The not so glorious history of immigration
If you don’t watch baseball anymore, you missed out on a great moment
By Ken Tingley
This past May, Rep. Elise Stefanik tweeted this:
“Democrats desperately want wide open borders and mass amnesty for illegals allowing them to vote. Like the vast majority of Americans, Republicans want to secure our borders and protect election integrity.”
Not only have I never heard any Democrat say they were in favor open borders, I don’t think I’ve ever heard any person say it. The tweet was so over the top, the fact-checking organization snopes.com used it as an example of Republican hyperbole and wrote an entire article on how complicated the issue is to solve.
The first part of Ken Burns’ latest documentary series - “The U.S. and Holocaust” - aired Sunday night with an examination of past immigration policies by the United States. While it welcomed one and all as settlers pushed westward, those policies became more and more exclusionary including laws against the immigration of Asians and finally a roadblock to Jews trying to escape Eastern Europe before World War II.
Opposition to any type of immigration is not a new problem.
The Burns documentary arrived a day after hearing a group of authors speak about immigration at the Albany Book Festival.
Susan Hartman’s book “City of Refugees” was the story of three newcomers who helped breathe life into the city of Utica. Beginning in the 1970s, Utica was like many rust-belt cities in the northeast that saw its factories close and its residents move away.
At one point, there was billboard put up that read: “Last one out of Utica, turn out the lights.”
Gradually, thousands of immigrants - many seeking sanctuary as refugees - replaced them. Immigrants from Vietnam, Russia Dan Burma helped transform the city. They now make up a quarter of the 60,000 residents.
“The city began to bloom by having a policy of accepting refugees,” Hartman said. “They brought the city back to life.”
Jason Riley of the Wall Street Journal wrote “Let Them In: The case for open borders” in 2008.
“People want to come here to have a better life,” Riley said. “As an American, I want to welcome all of them, but they have to come here in an orderly way. The real onus is on the policy-makers. That’s where the friction lies. They are told to get in line. But does that line even exist? Sometimes it depends on what country you are from.”
Riley explained opposition against immigration are not new. They include ideas that have proven to be untrue including:
- Immigrants take jobs.
- They cheapen labor and reduce wages.
- Their presence overruns public benefit programs.
- They bring disease.
- They are terrorists.
We’ve heard those arguments before. Riley insists they are not true. He explained there is only a wage depression for Americans without a high school diploma. They make up just 8 percent of the population
“There was always this anti-immigrant strain in the GOP, but it was not the dominant strain,” Riley said. “You are seeing that play out now.”
Rosayra Pablo Cruz escaped from Guatemala in 2018 with her two children after her husband was murdered. When she finally arrived in the Arizona border after a brutal journey, she was immediately separated from her two children. They were eventually reunited, settled in the midwest where she worked hard to become part of the community.
“I’m not here to take from you,” Pablo Cruz said. “I’m here to build with you.”
Riley explained how the journey of these immigrants inspired him.
“A very small percentage of people will move away from the country they were born in.,” Riley explained.
Think about it.
How many of us would even consider leaving our community, never mind our country?
Consider going to a world where you do not speak the language, do not know the customs and few practice your religion.
Consider the circumstance that drive you to undertake such a challenge.
“If you have that in your DNA,” Riley said. “I want you to come to America.”
That’s what immigrants have traditionally brought to our country. There is a hunger for a better way of life where they can live without fear. They don’t ever take that for granted.
Maybe they aren’t the problem, but the solution, especially in places like the Adirondacks where are communities are losing residents and families.
Maybe we can again be what Ken Burns described as “The golden door.” But the problem is not the immigrants, its the failure of a policy to allow them to get in line and pursue their dreams.
Drive-by shootings
I received a mailer from Sen. Dan Stec on Monday promising to spare us from the horror of drive-by shootings. An earlier mailer made the same promises, yet I know of no local drive-by shootings.
He also pledged to defend police officers. Once again, I’m not sure who is attacking police officers in our communities.
Sen. Stec seems to be promising to solve problems that do not exist in our local communities.
Love those cookies
Patrick Barber is a Fort Ann native who I wrote about several months ago. He once considered running for Congress against Rep. Elise Stefanik, but eventually changed his mind.
We’ve stayed in touch and had lunch recently. He is a smart and successful man with an interesting hobby. He likes to bake cookies.
When Patrick heard about my obsession with penguins, he baked me some penguin cookies. They looked so cool, I almost hated to eat them. But they were pretty tasty too.
I heard from his parents this week that the Fort Ann graduate had baked a bunch of cookies for the Fort Ann Central School Alumni Association to sell homecoming weekend.
Now, that’s a local guy who know how to give back.
Extreme? Maybe necessary
USA Today columnist Jill Lawrence took an extreme position with voters in her latest column. She urged them not to vote for ANY Republican.
My philosophy has been to vote for the best candidate. I regularly vote for candidates from both parties.
“It pains me to say this, but if you care about your rights and country, don't vote for any Republicans in 2022,” Lawrence wrote. “Even the officeholders who have stood up to Trump and the newcomers who pitch themselves as reality-based. All that counts is the R after their name. Their party is on a dark path and can't be trusted to control any level of government.”
Consider a moment that any member of the news media felt compelled to right that and it provides the context to what a frightening time we are in living in.
Glorious No. 60
In my 50 years of passionately following the New York Yankees, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a finish like Tuesday night.
It started with Aaron Judge leading off the ninth inning with his 60th home run of the season. That tied Babe Ruth who did it 95 years ago.
It was an awesome 430-foot blast into left field bleachers. It was certainly enough to make the game memorable. But the next three Yankees all reached base too and Giancarlo Stanton, who once hit 59 home runs in Miami, hit a grand slam home run to give the Yankees a 9-8 victory over the Pittsburgh Pirates.
That’s why I love baseball.
Well said. Washington County has many hardworking immigrants working on three year visas with no path to citizenship. Come visit the Slate Valley Museum in Granville to learn the stories of immigrants who were able to settle here. As a result, our community thrived.
I hesitated reading this, not because I thought you might be wrong, but because I knew you would be right.
Not because another republican did another heinous thing, but because I would be reminded of how heinous stefanik has become.
It is not hard to see this, I wish it was perspicacious (Merriam-Webster word of the day) to notice these actions. Whatever the antonym of perspicacious is (ignorance, but it isn't so highfalutin), are her supporters.
What is so sad, the republicans have twisted our core values --- dar I say our cristian values. (I am an atheist but know enough about the bible to know you are supposed to have compassion and care about the downtrodden).
Ultimately the republicans have created a dialog of deception. Doing so by attacking problems, not with solutions, but with a sledgehammer of misrepresentation.
I am not sure if stefanik ever tells the truth.. now it just comes down to the degree of what she is saying is not true.
If you go to any stefanik, and I supposed most republican, social media, you will see droves of the not so perspicacious. I post a lot often with facts and links. Now I suppose those facts and links could be proven wrong... but never are.. Her supporters know but can not present anything resembling facts.
Nor, I suspect, do they want to, they want the adrenaline of their fear. They want to have guns to protect them from the imaginary boogie man. They want to believe no one will replace them, because of their skin color (ignoring they aren’t very smart or lazy)
I think the solution to the country’s problems is to make ignorance illegal. Sure stefanik would be in jail, as would most of her supporters.
Or they could join the rest of us that understand facts, logic and cognitive thinking.