The Ecstatic Joy of Immigration

I was on a jog the other day and I saw a family out on the trails. There was a grandma, a grandpa, a few adults, and three kids. The weather was nice. Not hot, a little overcast, and a mild SW wind. I’m not sure what music was playing in my headphones but it would have had a nice, happy beat. I saw the group of them from a distance. The trails I run are in a conservation area with lots of turns and rolling hills. From my vantage point, they looked like any other family out enjoying the day. As I got closer I could discern a few more details about them.

They were Asian, perhaps Hmong (more on this later), and once I got close enough to hear them, the older adults were speaking a language I did not recognize (so, not English, the only language I know fluently). The grandfather figure had a child of about four on his back and he smiled wildly as he chased another, slightly older child down the paved path. The other adults doubled over with laughter at this. I waved as I passed and they smiled at me, nodding a little as they did. I looked into their faces and saw something that a few steps later would bring me to tears: joy.

Now, obviously, I am assuming A LOT about this group of people I know nothing about. I’m assuming that they’re related, that they’re a multigenerational family, and — my biggest assumption — that some of them were immigrants. In truth, my privilege and bias are showing here. I acknowledge that. But, hear me out on where I’m going with this. It might not matter.

In Minnesota, we have two large groups of recent immigrants: Somali and Hmong. I say “recent” because while most people here consider this frozen tundra of a state to be the birthright of Germanic and Nordic people, they were not the original people here. They emigrated as well, long ago. You’ve probably heard about the Somali population here. Towns have tried to outright ban them, Trump has made Ilhan Omar a focal point of his racist white supremacist rallies, and every few months something happens within the community that makes national news. But there is another group of people who came to Minnesota a little before them that doesn’t get the national headlines the Somali population does.

Starting in roughly 1975, a people from Laos know as Hmongs began to come to Minnesota. They were escaping a war-ravaged country, facing mass death and genocide. Most of them are Buddhist and if you’ve ever been in one of their neighborhoods, you can usually spot one of their modern temples. I used to live around the corner from one. There is a long, complicated history of our country and this group of people. I won’t get into all of it now. Suffice to say, they’ve been coming to America for about 40 years and now multiple generations have settled in the Twin Cities.

This is a personal issue for me. As a result of numerous conflicts and colonialism, parts of Southeast Asia was destabilized in the 50s, 60s, & 70s. The wars that ravaged Laos touched a number of other countries, one of them being Cambodia. My cousin was adopted from there and I did a report in school on her experiences growing up there before she emigrated. It’s not pretty. She, along with many other children, were brought to safety in America and adopted by families. She’s since married, had kids, and is about as stereotypically “American” as anyone you could imagine.

As I passed that family on my run, I projected a lot of things onto them. In their faces, I saw my cousin and her now-grown children. I thought about the horrors that immigrants have to live with in their native countries, the things they try to escape when they come to America. I thought about the joy on their faces, that they no longer had to worry about stepping on landmines or having their homes raided or being summarily executed for no reason. And while America definitely has some blood on her hands by starting a lot of these wars, she also protected them and offered them refuge. This is the single greatest thing about America. Or, it used to be, before we started demonizing immigrants as lazy criminals who don’t belong here. Before we started separating children from their parents at the border, leaving us unable to reunite more than 600 children. Before we called them rapists, drug smugglers, and worse.

My American pride is rooted in a few things. Being a beacon of freedom and hope for the world to see has always been one of them. I’m not one to engage in American exceptionalism. We’ve done lots of messed up stuff around the world. As a nation, we’re overweight, unhealthy, undereducated, and poorer than we should be, considering the tremendous wealth we have within our borders. We are not perfect. We’re not even mostly good. But we used to sell a few things that worked and freedom from oppression was one of them.

There’s a plaque on this old gal that sums it up nicely. In part, it reads:

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

What the poem says, in essence, is this: keep your fancy rich folk, keep your decadent ways, we don’t want ‘em. Send us your poor, your outcasts, all the people you don’t want. So long as they have a genuine yearning for freedom (real freedom, not like, ‘I’m not wearing a mask’ BS freedom), we’ll take ‘em.

That, to me, is the American dream at its core. We welcome all comers at our borders. It doesn’t matter if you’re “skilled” or educated. It doesn’t matter if you’re rich or poor. If you want freedom then have we got the country for you. Escaping war? Come on down. Famine and unimaginable poverty? Welcome ashore! Immigrants have always been the strength of our nation, not its weakness. This land was first conquered by immigrants (though not completely, let’s not forget that Native Americans are still here and might have a different take on this whole America-Land-of-the-Free idea); mass-industry was built by immigrant laborers; the railroads were laid by immigrant workers; and most of our food grown here has been picked by migrant farmers. Simply put, without immigrants, America wouldn’t exist.

To quote the popular saying, “immigrants get it done”.

