Temple Emanuel of Great Neck celebrated Thanksgiving early this year, with an interfaith service that featured Congressman Steve Israel and members from throughout the spectrum of Nassau County’s cultural tapestry.
Congressman Israel spoke mainly of the need to build bridges – something that has been horrendously lacking in the nation’s capital, torn asunder by partisan extremism that won’t be fixed, he says, without campaign finance reform.
But he closed his talk as he does often, talking about the constant source of inspiration for his public service: his immigrant grandparents whose photos he keeps near him in his congressional office.
They came during a time when immigrants were not just welcomed to these shores, they were recruited with advertising and sponsorships. Industrializing, expanding America needed bodies to build railroads and skyscrapers, lay roads and man factories and mines.
At the same time as the flood of immigrants peaked in the first decade of the 20th century, the celebration of Thanksgiving was turned into a kind of morality play intended to Americanize and assimilate these immigrants. The history of thanksgiving – which is a tradition among native Americans as well as Christians and Jews to give thanks after a harvest – and became a national holiday under President Lincoln was revised to be one of ecumenical acceptance by the Pilgrims of the Wampanoag Indians whom they so nobly invited to share their feast.
The actual history of America’s first Thanksgiving is quite different: the Wampanoag Indians outnumbered the Pilgrims 93 to 50 and also brought most of the feast which they shared with the settlers.
In just two generations, the descendents of those Wampanoag Indians severely regretted the hospitality and the help they gave those first settlers who would otherwise have perished. Today, Thanksgiving is marked by Wampanoag as a Day of Mourning in Plymouth, the site of the original feast.
But of course, except for the indigenous Indians who populated North America at the time of Columbus, we all are immigrants.
In the decade after the American Revolution, about 5,000 people a year emigrated to the United States. By the early 1900s, immigrants arrived at Ellis Island at the rate of 5,000 a day.
In the decade 1901-10, six million immigrants came through Ellis Island – have of the 12 million immigrants that were processed here between 1892 and 1954. At the peak of immigration, on a single day in 1907, 11,000 immigrants were processed.
It is estimated that 100 million Americans today have ancestors who came through Ellis Island, alone.
They came to escape religious persecution, political strife, unemployment, plague, famine, and they came for the opportunity to work, for family, to build a new life. They were part of the greatest migration in modern history.
“This is a special place, a hallowed place,” says Superintendent David Luchsinger of Ellis Island, whose great grandparents came through here. “The balance of power shifted here” because of the human capital that came through these halls.
And then the spigot was turned off in the 1920s. The sentiments of the nativist “Know Nothing” party that had been active 50 years earlier took hold; the Ku Klux Klan arose. Jewish immigrants were targeted as Communists intent on overturning the government and sent back; Palmer raids were unleashed on homes. And finally, quotas on immigration based on national origin. Instead of welcoming those yearning to be free, Ellis Island became a deportation center.
Still, when convenient, we glorify our tradition of welcoming in the immigrant and how they epitomize the American Dream. Andrew Carnegie. Albert Einstein. Henry Kissinger. Charles Wang.
And Andrew Ly.
He is an immigrant who fled Vietnam with his four brothers by boat – failing three times but finally succeeding on the fourth try – making it to Malaysia and eventually to San Francisco. Their family learned English, worked as handymen and seamstresses and eventually Andrew and his brothers earned enough money to buy a small bakery. Sugar Bowl Bakery today is a $60 million business.
“So now, these humble and striving immigrants from Vietnam now employ more than 300 Americans,” President Obama said, invoking Andrew Ly’s story in speech this week from San Francisco, urging the House to pass the comprehensive immigration reform bill that the Senate has already passed.
“And Andrew says, ‘We came here as boat people, so we don’t take things for granted. We know this is the best country in the world if you work hard.’ That’s what America is about. This is the place where you can reach for something better if you work hard. This is the country our parents and our grandparents and waves of immigrants before them built for us. And it falls on each new generation to keep it that way. The Statue of Liberty doesn’t have its back to the world. The Statue of Liberty faces the world and raises its light to the world.”
But the American story is also one of genocide, ethnic cleansing, of enslavement and exploitation. And today’s story of immigration has shifted from that glorious part of the American Dream to that terrible underside.
This holiday season, we sit around our table in the security of our homes surrounded by family and friends, we should think about this underground, shadow world of 11 million undocumented immigrants who live in constant fear and insecurity.
Women who are victims of domestic violence are afraid to seek out police help for fear of being turned over to authorities; workers who are screwed out of their meager wages feel they have no recourse. American-born children are fearful that one or both parents will be deported.
And the reason there are 11 million people living a shadow existence is mainly because the immigration system has been broken for decades and there has been little will to fix the system because, frankly businesses have benefitted by something akin to slave labor or serfdom and the for-profit prison industry has made a bundle on the incarceration of some 400,000 people – 25 percent of the incarcerated population – at a cost of $20 million a day.
And the Republican party has benefited from having undocumented immigrants counted in the census for the purpose of representation in Congress, but not with the ability to vote – much like the 4 million slaves in the South, counted as 3/5 of a person for the purpose of representation, gave the South outsized control of Congress before the Civil War.
President Obama spoke at the Betty Ong Recreation Center, located in San Francisco’s Chinatown, named in honor of a flight attendant who grew up in Chinatown and was killed on September 11, 2001.
In the early 1900s, about 300,000 people — maybe some of your ancestors — passed through on their way to a new life in America. And for many, it represented the end of a long and arduous journey — they’d finally arrived in a place where they believed anything was possible.
