Immigrants should be helped, not shunned
For almost as long as America has welcomed the “huddled masses,” no small number of us have been wary of the new arrivals.
German, Irish and Italian immigrants were subjected to discrimination at various points in the 19th and 20th centuries. Chinese laborers were “filthy yellow hordes,” deemed by no less a personage than newspaper editor Horace Greeley to be “uncivilized, unclean and filthy beyond all conception” and “lustful and sensual in their dispositions; every female is a prostitute of the basest order.”
More recently, Hispanic immigrants – documented or not – have been portrayed as pilferers of American jobs and pillagers of communities. Arabs and Muslims have been painted as terrorists-in-waiting, irredeemably violent and bent on decimating our way of life, replacing it with burkas and beheadings.
Most of these flare-ups of loathing fade with time. The intolerance of past centuries looks hysterical and foolish in retrospect, and there’s little doubt that the fears that animate us today will look just as daft when students are studying our times in 2117 and beyond.
In recent days, we’ve seen these apprehensions about foreigners bubble to the surface in California Borough regarding a group of about 40 Romanian asylum seekers who have settled in apartments there. Last week, about 150 residents crowded into a borough council meeting to offer their misgivings, and an online petition seeking to evict the Romanians has attracted more than 1,000 signatures. There have been ominous reports of children defecating in the streets, chickens getting their heads lopped off, traffic rules being violated and other forms of mayhem and chaos. Some have dubbed them “illegal immigrants,” even though they came to the United States seeking asylum from persecution in Eastern Europe thanks to their status as Roma, otherwise known as gypsies.
Borough officials have suggested that reports of misbehavior by the Romanians has been overstated, and some local residents have offered to help the Romanians get acquainted with American culture, including a group of ministers and some professors at California University of Pennsylvania.
If any of the immigrants break laws, it goes without saying they should be charged and dealt with accordingly, just like American citizens. Otherwise, helping them adjust to life here is a far more constructive and humane approach than showing them the door.
Consider that the Romanians were drawn to the borough by the prospect of affordable and available housing. Would California be better off if that housing remained empty? Would it be better off if the Romanians did not frequent stores in the community?
Many studies show that immigrants invigorate our country and our culture. They commit fewer crimes than native-born residents, work hard and share the same ideals and imperatives as the rest of us. With an aging population, they also spur economic activity. Barring a technological breakthrough that increases productivity, the only way for the United States to achieve annual economic growth in the range of 4 percent, as some politicians have promised, is to increase the number of immigrants we allow into the country. Most of these same politicians, however, have instead vowed to sharply curtail the number of immigrants we admit.
Is that making America great again? Not by a long shot.