Opinion & Commentary:
Should we support unrestricted immigration?
Yes, we should!
By David Laibow
Feb. 29, 2008

The landscape of America is changing, and I'm enthusiastically in favor of that change. As the world becomes smaller and sovereign borders more and more irrelevant, other peoples and cultures leap out of the pages of our "social studies" texts, and out of our television sets, into our very lives. I say "bravo!" because immigration not only revives and refreshes our American culture and our American lives, but it maintains and strengthens America's role as the leading nation of the world, and solidifies America's future role as the leader of mankind when humanity advances into the planetary government phase of human history.

America is the place that everyone else wants to come to, from around the globe, to have their chance at rising in the world. You don't see long lines of Americans lined up at foreign consulates seeking one-way visas to other countries, and Canadian and Mexican politicians aren't using halting illegal immigration by Americans to their countries as a major campaign issue, and you don't have American migrant laborers crossing borders illegally to work in Canada or Mexico -- that's limited to science fiction and political fiction that describes catastrophes of various sorts overtaking the country.

What you do see are people from less privileged countries seeking a chance at grabbing the red-white-and-blue brass ring on the merry-go-round of life, by starting at the bottom and rising to the top (or as close as they can get to it) with whatever share of the American dream they can grab.

From colonial times until the last quarter of the 20th century, the political, economic, financial, and cultural dominance of white Protestants was pretty much taken for granted in American life -- like a movie where the major characters were WASPS, and the rest of us were "bit" players and character actors who lent flavor to the story without affecting the outcome. The great outpouring of white Christian Europeans across the ocean effectively ended between the World Wars, at the same time as the great outpouring of Jews from those lands. For the most part, today's Jews either make aliyah or stay where they are.

Not so millions of non-Jews, who seek a better life by having the bravery and willingness to sacrifice by leaving what they know and seeking what they don't know, confident that hard work and honesty will bring them the rewards they seek for themselves and their children. They are, for the most part, non-white -- Asians and Africans who are bringing an international flavor to the American "salad bowl". It won't be as white Protestant as it was historically, but it'll be full of people who share the dream of upward mobility through hard work and self-sacrifice -- the ex-bank manager from Manila, who becomes a nurse's aide in Paramus, because she knows that her sacrifices send her son to college and on to medical school; or the ex-civil engineer from Sierra Leone who becomes a draftsman in Clifton, because he knows that his daughter's going to college to be a teacher, and on and on -- they keep the American dream refreshed and alive, instead of old and tired.

It would surely be nice if everyone played by the rules and obeyed the law -- a self-satisfied, comfortable view that you can afford if you're smug and well fed. It's easy to forget that if everyone played by the rules, then conditions in foreign countries would be as good as they are in America, and no one would have a reason to leave the familiarity of their native land and go elsewhere. But the fact is if you want a significantly better life, then you come to America -- legally if you can, illegally if you must.

"Conservative" whites who want to keep American life as it's best for them are entitled to their viewpoint, and to their say in making and enforcing laws that control, restrict, and criminalize those who have a desperate desire to rise in the world. But in doing so, they are raising a specter of hordes of criminals and people with unfamiliar ways swarming across our borders, to take our country away from us, to make us "foreigners" in our own country.

A few years ago, here in Cranford, there was an intense debate over whether or not a supermarket could be built on a narrow tract of land about a quarter mile from my home. One of the arguments marshaled against the supermarket was that if it were built, it would expose our section of Cranford to an invasion of hordes of criminal Mexican immigrants who would break into our homes intent on plunder and pogrom. I don't think that argument made the difference in our Township Committee rejecting the proposal, but it highlights the thinking of those who oppose immigration: When all else fails, resort to fear-mongering.

In the 1840s, the Irish Catholic immigrants to America were met by signs in store windows: "No Irish Need Apply." Half a century later, Jewish immigrants to America were met by signs saying: "No Jews Wanted." And so it goes, decade after decade, as those who have a little smidgen of prosperity need someone to fear, to protect themselves against. African-Americans, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, Hondurans, Salvadorans, Cubans, Haitians, Yemenites, Saudis, Dominicans, Malayans, Chinese, Filipinos, Nigerians, Ghanaians, Rwandans, Koreans, and the list goes on and on. If your ancestry isn't white European, millions of American whites can't bring themselves to believe that you can become as good an American as they believe themselves to be.

Yes, there may be criminals in the horde of foreigners who seek admission to our country, legally or illegally. And we have the resources to track them down and punish them. But the overwhelming majority of immigrants, legal and illegal, aren't here to break our laws, or cause death and destruction -- they want a better life (just as our ancestors did), and they're willing to make their sacrifices to achieve it (just as our ancestors did). I prefer to welcome law-abiding immigrants and give them a path to citizenship. They will keep on making America great, now and in the future.

David Laibow lives in Cranford. He is an author and graphic designer.