[This op ed was written less than a decade ago, during a very different period from today's on the subject of immigration. Asad's father had Syria,firmly in his grip. The civil war that produced millions of refugees was still in the future. ISIS had not yet come into existence. Illegal immigration from Mexico was ongoing, but had not yet reached the critical mass that split US politicians into maintaining two irreconcilable positions, creating paralysis. The piece here reprinted was written by a liberal middle class immigrant to the United States, published by the liberal Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. I was grateful to them.]
PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE
PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE
The importance of
immigration
America gets the able and ambitious, not the
huddled masses
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
By Rudolph H. Weingartner
As part of MSNBC's "Lean Forward" branding, talk-show host
Lawrence O'Donnell solemnly intones that "immigration is an added
value" and an "invaluable energy infusion" for America -- that
it has always been so and remains so today. This is demonstrated superbly in a
1969 volume, "Intellectual Migration: Europe and America, 1930-1960,"
edited by Donald Fleming and Bernard Bailyn.
The first half of this span was of course that extraordinary period
during which Adolf Hitler became the greatest benefactor of America's
intellectual life as he sent refugees fleeing from Europe.
Among many examples were the emigre scientists who created the atomic age
at Los Alamos, game theory and survey research. American architecture and so
many other fields were deeply influenced by Bauhaus refugees. The book's
appendix devotes a paragraph to each of "300 notable emigres," many
of whom would be recognized by reasonably alert laypersons.
Almost all of these arrivals were notable or on the way to becoming so
before they got here. Not so the group studied by Gerhard Sonnert and Gerald
Holton for their book "What Happened to the Children Who Fled Nazi
Persecution" (2006).
These immigrants were born in central Europe between 1918 and 1935 and came
to America between 1933 and 1945. The largest number were teenagers or younger
(I was just 12 when my family reached New York.) A fraction had graduated from
the equivalent of high school in Europe or even begun university careers, but a
large majority were primarily educated in the United States (I started here in
sixth grade).
The authors supplement their study with many additional research reports,
yielding a text replete with tables and notes. Their book is not as absorbing
to read as the one about the big shots, but some of their conclusions are quite
startling.
For instance, approximately "15 times as many former young refugees
[are] in the pages of 'Who's Who' than one would expect from the size of the
group." This measure is useful, the authors point out, because of the
large size of the "Who's Who" database and the fact that it reports
on accomplished people in every major field, while making it impossible to buy
one's way in.
The authors also found the educational achievements of the men of this group
-- the women had fewer opportunities -- to be downright "amazing." By
1970, just under 50 percent had completed four or more years of higher
education and over 30 percent went beyond that level. These figures were far
higher than the average for those born in the same years.
Can there be any doubt that both of these sets of immigrants "added
value" to the United States?
Nevertheless, skeptics about MSNBC's branding -- perhaps those now
enforcing Alabama's new immigration limitations -- are likely to say that
immigration around the world wars of the 20th century was different from that
which occurred before and after that time. Indeed, the immigrants discussed in
these two books were emphatically middle class, with the attendant level of
affluence and education.
But let's consider the Emma Lazarus poem mounted in the Statue of
Liberty:
Give me your tired, your poor.
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me ...
Many skeptics may say we can very well do without that wretched refuse!
But the Lazarus poem is misleading.
Yes, the immigrants she wrote about came from Irish farms, from Eastern
European shtetls, from impoverished towns in Calabria, from the Mexican countryside
and as railroad laborers or escapees from wars in the Far East. Tempest-tossed,
some; yearning to breathe free, others. But also people who had the imagination
to envisage a future elsewhere, the guts and organizational skill to make a
trek that was mostly long and arduous. Once here, they had the wit and energy
to stay alive and, often, thrive in a strange -- indeed, foreign --
environment.
Peace, Emma: Then, as now, it is the huddled masses who were left behind,
while America got those who distinguish themselves from the crowd.
Of course, the many millions who have migrated here have benefited from
the fact that in America ability and ambition are the major forces upward. And
that must not end. Nor must the belief that immigration is indeed an added
value and a valuable infusion of energy.
Rudolph H. Weingartner is professor emeritus of philosophy and a
former provost of the University of Pittsburgh (rudywein@comcast.net). The second edition
of his "Fitting Form to Function: A Primer on the Organization of Academic
Institutions" was recently published.
First published on October 25, 2011 at 12:00 am
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