Massachusetts Daily Collegian

A free and responsible press serving the UMass community since 1890

A free and responsible press serving the UMass community since 1890

Massachusetts Daily Collegian

A free and responsible press serving the UMass community since 1890

Massachusetts Daily Collegian

Remember what Lady Liberty stands for

“Overrun by foreigners.”

That was the overwhelming response by Germans in a recent survey charting attitudes towards immigration. Looks like the immigration debate isn’t just heated south of our border, the debate is hotly contested in Europe, with German Chancellor Angela Merkel saying attempts “to build a multicultural society and to live side-by-side and enjoy each other has utterly failed.”

But what does it mean for a country to be “overrun” by immigrants? Perhaps the focus should be on who’s asking the question, rather than talking about whom the question focuses on. Using “overrun” and “foreigners” in the same statement implies that foreigners are a negative addition to society. Herein lies the contradiction: we want immigrants to come to our country to do work, but we don’t want to have anything to do with them. It also puts the battle over immigration into a hegemonic context: natives are better than immigrants. I take issue with some of the arguments against immigration policies, especially being a son of those “foreigners” German and American conservatives have such a problem with.

The fact is, foreigners created America. Not just any foreigners, but illegal foreigners. Illegal immigration began in 1492 when Christopher Columbus landed in the Caribbean and sparked a genocide to which we owe our sacred freedoms.

Yes, we have a problem with both legal and illegal immigration. Arizona attempted to solve the problem of immigration, but that did more harm than good. Arizona immigration law SB1070 is more about mostly white law enforcement officers racially profiling Hispanic-looking citizens than blocking illegal immigrants from crossing the border.

By definition, people who cross the border illegally have committed a crime. That is not up for debate. But we would be naïve just to judge someone on one singular action. I find it surprising that whenever we talk about illegal immigrants coming from Mexico, we only talk about what is wrong with them and not our immigration policies.

I’m not sure if you missed the first part, but many illegal immigrants are from Mexico. So the question has to be just what is going on in Mexico that is causing Mexicans to put their lives on the line to come to the land of dreams? What is living in poverty like in Mexico? What about the surge in drug-related violence across the border regions killing people left and right? My question, then, is what is wrong with the Mexican government’s policies that make their own citizens risk everything to travel north of the border for a few dollars? Stereotypes of immigrants need to be dispelled, or racist politicians will continue to thrive and white supremacist groups will have ammo to recruit followers.

When it comes to illegal immigration, we need a bipartisan approach from both the Republicans and Democrats – yeah, that seems likely – and the United States and Mexico. This is an issue for both parties and both nations, and we need to tackle it together.

Bipartisanship aside, there is still an “us vs. them” dilemma. I do not know of any academic studies to back this up, but from my personal experiences, most of my first-generation American friends take more pride in being American and American values than do many of my friends whose families have been here for generations. Of course, what I have experienced cannot be generalized to the mass public, but it still resonates with me. From the time I could speak, my parents did everything they could to make me appreciate the freedoms of living in America and the sacrifices they went through to bring the family to Boston. Had my family stayed in Israel, I would be three years into my military service.

I believe that every immigrant who wants to come work and live in America needs to learn English. However, many Americans take for granted our language and how it is everywhere in our country. From bus stops to classes, we never have to worry about language barriers.

As this country is a melting pot, I say every student in a public school should be required to learn another language. If we expect immigrants to learn our language, than we should expect of ourselves the effort to learn a foreign language. Studies have proved that individuals who are bilingual are more successful in their careers. Many companies today are looking for people who speak another language. I, too, am learning a second language; that way I won’t look like an idiot asking for directions in Europe.

America is still the best place in the world, yet our imperfections are many and visible. This does not make us bad, it just means we have room to make this country better. We are a nation of immigrants. I think that is something we should be proud of.

Roy Ribitzky is a Collegian columnist. He can be reached at [email protected].

View Comments (6)
More to Discover

Comments (6)

All Massachusetts Daily Collegian Picks Reader Picks Sort: Newest

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

  • P

    Polo-GoNov 9, 2010 at 11:32 pm

    “The fact is, foreigners created America. Not just any foreigners, but illegal foreigners. Illegal immigration began in 1492 when Christopher Columbus landed in the Caribbean and sparked a genocide to which we owe our sacred freedoms.”

    I know you are trying to be cute with your interpretation of your above ‘fact’. But not only are you offensive, you are just as guilty of generalizing the very point you sought to highlight with your article- that of illegal immigration…

    I am getting very tired of reading over and over of this nationwide attempt to associate Columbus’ expeditions with genocide. Genocide [as per Webster’s dictionary, a simple dictionary] is: “the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group”. Columbus’ purpose in his expeditions (according to compilations of existing historical documents narrating his voyages) was not to mount a premeditated assault on the native indigenous population- people whom he didn’t even understand nor had knowledge of their existence, numbers and metropolis prior his arrival to the Americas. What does exists -and is generously propagated throughout the internet- is the many revisionist misinterpretations of said documents by the likes of Howard Zinn or Noam Chomsky.
    Columbus’ documented actions (along with that of his siblings) in the Americas were of an atrocious nature; but to equate it with genocide is just pure ignorant and simplistic.

    And what are you alluding to with this ‘sparked genocide’ that you refer to- the Black Legend?

