want to pick lettuce or slaughter pigs
or wash elderly asses?
Besides, that argument – we don’t want the poor and dirty
and uneducated – was used to keep out the Irish and the Chinese and the Eastern
European Jews. I guess if you really think
that letting in the Irish and Chinese and Jews was a bad idea, it would make
sense to use the same logic now. But
please explain to me why the US is worse off because the Irish and Chinese and
Jews are here.
We benefit from people who really want to be here, and who
are determined and creative. (Like the ones who figured out how to drive a 1951
Chevy pickup from Cuba to Florida.) If
you think you can persuade me that immigrants are bad for the US, go ahead and
try. But be aware that the immigrants I know are smart and funny and hard-working,
I am descended from immigrants (including Eastern European Jews), and my
daughter is an immigrant. Does that make
me biased? Perhaps. But more importantly
it means that this issue is real for me, not abstract or theoretical, just as
it is real for all immigrants, past and future.
So to all my immigrant friends, colleagues and
acquaintances: happy Thanksgiving, and thank you for being here.
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