6. Language
Back to seventh grade at Saucon Valley Middle School: It was time to choose what foreign language I would learn. The decision was simple for me. It involved thinking what other language, besides English, I heard around me. Spanish. That's all. So, I thought, I should learn Spanish. This simple decision has taken me to many places and brought many new people and ideas to me that I'm so happy I chose wisely.
Perhaps I'd say the same thing had I selected French or German but I can pretty confidently say no. Yes, if I had studied German I would have lived abroad in Germany and had adventures, indulging in too many drunken nights and visiting too many medieval castles as I did in Spain but beyond that year, coming back to a United States, where would German have taken me? My knowledge of Spanish and the window it provides me into Spanish and Hispanic culture in the United States informs how I understand our conflicted and perhaps hypocritical nation, divided as we are in terms of welcoming or rejecting Latino immigrants coming to the United States, hoping to make new lives here. Through my knowledge of Spanish, I better understand their situations and am able to more effectively interact with them and learn from them, teaching English and caring about them, first-hand, through my new husband and his friends and family.
Through my knowledge of Spanish and empathy for today's immigrants (being the great-grandchild of Romanian, Swedish, Welsh, and German immigrants myself; I'm a Euro-American mutt like so many other second- and third- and fourth-generation Americans), I've met people who are here without papers, who don't drive, who can't go home, who are unable to see their families for years and years at a time. I know husbands who've been away from their wives for two plus years; young people, in the prime of their lives, separated. Weekly phone calls and packages sent by courier are all that connect them; that and a maudlin longing. If they go home, they can't come back. Tricky smugglers and dangerous routes. Long hours in windowless cargo vans. Hopelessness. Confusion.
The fear is constant and all-encompassing: In fact, a guy I know who's here without papers told me one day that he'd like to volunteer at a soup kitchen or some similar place to help the homeless and the hungry here in DC. He wondered if such a place would check his papers. That's the status of things in this debate as I see it, put simply, writ large. Hard-working, caring people living in the shadows.
Sure, every bunch has some rotting apples in it, so the saying goes, but most Latinos coming to the United States just want to live simply, work hard, have a family, provide for those back home, have some bbqs, watch television, and help out in their communities. Why are “Americans” so threatened? Why is this latest inflow of immigrants such a big deal, especially in our nation of immigrants?
Those on the other side of the debate will counter, well, those immigrants will take our jobs. They will work longer hours for less money, undermining the low-wage economy. Their cultural presence will corrupt our own. They will outbreed “us” and their kids will outnumber and overwhelm our own in the nation's schools.
Well, perhaps the first argument is partially true. Immigrants might take lower paying, lower skilled jobs. But, today's immigrants are not only those with low educational levels and paltry skill sets. High-skilled immigrants abound, as well. Why can't we accept the lower-skilled immigrants entering the country today and see their presence in the low-skilled job market as impetus to enhance the skills of native-born Americans on those lower rungs of the work/skill/wage ladder?
I don't think the immigration and labor market is a model of limited good. As I see it, there's enough pie to go around. Perhaps we need to take slimmer slices or bake an additional pie (or three or four) altogether. Maybe we need new ingredients or a novel recipe? Instead of complaining and fearing new immigrants, let's better ourselves and them and then the communities we share will, by default, benefit, too.
And, I'll repeat, standing tall on my soap box: The United States is an immigrant nation; a salad bowl, a melting pot, among other imperfect metaphors. Yes, immigration is not a new story in the United States. Just think back to the English thinking the German immigrants new to eastern Pennsylvania were from the Netherlands/Holland and not Germany. It's not new, this tacit fear of the new, the unknown, miscommunication and misunderstandings. We all came here from somewhere else but back in the nineteenth century, the English and the Germans, the Irish and the Swedes, after one generation, started to look more and more alike, right? I'm sure there were uber-blonde Swedes still popping out of the gene pool or freckled redheads left in the lot (I'm speaking of myself here) but white is more or less white, right?
Latinos, although they have been living in the United States for generations, continue to come and continue to look differently than “mainstream” white America (although that, too, is certainly changing). But, what about Jews from Eastern Europe or the prejudice the Italians from Sicily faced when they arrived decades after the Irish “need not apply”? Yes, yes, these are all contours (and iterations) of the same story but the pace and modes of immigration to the United States have changed radically in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Ellis Island is now a tourist trap and immigrants from Central and South America as well as the subcontinent of India and Pakistan as well as the Far East get here by plane or train or car. Immigration is faster, it's more disorienting and today's immigrants look more distinct from those of us from generations past.
