Real Immigration Reform

    In 1952 Senator George Aiken made this argument about enforcing the immigration laws: If Congress was going to absolve farmers from responsibility for hiring illegal immigrants it needed to do the same thing for urban employers. Why? Because Aiken correctly told his colleagues "that I have a suspicion that there may be more aliens illegally employed in the cities of the United States than there are on the farms."

    Again in 1952,  Senator Hubert Humphrey assured the Senate that the situation for Mexicans resembled a form of "economic slavery". "We have been so used to bleeding the people of Mexico for cheap labor that it has become a habit for some people." Moreover, "I think the government is a party to a crime that is going on."

   As President Obama considers our contemporary situation he needs to remember that we are repeating history. The United States has relied on illegal immigrants -especially Mexicans- since at least 1924. Today, in economic sectors like construction, restaurants, hotels, horticulture and farming, the reliance on illegal workers is as great as ever. So, if the President means to make real changes, he needs to confront two issues: Our hypocrisy and our structural reliance on the people we supposedly wish to exile. As New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg told Congress in 2006:  "Although they broke the law by illegally crossing our borders or overstaying their visas, our City's economy would be a shell of itself had they not, and it would collapse if they were deported. The same holds true for the nation."

   My guess is that President Obama will repeat history: Confronted with the opposing forces that want illegal immigrants (e.g., the U.S. Chamber of Commerce) and those who do not (e.g., many residents of Southern Arizona), the President will make cosmetic changes and the nation will lose the change for real immigration reform.

   Here is my suggestion: Before focusing on issues like enforcement and illegality, let's ask Americans to change our disposition toward cultural difference. If we realized that immigrants (both legal and illegal) can help us positively transform American culture, the axis of the debate would change. Instead of trying to keep people out, we might be willing to let them in because they help us as they help themselves.

   Right now the stress is to assimilate, to become real Americans. The problem, of course, is what is a real American? Do the millions of evangelicals represent the immigrant ideal? Is it the gay community in San Francisco or the thriving Hasidic community in Brooklyn? Or, is the immigrant ideal the Chicanos who have institutionalized in hundreds of universities a program of study that is distinctly anti-American. Take many courses in Chicano (or Asian or Native American) studies and the immigrant learns that Americans are. among other things, ruthless imperialists who have exploited newcomers since 1607.

     Advocates of assimilation ignore a crucial insight of Fernando Ortiz. Whenever immigrants enter a culture they also change it rather than assimilate into it. Ortiz called this process of cultural creativity transculturation and he wisely criticized American sociologists for being blind to the world that was actually there. Cultural change is always going to occur. As with Chicano or Asian Studies, it can produce a negative assessment of the host culture or, cultural creativity can be embraced by everyone as a means to change what is troublesome or even poisonous about the host culture.

    Take prejudice. America divides the entire world into white, black and nonwhite human beings. This is demonstrably stupid! My grandsons, for example, have Spanish, Colombian, French, Irish and Japanese heritages. They do not get a color, they are labeled bi-racial, and by definition they are outsiders. Since my grandsons represent a rapidly increasing segment of American society, how do we welcome them into a culture that can't even call them nonwhite?

   Why not look at immigrants as a peaceful and even delightful way to reevaluate American culture? Maybe we have as much to learn from them as they have to learn from us? For example, many Jamaicans, Cubans, Trinidadians, and Puerto Ricans are confused by our way of thinking; they take very diverse human fusions for granted and use ethnicity -rather than skin color- as an axis of self and personal esteem. Perhaps we ought to do the same thing? Be real revolutionaries. Forget color and define ourselves by what unites us: Our membership in a culture that wants to move into the future by allowing immigrants to be contributors rather than passive recipients of the already established cultural truth.

       Go, for example, to the GQ Website for May 18th, 2009 (http://men.style.com/gq ) and look at the piece entitled "Bush's Bible Briefings". Among other things, the President learned that his soldiers, wearing the "full armor of God", used "their chariot wheels like a whirlwind."  That God was apparently Jesus Christ and he was going to bring righteousness to a region dominated by Muslims. Is that the ideal envisioned by those who preach assimilation? Or, can we construct a new meaning of Americanism, one that is rooted in a brand new disposition toward cultural difference?

  My suggestion is that we think of America as a marvelous Banquet of Cultures. We would not only be open to others, we would be as potentially excited by cultural differences as we are excited by the opportunity to try and enjoy different foods. Why do we run to ethnic restaurants but run away from - or even ridicule - the people who run those restaurants?

   And why do universities argue that an international experience is a wonderful way to positively shape mind and character but neglect the international experiences that already exist in fifty states? Students do not need to travel abroad. The cultural diamonds are already in our own backyards.

   Openness would be a two way street. Immigrants would have to agree that, potentially, they have as much to learn from us as we have to learn from them. And neither side would have to like everything at the cultural banquet. On the contrary, those of us committed to equal rights for all might have sharp criticisms about any culture that restricted the rights of women or gay Americans.

  Thinking of America as a Banquet of Cultures is a vote for the open road. It recognizes that we are living between past and future; and that we can all be imaginative forces in the reconfiguration of a society that seeks to improve itself rather than wear, like former President George Bush, "the full armor of God".