Saturday, August 05, 2006
What they teach today about immigration
It won't be this. "Once I thought to write a history of the immigrants in America. Then I discovered that the immigrants were American history." (Oscar Handlin, The Uprooted, 1951). That's the America I learned about.
Today, that view is considered triumphalist, xenophobic, racist, quasi-religious, colonialist, distorted and simple minded.
Modern scholars hate Handlin's positive view of the end result of immigration. But having spent an hour Thursday chatting with a first generation American who started out very poor and now lives on a yacht in California, has a summer home in Miami, and tours the country in an RV so is currently parked here in Lakeside, Ohio, let me assure you that we still need immigrants with a "can do" attitude. She is as concerned as I am about illegal immigration and the number who come here, not for a better life or to escape a Castro or Stalin or Mao, but for the state supplied benefits.
Today, that view is considered triumphalist, xenophobic, racist, quasi-religious, colonialist, distorted and simple minded.
Modern scholars hate Handlin's positive view of the end result of immigration. But having spent an hour Thursday chatting with a first generation American who started out very poor and now lives on a yacht in California, has a summer home in Miami, and tours the country in an RV so is currently parked here in Lakeside, Ohio, let me assure you that we still need immigrants with a "can do" attitude. She is as concerned as I am about illegal immigration and the number who come here, not for a better life or to escape a Castro or Stalin or Mao, but for the state supplied benefits.
# posted by Norma : 8/05/2006 12:08:00 PM
