Women's Crossroads

The lead editorial in The New York Times today was about the big immigrant protests that took place all over the country this past Sunday and Monday. The editorial seems surprised at the numbers who turned out to show their support for immigrants' rights, a new old concept in American policy that we seem to have forgotten about in recent years.

The Times estimated the turn-out at "180,000 in Washington, 100,000 each in Phoenix and New York City, 50,000 each in Atlanta and Houston, and tens of thousands more in other cities.

"Adding in the immense marches last month in Los Angeles and Chicago," the editorial continues, "the immigrants and their allies have carried off an amazing achievement in mass political action, even though many of them are here illegally and have no right to vote. Whether the rallies leave you inspired or unnerved, they are impossible to ignore."

Impossible to ignore the way we've been ignoring the festering problem of illegal immigration for years and years, the Times means. Is it possible to continue celebrating our country as a "nation of immigrants," while still harassing, humiliating and deporting the hardy souls who make it across the grueling desert passage to work for peanuts, in horrendous living conditions, in our plantations, our slaughterhouses, our factories, our restaurants, our construction sites?

We love to celebrate America as a country founded by immigrants, as long as by immigrants we mean everyone who arrived here at least a century ago, and preferably back in the good old days of the Pilgrims.

One immigrant compared Congress's proposed "guestworker" policy to slavery--once they're done with you, they throw you out like an old rag, he said with harsh poetry. And then there's that 700-mile wall Congress is thinking of building on the U.S.-Mexico border. Who are they kidding? There's no wall so high it can keep people desperate to feed their families away from the best source of income in the hemisphere. Are we going to wall off the entire Canadian border too? The very idea of building walls is repugnant. I thought we take pride of being the "land of the free and the home of the brave"? What's free or brave about walling ourselves in?

What are we afraid of, anyway? All those Republican conservatives should be dancing in the streets at the prospect of people with such strong "family values" moving into our neighborhood. Aren't Latino immigrants known for their many children (no contraception or abortion for them!), their staunch patriarchal families, their strong work ethic, their piousness? And they're already here! What we're talking about is allowing them to come out of the shadows and feel proud to be Americans, as they surely are (Mexicans always remind gringos, with irritation, that they are "Americanos" too; U.S. folks are "Norteamericanos.").

I didn't like the way the Times ended its editorial. The penultimate paragraph was fine; the writer should have stopped there:

"...the marchers seemed motivated less by a sense of grievance than by hope, and the pure joy of seeing others like themselves rallying for a precious cause. They were venturing boldly from the shadows and daring the country to change its laws, but were doing so out of a desire to participate in the system, not to undermine it."

But instead the editorial continued:

This became especially clear when the thousands on the Mall recited the Pledge of Allegiance, reading from yellow sheets printed in English and in a crude phonetic spelling to help Spanish speakers pronounce the unfamiliar words. Something about the latter version — with its strange sense of ineloquent desire — was enough to provoke tears.

Ai pledch aliyens to di fleg

Of d Yunaited Esteits of America

An tu di republic for wich it estands

Uan naishion, ander Gad

Indivisibol

Wit liberti an yostis

For oll.

Okay, why the tear-jerker ending? Why emphasize that some of the immigrants proudly waving their American flags are uneducated enough to require a phonetic translation of the "Pledge of Allegiance"?

My great-grandparents probably made hash of the "Pledge" too, in their Yiddish-accented English. But that didn't make them any less smart, capable and dedicated to their new country. Immigrants always have been the lifeblood of the United States (when they weren't the death blow to its native inhabitants, that is). We spurn today's immigrants at our own peril.