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In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith, becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person’s becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American… There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn’t an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag… We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language… and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people.
Theodore Roosevelt 1907
I didn’t watch President Bush’s speech on immigration tonight: I had a project I needed to work on in the shop. But it seems to me that President Roosevelt got it right: assimilation, assimilation, assimilation.
It occurs to me that our immigration problems today stem from where the immigrants come. It’s not that they are Hispanic; the “differences” there are no greater than the differences between established Americans and the immigrant waves of the nineteenth and early twentieth century. But the immigrants of the past came from overseas, often scraping together every last shilling to pay for their passage to the New World. While they brought their languages and customs with them, and perhaps dreamed about the occasional return visit to their ancestral homes, they were, for the very greatest part, stuck here. Communication was poor, transatlantic post sometimes taking months, when it connected at all. And for most there was simply no way, either financially or in time away from their new lives here, that they could ever return. They were about as completely separated from the Old Country as was possible, and they had to become Americans.
But immigration from Mexico and points further South isn’t like that. The immigrant who walked across the border from Mexico into Texas or Arizona has the option, just as easily, of walking back. The Hispanic immigrant who makes his way to Philadelphia and finds a job pouring concrete can still afford a bus ticket to Waco, and across the border to visit old friends and family. Thanks to modern communication, the Mexican immigrant can telephone home, can easily send money to his separated family. The enforced physical and communicative separation that beset earlier immigrants doesn’t apply to immigrants from Latin America.
Further, immigrants from the Old World had to either bring their entire families, or would probably never see them again. Immigration to America was a huge commitment for them: husbands brought their wives and children, and families stayed together. For our Mexican immigrants, it is frequently not that way. As I noted in an earlier story, Carlos, an illegal immigrant profiled in The Philadelphia Inquirer last month, crossed the border into Arizona’s Sonora Desert with a human smuggler in 1998. It wasn’t until 2002 that he brought his wife and (then only) daughter to the United States.
That has to be less of an emotional and intellectual commitment to becoming an American, if Carlos was willing to come here without his family; while we don’t know if it was always his plan to bring them here after he got established, or whether he thought his stay in the United States was only temporary, the fact is that he was able to stay in communication with them, was probably able to send them money, and simply had less pressure on himself to become an American.
Not a Mexican-American, but an American.
Some of our friends on the left seem to think that the objections of many Americans to illegal immigration stem from the immigrants being “brown” people. Oliver Willis, who sees racism in just about everything, calls them “hard right nativist racists.”
I don’t see it that way. There was plenty of American angst during the heavy Irish immigration, many help wanted advertisements contained the phrase “no Irish need apply,” and you’d be hard pressed to find a “whiter” people than the Irish!
To me, it seems that the problem is cultural, exacerbated by a difference in language. Immigrants from the Old World either knew English already or learned it reasonably quickly; they really had little choice. Today we are seeing something new, the need for Americans to learn Spanish, to be able to communicate with the immigrants. Those are hard feelings just waiting to happen!
We had a wave of immigration from Southeast Asia, Vietnamese, Cambodians and Laotians primarily, following the American withdrawal from South Vietnam, and, for the most part, there was very little resentment to these immigrants, some of whom weren’t exactly legal, and all of whom looked a lot more “foreign” than do Mexicans. Why? Because they were determined to become Americans! English became a passion for them, and their kids studied like nobody’s business, frequently becoming the top students in their classes.
In the end, I return to the beginning: President Roosevelt was right! If our immigrants from Mexico and Guatemala and the Dominican Republic were more inclined to assimilate, we’d not be having this debate right now.
I agree with you on most points, but I wanted to correct one item. It’s not true that immigrants from the Old World either came over with their families or left them behind almost permenantly. The story you told of Carlos matches closely with many of my family members’s stories from before World War II. My Great Grandfather came here, went back, came over again, went back for his wife and finally came to stay. A friend of the family came and sent money back to his wife, only to return for her to find her sleeping with someone else. His intention was to return with her, but unfortunately his wife and her lover killed him. Seriously.
I agree that it’s much, much easier for someone from Mexico to retain ties to home than it was for the European immigrants at the turn of the century, but – at least for the Italian immigrants that make up my family and their friends – many of them came alone with the intention of bringing their families later, if they succeeded, just like the story of Carlos.
Good work on the article, though.
Let’s not forget the millions of Mexican women who are left behind to raise children without their husbands who are off to the US. Many illegals don’t send money home, some forget about their responsibilities in Mexico, and quite a few find girlfriends here and start second families.
We don’t often hear the voice of these abandoned Mexican women, who like most women everywhere need their husbands at home.
Why would you take a bus to Waco to walk back to Mexico? That’s a mighty long walk. Try Brownsville or Presidio or, if you’re really adventurous, Eagle Pass.
Oh, and crap article by the way.
Anon, while you have a perfect right to claim that the article was “crap,” your opinion might draw more support were you to explain why you believe it to be crap.