And for some, it also represented the beginning of a new struggle against prejudice in a country that didn’t always treat its immigrants fairly or afford them the same rights as everybody else. Obviously, Asians faced this, but so did the Irish; so did Italians; so did Jews; and many groups still do today.
That didn’t stop those brave men and women from coming. They were drawn by a belief in the power of opportunity; in a belief that says, maybe I never had a chance at a good education, but this is a place where my daughter can go to college. Maybe I started out washing dishes, but this is a place where my son can become mayor of San Francisco. Maybe I have to make sacrifices today, but those sacrifices are worth it if it means a better life for my family.
And that’s a family story that will be shared by millions of Americans around the table on Thursday. It’s the story that drew my great-great-great-great-grandfather from a small village in Ireland, and drew my father from a small village in Kenya. It’s the story that drew so many of your ancestors here – that America is a place where you can make it if you try.
But too often when we talk about immigration, the debate focuses on our southern border. The fact is we’re blessed with immigrants from all over the world who’ve put down roots in every corner of this country.
Here in San Francisco, 35 percent of business owners are immigrants – and your economy is among the fastest growing in the country. That’s not an accident. That’s the impact that our talented, hardworking immigrants can have. That’s the difference they can make. They’re hungry and they’re striving and they’re working hard and they’re creating things that weren’t there before.
And that’s why it is long past time to reform an immigration system that right now doesn’t serve America as well as it should. We could be doing so much more to unleash our potential if we just fix this aspect of our system.
The immigration system is broken and has been broken for years, Obama said in speeches In October and again this week. It’s not just that it has made criminals of 11 million people, but that it saps the creative energies and talents that generations of immigrants before have shown to make the country great.
The Senate earlier this year passed immigration reform bill by a wide, bipartisan margin that would strengthen the borders, would hold employers accountable if they knowingly hire undocumented workers, would modernize the legal immigration system so that highly-skilled entrepreneurs could be accommodated, and would provide a pathway to earned citizenship for those who are here illegally – including passing a background check, learning English, paying taxes, paying a penalty, and getting in line behind everyone who is trying to apply the right way.
Immigration reform isn’t just humane and consistent with American values, but would grow the economy by $1.4 trillion over the next two decades and shrink the deficit by $850 million – and not just because it would enable more individuals to reach their full potential.
“You don’t have to be an economist to figure out that workers will be more productive if they’ve got their families here with them, they’re not worried about deportation, they’re not living halfway around the world. This isn’t just the right thing to do -– it’s the smart thing to do,” Obama said.
The failure to accomplish comprehensive immigration reform is one of the clearest examples of all that has gone horribly wrong with the political process, as Congressman Israel described in his remarks at Temple Emanuel. Immigration reform is wildly popular – as is gun violence protection. And yet, there is no vote in the House because most districts are so gerrymandered, congressmen are being controlled by their partisan extremes and monied interests and have little interest in compromising or reaching solutions, particularly to the hard challenges that are the least controversial.
Because if you open a path to citizenship to people who are inclined to embrace the values and principles of the Democratic party, well then, you may not be able to keep control of Congress.
But as President Obama said, “This isn’t just the right thing to do; it’s the smart thing to do. Securing our borders; modernizing our legal immigration system; providing a pathway to earned, legalized citizenship; growing our economy; strengthening our middle class; reducing our deficits — that’s what common-sense immigration reform will do.”
Americans Should Support ‘First Step’ Agreement with Iran
I can imagine there are a lot of Great Neck people who are infuriated and worried about the “first-step” agreement President Obama has forged with Iran. Ardently pro-Israel people will take to heart that Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu has dubbed it a ‘historic’ mistake rather than history-making. Those in our community who are only one or two generations removed from Iranians who had to flee their country after the 1979 Revolution will also harbor concerns.
But in reviewing the outlines of the agreement, I believe this is vitally important to furthering the interest of peace and the safety of Israel and the rest of the region.
This is the first time Iran is even admitting to having a program of uranium enrichment to weapons-grade level, and under this agreement, will open up to daily inspections. It has promised to dilute or destroy uranium enriched to more than 5 percent – the grade needed for electricity, and will even open its Arak reactor to inspections.
The sanctions do not hurt the government or the Ayatollahs. They hurt the Iranian people, who as a whole are pro-America and not necessarily anti-Israel.
The agreement is only for six months – and can be withdrawn if Iran violates the terms, and the harsh sanctions that Congress is so anxious to impose can be unleashed.
But the usual claque of anti-anything-Obama Republicans have criticized the deal as spurring another North Korea (Republican Senator John Cornyn (Texas) tweeted that the Iran deal was “Obama Trying To ‘Distract’ From Obamacare”).
Even Democrats like Sen. Charles Schumer whose sensibilities are tied to his desire to protect Israel, raised concerns.
But it is just the opposite. Without such a deal – the first opening to a nuclear-disarmament agreement with Iran in more than 30 years – we would be facing another North Korea.
And what is the alternative? Should Israel or the U.S. bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities? What is a better means to ratchet back nuclear armament than through diplomacy?
For the first time in a decade, we’ve halted the progress on Iran’s nuclear program. Key parts of the program will be rolled back. International inspectors will have unprecedented access to Iran’s nuclear-related facilities. So this will help Iran from building a nuclear weapon. And over the coming months, we’re going to continue our diplomacy, with the goal of achieving a comprehensive solution that deals with the threat of Iran’s nuclear program once and for all.
And if Iran seizes this opportunity and chooses to join the global community, then we can begin to chip away at the mistrust that’s existed for many, many years between our two nations.
It is fitting in this time of Thanksgiving, this season of peace on earth, goodwill to men, we talk of building bridges, together.
Happy Thanksgiving.
