by Tom Kando
On November 20 President Obama made his important immigration speech. To their shame, the major networks refused to broadcast it - a mere 15-minute long address to the nation about a very important matter! A decade or so ago, when President George W. Bush gave a similar speech on the same topic, every major network carried it directly and it was viewed by 40 million Americans. And people still dare to say that the media have a liberal bias? My foot. It’s the opposite. The so-called “mainstream” media are fully participating in the non-stop sniping at this beleaguered president, inflicting a thousand cuts so as to bring him down.
The double standard applied to this president is gross: Reagan, Bush Senior and Bush Junior all proposed similar executive actions for illegal immigrants. But when THIS president does the same thing, all hell breaks loose.
Of course, Obama is 100% right. He will permit the “dreamers” to stay. He will stop tearing apart families. He will allow millions of decent and hard-working people to become part of the fabric of America. He will perpetuate, in essence, what America is all about. This is and always has been a nation of immigrants. In Emma Lazarus’ words: “give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”
I am an immigrant. My personal saga is classic: I first came to America as a teenager for one year, on a Fulbright scholarship. I hopped onto an old World War II Liberty ship that carried a couple of thousand immigrants from Rotterdam to New York. Ten days later, we entered New York harbor. When we sailed by the Statue of Liberty, I knew that my new life had begun. When I got off the boat in Hoboken, I had a total of $50 in my pocket. My trajectory went from sleeping on a bench in New York’s Central Park to getting a PhD.
After a year, my student visa expired and I had to return to Europe. Being Hungarian-born, I had to wait five years before I could come back to America. Back then, there was an immigration quota for each country. The Hungarian quota was full for many years due to the flood of Hungarian refugees who fled to America after the 1956 uprising in that country.
I finally got my green card and came back to America when I was twenty-four. After that, I had to wait another five years before I became a citizen. So, a ten-year wait altogether.
People might say: Okay Kando, you played by the rules. Don’t you see a difference between legal and illegal immigration? How come you go along with Obama, who wants to protect ILLEGALS?
I’ll tell you why: because the Republican opposition to immigration reform has little to do with the distinction between legal and illegal. It has everything to do with a desire to keep out ALL immigrants as much as possible, period, especially immigrants of color. It is nativism and chauvinism. It is an effort to “keep America pure.” Obama’s approach is a common-sensical and compassionate compromise. It gives the “dreamers” a chance, it avoids breaking up families and kicking out people who were brought to America as toddlers. The fundamental issue is whether America will remain true to itself and continue to welcome immigrants, or become a closed and xenophobic society.
The other day at my health club, I had a conversation with one of the many Republicans there (many of whom are my friends): I said to him, somewhat in jest, just to rib him:
“If ebola spreads, it would be partially your guys’ fault. You always want to cut public spending, spending on science and medical research, cutting the budgets of the EPA, the NSF, the NIMH, the CDC. If it weren’t for all those cuts, we might already have a vaccine for ebola.”
His answer: “You know what the Latin word for ebola is? It’s ‘immigrant’.”
This repartee was sure revealing.
99% of Americans are either immigrants or descendants of immigrants. Without immigrants, there is no America. Without immigration, America does not receive the thousands and thousands of creative and scientific geniuses who have contributed to this country’s greatness, its arts, its film industry, its athletic prowess, its wealth, its power, its military might, and its victories in wars. Here is a small sample of 50 such immigrants:
Christiane Amanpour
Elizabeth Arden
John Astor
James Audubon
Irving Berlin
Charles Boyer
Yul Brynner
Michael Caine
Jose Canseco
Andrew Carnegie
Rod Carew
Jackie Chan
Maurice Chevalier
Claudette Colbert
Willem de Kooning
Albert Einstein
Enrico Fermi
Felix Frankfurter
Cary Grant
Monty Hall
John Paul Jones
Louis Jourdan
Henry Kissinger
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
Juan Marichal
John Muir
Rupert Murdoch
Martina Navratilova
Maureen O’Hara
Hakeem Olajuwon
William Penn
Natalie Portman
Wolfgang Puck
Joseph Pulitzer
Anthony Quinn
Ayn Rand
Edward G. Robinson
Knute Rockne
Miklos Rozsa
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Sammy Sosa
Jerry Springer
Isaac Stern
Igor Stravinsky
Elizabeth Taylor
Edward Teller
Rudolph Valentino
Wernher von Braun
Bruce Willis
Neil Young
There are thousands more. I am in good company.
