It is common to say that the United States is an immigrant country and that we should, in some way, not forget that it is part of our identity as Americans. At the same time, we are currently busy implementing the notion of erasing immigrants from our midst.
The love-hate relationship fashioned around immigration has been with us almost since the beginning of the country. We tend to idealize our immigrant heritage and yet see immigrants in our communities as unwanted intruders that disturb the iconic nature of our collective memory of who our ancestors were, and their genius in beginning a successful history in America.
We take pride in what our history books say about how the east coast was populated and the role of the British in building settlements in New England and Virginia, the Dutch in New York, the Swedes in Delaware and the Spanish in Florida. We read about the first great wave of immigrants between 1815 and 1860 that included the Irish and Germans as new arrivals that helped move the frontier forward.
We study the second immigrant boon between 1880 and 1920 mostly from southern, eastern and central Europe and find reasons to cheer their hard work and participation in the industrial revolution that made our country strong and powerful in an uncertain and insecure world. Because they are our ancestors, we give those immigrants a lot of credit for helping to build a country that became a world political, economic and military superpower.
However, as the immigrant and immigration events get closer and closer to our own lifetime, we tend to fall out of love with our history about this matter. To be sure, this has happened before and will happen again.
For example, there is the 1849 anti-immigrant Know-Nothing Party that became the direct parent of today’s Republicans. Another example is the tremendous backlash against southern European and Jewish immigrants in the first part of the 20th Century.
“The fact is that any period includes a sense that immigrants negatively affect our identity as Americans because they most likely reminds us that we also came from somewhere else.”
That somewhere else is really nowhere as immigrants are castaways from a life that meant little because back home they were already deprived of their roots, their origins, their identity. Perhaps immigrants come from nowhere to arrive in the same place.
In no uncertain terms, the American Dream is an immigrant dream. It is made up of economic values and social settings that can lead to a successful life.
Because of the immigrant condition however, American culture has had to be manufactured. It cannot go back to a natural beginning because that beginning is not there.
I have always admired the multiplicity of languages offered in European schools. Every person learns two or more languages and is intimate with the cultural vision they speak to.
In America however, the culture is so fragile that we seek to protect what little there is by being ultra-patriotic, militaristic, speak English only (created somewhere else) and claim a democratic heritage that we did not originate.
In times of difficulties like those of the present day, we look at each other with deep suspicion and wonder if we can manage our differences. We also look at immigrants as outsiders that sometimes speaks another language and have another vision that threatens our cultural sense of who we are.
Immigrant America is afraid of immigrants. They threaten our history that cannot be written without them.
The views expressed by David Conde are not necessarily the views of LaVozColorado. Comments and responses may be directed to News@lavozcolorado.com.