Back to seventh grade at Saucon Valley Middle School: It was time to choose what foreign language I would learn. The decision was simple for me. It involved thinking what other language, besides English, I heard around me. Spanish. That's all. So, I thought, I should learn Spanish. This simple decision has taken me to many places and brought many new people and ideas to me that I'm so happy I chose wisely.
Perhaps I'd say the same thing had I selected French or German but I can pretty confidently say no. Yes, if I had studied German I would have lived abroad in Germany and had adventures, indulging in too many drunken nights and visiting too many medieval castles as I did in Spain but beyond that year, coming back to a United States, where would German have taken me? My knowledge of Spanish and the window it provides me into Spanish and Hispanic culture in the United States informs how I understand our conflicted and perhaps hypocritical nation, divided as we are in terms of welcoming or rejecting Latino immigrants coming to the United States, hoping to make new lives here. Through my knowledge of Spanish, I better understand their situations and am able to more effectively interact with them and learn from them, teaching English and caring about them, first-hand, through my new husband and his friends and family.
Through my knowledge of Spanish and empathy for today's immigrants (being the great-grandchild of Romanian, Swedish, Welsh, and German immigrants myself; I'm a Euro-American mutt like so many other second- and third- and fourth-generation Americans), I've met people who are here without papers, who don't drive, who can't go home, who are unable to see their families for years and years at a time. I know husbands who've been away from their wives for two plus years; young people, in the prime of their lives, separated. Weekly phone calls and packages sent by courier are all that connect them; that and a maudlin longing. If they go home, they can't come back. Tricky smugglers and dangerous routes. Long hours in windowless cargo vans. Hopelessness. Confusion.
The fear is constant and all-encompassing: In fact, a guy I know who's here without papers told me one day that he'd like to volunteer at a soup kitchen or some similar place to help the homeless and the hungry here in DC. He wondered if such a place would check his papers. That's the status of things in this debate as I see it, put simply, writ large. Hard-working, caring people living in the shadows.
Sure, every bunch has some rotting apples in it, so the saying goes, but most Latinos coming to the United States just want to live simply, work hard, have a family, provide for those back home, have some bbqs, watch television, and help out in their communities. Why are “Americans” so threatened? Why is this latest inflow of immigrants such a big deal, especially in our nation of immigrants?
Those on the other side of the debate will counter, well, those immigrants will take our jobs. They will work longer hours for less money, undermining the low-wage economy. Their cultural presence will corrupt our own. They will outbreed “us” and their kids will outnumber and overwhelm our own in the nation's schools.
Well, perhaps the first argument is partially true. Immigrants might take lower paying, lower skilled jobs. But, today's immigrants are not only those with low educational levels and paltry skill sets. High-skilled immigrants abound, as well. Why can't we accept the lower-skilled immigrants entering the country today and see their presence in the low-skilled job market as impetus to enhance the skills of native-born Americans on those lower rungs of the work/skill/wage ladder?
I don't think the immigration and labor market is a model of limited good. As I see it, there's enough pie to go around. Perhaps we need to take slimmer slices or bake an additional pie (or three or four) altogether. Maybe we need new ingredients or a novel recipe? Instead of complaining and fearing new immigrants, let's better ourselves and them and then the communities we share will, by default, benefit, too.
And, I'll repeat, standing tall on my soap box: The United States is an immigrant nation; a salad bowl, a melting pot, among other imperfect metaphors. Yes, immigration is not a new story in the United States. Just think back to the English thinking the German immigrants new to eastern Pennsylvania were from the Netherlands/Holland and not Germany. It's not new, this tacit fear of the new, the unknown, miscommunication and misunderstandings. We all came here from somewhere else but back in the nineteenth century, the English and the Germans, the Irish and the Swedes, after one generation, started to look more and more alike, right? I'm sure there were uber-blonde Swedes still popping out of the gene pool or freckled redheads left in the lot (I'm speaking of myself here) but white is more or less white, right?
Latinos, although they have been living in the United States for generations, continue to come and continue to look differently than “mainstream” white America (although that, too, is certainly changing). But, what about Jews from Eastern Europe or the prejudice the Italians from Sicily faced when they arrived decades after the Irish “need not apply”? Yes, yes, these are all contours (and iterations) of the same story but the pace and modes of immigration to the United States have changed radically in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Ellis Island is now a tourist trap and immigrants from Central and South America as well as the subcontinent of India and Pakistan as well as the Far East get here by plane or train or car. Immigration is faster, it's more disorienting and today's immigrants look more distinct from those of us from generations past.
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