Conversation with an Immigrant

I often get so caught up in my own point of view that, even when I'm trying to remain open, I often fail to see the other side of the argument. I was once fairly conservative, have a ultraconservative father, and once I was won over to the liberal side I discounted many ideas I considered ideal, but flawed.

Helping those in need for instance. Heaven forbid you start a conversation with my father about welfare. Anybody, he thinks, on welfare is a worthless human being. The government shouldn't help those that can't help themselves. I of course, working with children from all backgrounds, see a different story. Maybe they should pull themselves up by the bootstraps, but poverty has a tendency to beget more poverty. It's hard to improve your life if a) you've never seen success stories outside of military or sports advancements or b) you social and education skills are so low that you remain disadvantaged.

BUT, on Tuesday night I had a conversation with a first generation immigrant, and one off-handed comment that she made keeps on percolating through my brain. Her fiance who is doing doctoral work in Germany wants to come to the states and she's concerned that his name, Jafar, will cause red flags to go up, even though he isn't Muslim. When asked what they would do if he was denied a visa she said she just didn't know. She wants to live in the U.S. because it is so open and accepting.

Open? She's worried about her fiance's visa because of a name, and a heritage. But yes, she replies, the US is far more open than Germany, or in her native Albania. Within her 20 years in the country she's managed to study hard and graduate from Princeton. Although she could live in Germany, her station would probably not have improved. She'd remain at immigrant status, probably indefinitely, and her children would also be considered immigrants. She's a U.S. citizen now and, although she immigrated here as a child, she views herself as an American.

And this is the comment that stuck with me. Perhaps, she says, America is so open because it's based on merit. If, she says, we had universal healthcare and all the other perks that Germany has, we wouldn't feel so benevolent to immigrants. Because everyone has to, and can, work to get ahead, discrimination falls away in light of an individual's abilities. If you can make it, she says, your unusual name is no longer a big deal.

I wonder how her brother feels. He apparently didn't make it through the system unscathed. He graduated from a GED program (one of the better ones) and is now trying to put his life together better.

So I value her conversation, and wonder if a part of our openness is based on merit. But I do have to add that I think her case is not necessarily the norm for most immigrants. I think she's got the advantage. First, even if her parents weren't well educated (which I suspect they were) they placed a value on education. Second, she appears white and speaks English fluently with only a slight accent. Finally, her parents came here legally, which many immigrant child have no choice or say about, yet must live within a vastly different lifestyle as a result of their parent's secrecy.

To be clear, I'm not endorsing illegal immigration, just suggesting that it's far more complex, with far more rippling effects than is often discussed openly.

I think what I got from the conversation, after a lot of thought, is that she's right. We want a society that is open, and based on merit. We value self-reliance as one of the greatest assets a person can have. But if we expect people to pull themselves up, we have to accept that there are those who can't, or won't rise to the occasion. In fact, we have to assume that MOST people won't make it to the top, because success in this country is a pyramid.

So, my liberal side comes out once again. If many people aren't going to make it, even to middle class, shouldn't we ensure that everyone has at least minimal degree of safety and security? Or would that just mean more people would continue to move here? I don't know the answers, but I think the idea is worthy of rumination.