Don’t take it from me. Jesus himself was a big proponent of welcoming immigrants. Remember, his family were immigrants too. Matthew 25 speaks about a few things (a weirdo story about ten virgins being given to a guy as a wedding present where half of them fall asleep because they didn’t bring lamp oil with them, stands out) but one of the more pertinent tales has to do with welcoming a stranger into one’s house. Jesus is speaking here:

For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

37 “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38 When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39 When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

40 “Jesus will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

That’s all there is to it folks. Take care of each other. I am constantly astounded by how many supposed “Christians” speak about and treat immigrants horribly. You cannot be a Christian and hate on migrants. It would upset the Big Guy.

Being able to open your house and your blessings to a stranger from another land is a virtuous thing. We are so fortunate to live in this country. And I don’t mean that in an overly-patriotic way. It’s simple luck that we’re here and not somewhere else. Think about the fear you’d feel being in a country where you don’t speak the language or understand many of the customs. What would a crosswalk mean to you if you’d never seen one before? Or if they were blue where you came from? Would you like to be yelled at, cussed out, and have things thrown at you? Or would you rather people take two seconds out of their day to help you and appreciate you for the human being you are? I know what I would prefer.

There are many explanations behind America’s sudden turn against immigrants. For starters, it isn’t sudden or new. Ever since the earliest Americans committed genocide against the people who were here when they arrived from Europe, there’s been a particular cultural fear of outsiders. Hmmm. I wonder why? Do you think that they were worried someone might show up and treat them how they treated the natives? Perhaps. It’s obviously complex and multifaceted but I think there is a grain of truth in that idea.

The pervasive fear that an outsider will come and take your station, your position, in life is real. Intuitively, it makes sense. If there are three jobs at the bank and I’ve got one, adding more people makes it less likely I’ll keep it, or even scarier, that my children will be able to have it. But this assumes we live in a static world where nothing changes. Imagine instead that we have a system where the immigrant can make money and be a productive part of society. As that immigrant gains wealth, he’ll need a place to keep it. That means more work for the bank, which means, you guessed it: more bankers. We don’t have to speculate about this. It’s the LITERAL reason why there was one bank 400 years ago and now there are tens of thousands. It wasn’t because bankers felt like opening branches without reason.

And since I’m writing this in 2020, we have to talk about how race impacts things. The less commonality we have with strangers, the less likely we are to trust them. This is basic psychology. The differences we have between us have disproportionate impacts on our society. While tall people may prefer other tall people over short people, change the race of those “other” tall people and suddenly height doesn’t matter. When America was mostly white people (still is) an Englishman and an Irish could tell each other apart. But now? Compared to the rainbow of color available here the difference is negligible.

There’s also a power structure component as well. Whatever culture has the authority, whether through the government or via economic and religious morays, gets to establish what is proper and “good” for the society. Since white, male Christians were the main controllers, it was their culture that became the illusory bedrock for society. How to act, what language to speak, what clothes to wear, the role of women — all of it — was decided largely by white male believers in Christ. Crazy coincidence I’m sure that when everything shook out it was (checks notes) white men who ended up with all the money and power.

In a dictatorship, the number of people is irrelevant to authority. So long as the chief officer has enough power to control the people, the populous can grow and shrink. In a democracy like America, however, the more people you add into the system means your individual power dilutes a tad. You can see why it’s mostly white men of means (with the aid of their sympathetic, economically-challenged minions) driving a lot of the anti-immigrant fervor, not just here but abroad as well. They can do math. It’s why the Republican Party has been staunchly anti-immigrant for as long as I’ve been alive. It’s why they want to restrict voting as much as possible. In this country, the more voices there are, the less power everyone has.

This is a good thing! Again, we do not live in a static world. Being flexible and able to change with time is a positive gain for any nation. Imagine having a king in modern times? Not a figurehead but a literal all-powerful king. They’d be in charge for ages! No wonder so many of them lost their heads. Who wants to wait a lifetime for things to change?

Combating the learned fear of immigrants is tough but not impossible. It begins within, in the heart. Instead of seeing people who are here to take from you, see them as people who have a lot to give. We are a nation of immigrants. It may sound trivial, but consider all of the delicious food options we have available to us because someone from some other place brought their recipes with them. There is an incredible (and sometimes sad) connection between generations of immigrants and the food industry. Feeding another person is the most basic and noble thing you can do for a stranger. It’s why Jesus listed it first in his parable above.

Empathy and grace are required to fully appreciate the totality of a human being. Whether that person can trace their ancestry to the Mayflower or the Rio Grande, there is value and beauty within them. Our differences can blind us to the majesty of other people. I think this is why seeing that family, that happy, carefree family, exploded my heart with ecstatic joy. I didn’t see them as anything other than what I projected onto them, a mirror for my own bias, assumptions, and fanciful dream of what this country can be. And yet, one step beyond that was an idea of safety, security, and neighborly love. America is the place where all are welcome. We have plenty of room for you. Join us ‘round the hearth and share your story. Dinner will be ready soon.