Immigration has become one of the leading concerns of many in the US today.
When the word migrant is used, it is often in a negative context. Driven by constant warnings about being overrun by people who are crashing our borders, fear quickly morphs into concern that is fanned into anger. The repeated showing of families steaming across the Rio Grande River drives home a message of alarm and worry. In our neighborhoods, the subtlety of “they and them” creeps into our vocabulary.
What gets lost in all this reporting is the history of our nation. Built on the backs of immigrants who poured into our nation in the 19th and 20th centuries, the United States today is the most prosperous nation in the world and a continuing beacon of light and hope for neighbors everywhere.
It is no wonder that poor people want to come to our country. It is no secret that we are among the safest countries anywhere because of our first responders, our police and our fire-fighters. It is no wonder that people want to escape the violence of their native homes and come here to live.
The truth is that most people in the U.S. today have parents, grandparents or great grandparents who were born in a distant land. When the Irish came here in the 19th century, they were leaving a land that was filled with misery and violence. The potato famine, exacerbated by the English, created widespread hunger. The heavy hand of the British deprived the poor Irish of the ability to improve their lot and, therefore, become a threat to their ruling masters. They came to America, a land of opportunity, and never looked back. French, Polish, Germans and Italians have their own unique stories about why they left their homeland for greener pastures. The United States is built on the sacrifices of all the immigrants who came here, worked hard and contributed mightily to the prosperity of our country today.
When the word migrant is used in a pejorative way it denigrates the history of our country. It also depersonalizes the people it describes. It is only through historical amnesia that the discrimination that greeted Italians and Irish not too long ago fails to alter public opinion about immigration. At the same time, the thousands of Africans who were forcibly brought to our shores were not willing migrants, but they too are part of the population who hailed from a different land. Slavery and the discrimination that their descendants continue to experience is a dark chapter in our communal memory.
History is a great teacher that can inoculate us against the politicization of today’s immigration question. When we read stories about people dying in the Mediterranean as they try to cross from North Africa to Europe, we realize that people are on the move all over the world. The English Channel has recently claimed a number of lives as some folks believed that England was a more welcoming place to settle. Short memories prevent us from imagining that our forebears did exactly what people are trying to do today.
Migrants are human beings. Regardless of their legal status, they deserve to be treated with dignity. With few exceptions, they are not criminals, rapists and drug dealers. They are not part of an invasion, threatening to take over our country. They are poor people. They are fleeing poverty and violence in their homelands. They are being forced to leave the lands that they love in order to survive. In essence, they are not very different from the migrants of the 19th and 20th century who landed at Ellis Island with nothing but hope and ambition in their pockets.
“I’m up, pull up the ladder” is the mindset of those who fail to appreciate the immigrant character of our nation. There is no question that we need to reform our outdated immigration system that has been held in place by partisan politics. Immigration reform should not be a Republican or a Democrat issue. It should be a bipartisan issue focused on the common good of our nation.
Treating all people with dignity and respect, regardless of documented status, needs to be a first principle. Informed by our immigrant history, reform needs to eschew draconian measures like wholescale deportations in favor of common-sense measures that acknowledge the need for legitimate borders and an orderly way for people to enter our country.
All the issues associated with immigration reform can only be successfully addressed if we change the conversation from fear to hope and see today’s migrants through the prism of our history.
Msgr. Paul V. Garrity is a Senior Priest of the Archdiocese of Boston and former pastor of St Mary’s Parish and School in Lynn.
