The+Demonization+of+Immigration,+by+Ms.+Hutchinson

Contemporary Lit. – Hutchinson Sample JOT-style essay


 * The Demonization of Immigrants **

An editorial cartoon in the //Daily Herald// on Columbus Day last year showed two Native Americans, dressed in typical feather headdresses, peering out over some bushes to the ocean where a large Colonial-style ship came sailing in. One commented to the other, “Darn. More immigrants.” Reading that reminded me of a night during the fall of 2005 when I sat in the jam-packed living room of my friend Lisa’s house, drinking coffee and listening to U. S. Senate hopeful Tammy Duckworth try to convince us we should vote for her. One dark-haired gentleman spoke up halfway through the evening in a loud, firm voice: “What are you going to do about all the illegal immigrants who are coming to Illinois and stealing our jobs?” Duckworth sympathized with the man but basically told him she didn’t think rounding up all the illegals and throwing them into jail or exporting them was either possible or the appropriate thing to do. Her questioner shook his head and walked out.

Just what is it that makes people hate immigrants so? How is it that so many hard-working people have become the scapegoats for so many Americans? In hard economic times many citizens’ jobs may be in jeopardy, but most likely the Mexican family who moved in down the block is not to blame. It seems ironic to me that the man who chose to vote for the Republican candidate over Tammy Duckworth because of her stance on immigration doesn’t understand that it’s the Republican government who have promoted factory owners’ hiring cheap, illegal labor by turning a blind eye to the practice over the years.

Do we really want a nation where everyone sounds, acts and thinks the same way? Where we all eat McDonald’s for lunch and listen to Lite Pop music and wear Gap shirts and drive Chevrolets? Isn’t one of the most fascinating elements of this country our blending of cultures, with all the richness of its foods, styles, languages and beliefs? Peggy Noonan, an editor at the //Wall Street Journal//, wrote last fall that she believes today’s immigrants are less dedicated to “becoming American” because they keep one foot in the old country via the internet and TV and music which they can access in their native languages. She sees this as a problem, wistfully yearning for the day when, like her own grandfather who came from Ireland in the 1910s, all immigrants left the old country for good, mounted the Stars and Stripes on their front porches and never looked back.

But I’m not so sure that’s what this country needs any more. I think Truman College professor David Osborne has a better perspective. He explains in an essay in the //Chicago Tribune// that when teaching ESL classes to immigrants, he can’t refer to pop culture icons like Bart Simpson to make a point or tell a joke. His students have no idea who he is talking about. Yet what makes his teaching experience so rich is that his students have led such varied lives and have such interesting stories to tell – like the young man from the Sudan who witnessed murders before escaping to come here. In the ESL class I taught many years ago at Northeastern IL University I witnessed the same phenomenon, with adult students from thirteen different countries in the room, including a Jordanian woman who carried a pocket dictionary everywhere she went, and a young woman from Pakistan whose family disowned her when she refused to return to marry the man they had found for her. These were certainly people who saw America as the same refuge of freedom that Noonan’s grandfather saw a hundred years ago, people who still believed our streets are “paved with gold.”

Thinking about today’s immigrants made me wonder about how America is changing right along with the rest of the world. This summer, all the teachers at Buffalo Grove High School were asked to read Thomas L. Friedman’s bestseller, //The World is Flat//. By that title, Friedman is suggesting that there has been a jaw-droppingly huge leveling out of societies in the last ten years, primarily due to the internet and overall global connectedness. No longer does each country operate as a separate entity. Remote farmers in Afghanistan now have cell phones on which to conduct business with Europeans. Oprah is running a school for girls in South Africa. And doctors from all over the world, through organizations like Doctors Without Borders and Partners in Health, are working as global teams to try and eradicate diseases like TB and AIDS. Every European country is struggling, as is the U. S., to deal with neighborhoods of Arab-speaking immigrants, whose occasional turbans or veils make the natives suspicious. The entire planet’s walls have come down, not just the one in Berlin.

Yet maybe all this mixing it up is a good thing. Maybe we all stand to benefit. After all, if my country is full of people from your country, and your country is full of people from mine, how likely are we to use armed guards to keep each other out? More importantly, how likely would we be to blow each other up? So maybe it’s time to stop scowling at the dark-skinned people who just moved in up the street, and instead invite them over for coffee. Maybe they have a salsa or curry recipe to die for. Isn’t it time we scrapped the junk food anyway?