Anger Toward Immigrants

Welcome to From Insults to Respect.

Today, I happened to be listening to some songs when “Across the Borderline” came on. This touching version features Jackson Browne, who is joined with Gaby Moreno and Van Dyke Parks. Other artists covering this magnificent sad and mournful song are Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, and Ry Cooder. Cooder, along with John Hiatt and Jim Dickinson, are the song’s writers.

Some of the lyrics are:

There’s a place where I’ve been told
Every street is paved with gold
And it’s just across the borderline
And when it’s time to take your turn
Here’s one lesson that you must learn
You could lose more than you’ll ever hope to find

When you reach the broken promised land
And every dream slips through your hands
Then you’ll know that it’s too late to change your mind
‘Cause you’ve paid the price to come so far

The plaintive voices along with the emotionally evocative music convey so much more than the lyrics themselves.

As I listened, a vision of the Statue of Liberty came to me. In New York Harbor there she stands, classically robed, with her right arm holding above her head the lamp of liberty, symbolizing the welcoming of immigrants, and with a plaque inscribed with the words,

Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

This led to a soaring in my heart. Images came to me of my ancestors, along with the vast majority of my fellow American ancestors, arriving on our shores escaping awful conditions while praying for a better life. Along with this came images of the many gifts immigrants have contributed to our nation in the arts and sciences. I thought about the many, many employers who had been struggling to find workers to do certain difficult jobs finding relief as these immigrants arrive.

Oh, I’m not blind to the fact that there are times when the arrival of immigrants can lead to frustrating experiences. I remember when I was growing up in Brooklyn’s Brighton Beach neighborhood and suddenly a wave of Russian immigrants arrived. I didn’t ask any of them if they were here legally or not, because regardless, their presence could be exasperating. For example, at one point, I was in my local supermarket and was having trouble finding a particular product. I asked a worker who was stocking a shelf for help. He responded with such a thick Russian accent I couldn’t make out what he was saying. I was frustrated, and maybe even a little angry, but I took a deep breath and found someone else to help me.

In my neighborhood, others were complaining that some of the services had been stretched way beyond what everyone had become used to. For example, at the local hospital patients had a much longer time in the waiting room until a doctor could be seen. A couple remembered how it was to go to school when they were kids in the neighborhood, and since the new immigrants flooded in, their own children’s classrooms had way more students and the teachers had less time to teach them because so much time was being used to try to teach children who didn’t speak English.

Now, many communities in our country are not experiencing such a wave of immigrants suddenly arriving, but for those that are, I wonder if a plan can be put in place so the frustrating aspects of their arrivals can be eased. Perhaps the nation could set up a special waiting list for people who want to legally start a new life by coming to America. This would serve two purposes; first, if these people know that in time they will be able to enter our country legally with all the protections that status provides, fewer folks would be trying to sneak in illegally; second, those on the list would indicate specifically where in the country they wish to begin their new life, and with this knowledge communities that are expecting to get a significant wave of immigrant arrivals would be able to prepare for their arrivals by seeking special grants to adequately fund the needed revenues so local services would not be inundated.

Now, obviously, not all people who want to come to America are going to be willing to wait until their number comes up. And yet perhaps a significant number will find a way to wait because it would be such a powerful attraction to get legal status, thereby eliminating the constant fear that some ICE agent might, at any moment, track that immigrant down and send him or her back. If it would work with enough people, it just might significantly ease some of the most significant challenges that arises when large groups of immigrants suddenly arrive.

As for the frustrations that occur when so many arrive in American communities who don’t speak clear English, it just so happens that recent apps on cell phones solve this. These apps can, when spoken into the phone, instantly verbally convert an immigrant’s language into English, and the reply can be instantly converted back to a language the immigrant can easily understand. In addition to be generally helpful in the neighborhood, these apps can smooth the difficulties teachers have when they deal with non-English speaking students.

It seems to me that if we remain mindful of the great values that our immigrants bring to our shores, along with our knowledge that our own ancestors were once immigrants, we can convert any anger that their arrivals provoke into a challenge to fix the various problems that arise.This would be a kind and generous thing to do.

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Some people will enjoy reading this blog by beginning with the first post and then moving forward to the next more recent one; then to the next one; and so on. This permits readers to catch up on some ideas that were presented earlier and to move through all of the ideas in a systematic fashion to develop their emotional intelligence. To begin at the very first post you can click HERE.

Across the Borderlineanger toward immigrantsimmigration policyThe Statue of Liberty