© Tom Kando 2014
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9 comments:
Many could write a similar piece on immigrants, but none more convincingly. Thanks for sharing your story!
FWIW, the speech was on PBS, CNN, MSNBC, CSPAN, and front page above the fold in every daily newspaper in the country the next day. The White House did not request the prime-time sweeps-month slot anyway. And 40 years ago the broadcast universe was very different. Great speech, though.
Tom, this was a very, very good article, absolutely correct and well-written. I am proud to be your friend.
Hey Tom,
Read it and enjoyed it and, by and large agreed wholeheartedly with it. I can’t understand why networks didn’t broadcast Obama’s speech, but I do think that other presidents have given addresses not broadcast on national tv. We’ve come a long way since LBJ and Reagan and Carter addressing major issues via mediawide assertions, I think. Or maybe not. True, they have joined on the bandwagon to attack or critique Obama, but when you actually listen to their critiques, as in the recent one from the guy who replaced Tim Russert then Gregory (name escapes me), the critique is by no means broad or unstinting, but thoughtful and respectful.
(Some) strange figures on the list: Jackie Chan who, I think, has never abandoned his Hong Kong origins while occasionally making films for Hollywood (here I may be wrong) and Werner von Braun, clearly an immigrant, and a contributor to our prestige in science and engineering, but a figure I suspect we are less and less proud of, representing as he does our willingness to forgive and ignore Nazi crimes and behaviors for those we thought might prove beneficial to our goals (WvB was perhaps one of the few whose goals in rocketry coalesced with ours and he was “beneficial”; many of the other “naturalized” and hidden Nazis were more dubious in their contributions, though they did sink into the woodwork and nor pursue, apparently, those ideologies here.) Perhaps his function is merely alphabetical.
Dag Tom,
Zoals gebruikelijk stuur ik je berichten door naar een aantal vrienden en naar familie.
Wij, onze familie, is goed voorzien van immigranten: mijn partner is geboren in Frankfurt/Oder (vml. Oost Duitsland), nu met NL paspoort. De partner van mijn dochter is half Algerijns, half Deens. Zijzelf woont al 18 jaar in Kopenhagen. Mijn twee kleinzoons hebben een dubbel paspoort tot zij achttien zijn. De partner van mijn zoon is half Italiaans, half Nederlands. Zoals jij bewust hebt gekozen heeft ook mijn dochter een bewuste keuze gemaakt voor Kopenhagen. (Maar)Denen zijn erg nationalistisch.
Je teksten worden zeer intensief gelezen en geven soms aanleiding tot stevige discussies in de familie- en vriendenkring.
Daarom bedank ik je voor het doorsturen, mede namens de overige lezers. Blijf ze vooral sturen.
Met vriendelijke groet
Unfortunately you are right. I'm also one of those immigrants
I thank Carol and Don for their support.
Ken: 40 years ago?
Jon: Some of your comments are based on some misunderstanding: Wernher von Braun: he is one of several people I deliberately included in order to also impress the “rednecks” among my readers. I wanted to include athletes, military wizards, nuclear and rocket experts, etc, to show the likes of John McCain that many immigrants were “their kind of people,” - people who contributed to America’s machismo, its military might, etc. After all, even Einstein did that. In other words, while I didn’t include downright fascist immigrants, I did include “right-wing” immigrants with this purpose in mind (see also Edward Teller, for instance).
Jackie Chan: I looked him up again, and I do believe that he qualifies.
Elsewhere, you also mention my omission of Einstein and my inclusion of Henry James:
Einstein was the very FIRST immigrant on my list, but somehow he disappeared during the cut-and-paste process. I have remedied that.
On Henry James, I pass the buck: I got him from the website whose link is in my blog. But I have removed him, to correct this error as well.
What Elsje says, basically, is that she appreciates my blog, which she shares with others. Also, there are many immigrants in her family.
Margo: why “unfortunately”?
The Emancipation Proclamation was also an Executive Order, if memory serves. Excellent post, Tom.
Bill D.
The Emancipation Proclamation was also an Executive Order, if memory serves. Excellent post, Tom.
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