The Dilemma of Immigration

The events of the past few days, across America, as undocumented immigrants protest the new immigration bill that will criminalize all undocumented immigrants, highlight the dilemma of immigration in this country.

From the early seventeenth century to the twenty-first century, immigration to America has been borne out of two basic and fundamental necessities: liberty and life. In practice, one sometimes precedes the other, but in principle, both are often inseparable. To have freedom, one must have life, but to live life, one must have freedom. The pilgrims and founders came primarily for liberty; but they must have believed that greater liberty would ensure better life.

The primary cause of immigration to the United States, from very early in America’s history to the present, was a combination of factors such as social crisis, political discontent, religious discontent, and economic hardship. The degree to which these factors were the causes for immigration varied among immigrants. Nevertheless, they were fundamentally the same. These factors were the dominant reasons behind the unprecedented waves of immigrants from Great Britain, Ireland, and Germany from the 1820s to 1860s.

During the fatal years of the potato famine and cholera epidemic (mid 1840s), the mass migration from Ireland increased more than twelve-fold. It was said that at least four out of every five people who left the shores of the “old country” to try their fortunes in the new were Irish. Overall, in the first half of the 1800s, the majority of the immigrants that came to America were from Great Britain, Ireland, and Germany. By 1860 and up till 1890, immigrants from the Scandinavian countries had also joined.

The tidal wave of Swedish immigrants, which began in the mid 1840s and lasted until 1930, was also triggered by population pressure, economic hardship, agricultural hardship, social crisis, political discontent, and religious discontent. By the 1870s, the steady stream of immigrants from Europe had been joined by immigrants from Canada and China. Between 1890 and 1910, the majority of immigrants coming to the United States had shifted to those coming from Austria, Hungary, Italy, and Russia. From 1920 to 1930, more immigrants came from Greece, Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Italy, Poland, Russia, Spain, Portugal, and Turkey. In the 1940s, Jews fleeing the Nazi persecution in Europe also joined the wave of immigrants to America. From 1965 to the present, immigrants from the rest of the world (who had been previously excluded) were allowed to join the great migration to the new world, courtesy of the Immigration Act of 1965, with provisions that granted asylum to refugees, favored immigrants with desired job skills, and allowed families to reunite.

There is a common invisible but real and ever-present force that draws and binds immigrants to America. As the wave of immigration shifted from region to region, one thing remained constant: the motive for immigrating—liberty and life. America is a nation conceived in and born out of these ideals. Indeed, the fundamental principles upon which America was founded rest on these ideals, the same way a strong house rests on a solid foundation and is given support by pillars of steel and concrete.

There is something about America with a universal appeal to people all over the world. That something gave birth to America’s independence and is enshrined in our constitution. It is the belief in the providential imperative “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”.

It is in the light of this legacy that oppressed and dispossessed people around the world have come to see America as a haven, even as a paradise on earth. This notion is practically immortalized in the famous proclamation on the Statue of Liberty in the words: “Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” The world took America at her word and has been giving America her tired, poor, and huddled masses yearning to breathe free; however, not without the world’s best and brightest coming along too.

America has struggled to honor this perhaps exuberant commitment ever since. This is evident in her ambivalent attitude towards immigrants. It appears that America tries very hard to convince herself that she is not who or what she is, but never succeeds. However much America tries to suppress or deny her true nature as a guardian of liberty and an inspiration to the oppressed; frequently her true self gets the best of her. This is evident in the history of immigration legislation in America from 1790 to the present, which has been one of “to be or not to be.”

During this period, immigration legislation has been characterized by ambivalence—often seeming to discourage immigration, yet allowing it. It seems that measures to discourage immigration have always been reactionary and often preceded by public discontent supposedly borne out of fear of losing jobs and prosperity to new immigrants, and perhaps also for fear of losing the “American character” as a result of the infiltration or infusion of alien cultures, and now for security reasons, in the wake of 9/11.

Obviously, America cannot take in everyone who wishes to come to America, so what should America do? Abraham Lincoln said, “We must not promise what we ought not, lest we be called on to perform what we cannot.” This premonition would hold, if America fails to see the essence of the inexorable providential ideals that is her core. Benjamin Franklin spoke of these ideals when he said, “Tyranny is so generally established in the rest of the world that the prospect of an asylum in America for those who love liberty gives general joy, and our cause is esteemed the cause of all mankind…We are fighting for the dignity and happiness of human nature.”

America must realize that the cause of which Franklin spoke lies in the reality that America is more than a nation; that America is also an idea—founded on the virtue of freedom and individual prosperity. It is more realistic that America sees Franklin’s sentiments as a mandate to establish democracy and free enterprise in places where hitherto there has been tyranny. In so doing, America the country, is essentially extending “the prospect of asylum”, America the idea, to those who love freedom and seek prosperity, in their homelands. It has already happened in India, Japan, and South Korea.

For those with the fortune of welcome to America the country, America must more than ever demand from them the virtues that made America great. As Abraham Lincoln said, “I like to see a man proud of the place he lives. I like to see a man live so that his place will be proud of him.”