    I live and am a descendant of the Americas. Whenever I travel in any direction of the Americas (now geo-politically known as North America, South America, Central America and the Caribbean) I see my people still alive. They are around, you know. My people are a mix of races- white European, native American, African American- and religions -Catholic, Protestant, Muslim and Jewish- which all have evolved from the days of that ‘cursed Columbus’ setting foot into what we know today as the collective of all of the ‘Americas’ (yes, so evil was that guy Columbus that even during his first voyage he brought with him a Jewish translator, a free black man and most likely a ‘morisco’ that sighted land first, and then took an Amerindian to later be his adopted son!).

    For any of your subsequent doubts I will personally invite you to visit Saint Augustine, FL (you let me know when), and I will give you insight on the nonsense of this ‘genocide’ you refer to. Prior to the formation of the sovereignty now known as the ‘United States’, the indigenous Amerindian community you so alluded to above (already greatly reduced by the pox) were still counted as inhabitants amongst the then-intricately weaved society of natives and settlers and not outsiders. For any implication of that word ‘genocide’, you must first look towards the British legacy, the Lewis & Clark expeditions, Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, et. al. before casting judgment elsewhere.

    There is nothing we can do about our American past except accept it. Your attempt to give a ‘different’ light to this past to prove a point about illegal immigration, I’m sorry to say, favors exactly what you just tried to rally against- that “us vs. them” dilemma.

    Reply
  • B

    BenNov 9, 2010 at 12:26 am

    “Arizona immigration law SB1070 is more about mostly white law enforcement officers racially profiling Hispanic-looking citizens than blocking illegal immigrants from crossing the border.”

    That’s because it addresses people who are ALREADY across the border! Doesn’t that mean anything to you?

    SB1070 prohibits racial profiling. It’s right there in the bill.

    Oh, but the cops are mostly white and the illegals are mostly Hispanic! Which doesn’t prove racism in any sense of the word. The white cops are doing their job, the same job that they would have if they were black, Asian, or any other race. Yes, the illegals are mostly Mexican, largely because Arizona shares a long border with Mexico.

    I love this kind of reasoning. Any law that is disproportionately broken by members of one racial/ethnic group is racist be default. By that logic, laws against murder are racist against blacks. Let’s just clear the books of laws prohibiting murder. I bet that most of the cops arresting those blacks are WHITE too! What more proof do you need?

    Reply
  • B

    BenNov 9, 2010 at 12:19 am

    “Bipartisanship aside, there is still an “us vs. them” dilemma”

    That’s because we’re two different countries.

    “My question, then, is what is wrong with the Mexican government’s policies that make their own citizens risk everything to travel north of the border for a few dollars?”

    Yeah, Mexico is screwed up. So we have to wait until Mexico isn’t screwed up anywhere before we can start enforcing our laws? We’re going to be waiting for a very loooooong time.

    We can’t “fix” Mexico. Mexico has the same problems we have in our run-down urban cores, only much worse in magnitude. We haven’t yet discovered the solution to our own problems, never mind theirs.

    This is where the “root cause” canard goes off track. Sure, we could enforce our immigration laws, but that would be silly. Let’s just fix the country that these law-breakers come from! Yeah, that should be a snap. After Mexico, let’s fix El Salvador and Gautemala, Russia, China, and Cuba. We get a lot of illegals from there too. When we finish doing that, around the twelfth of Never, then we can get busy doing what we should have been doing in the first place–enforcing the law.

    It’s a familiar trick. You pretend that you really want to achieve the same goal (in this isntance, halting the flow of illegals) but only after some impossible condition is met. Such a condition will never be met, so we never undertake any effort to achieve the goal.

    I’m not buying it. We don’t have to make Mexico a happy place. We couldn’t even if we tried, which we shouldn’t. That’s for Mexicans to do. We need to make sure that people come into our country enter legally and leave when asked. That’s our responsibility.

    Reply
  • B

    BenNov 9, 2010 at 12:05 am

    “I find it surprising that whenever we talk about illegal immigrants coming from Mexico, we only talk about what is wrong with them and not our immigration policies.”

    We don’t have an immigration policy. Okay, we do. But we haven’t enforced it in years. Or are you suggesting that we haven’t done a enough to bend over backwards for unskilled workers with typhoid who break our laws? This article is gettin more pathetic with each word I read.

    Reply
  • B

    BenNov 9, 2010 at 12:03 am

    Roy said:

    Using “overrun” and “foreigners” in the same statement implies that foreigners are a negative addition to society. Herein lies the contradiction: we want immigrants to come to our country to do work, but we don’t want to have anything to do with them.

    Uhhh…no we don’t. Not here and not in Germany either. Last month, the US had an unemployment rate of 9.6%. That’s an epedemic by American standards, but a “new norm” for Germans who have come to accept it as a permanent state of affairs. Neither country is in need of workers. We have all we need and a lot more who can’t find bring home a paycheck to put food on the table.

    Germany stopped needing foreign workers at the end of the Wirtschaftswunder about thirty-five years ago. Since then, they’ve been–I’ll use the term–over-run by foreigners who enjoy the benefits of the welfare state. Those foreigners will even look you in the eye and tell you that they “only come here to work.”

    Why would a person looking for work immigrate to a country that has no jobs, hasn’t had any jobs in three decades, and won’t have any jobs in the forseeable future?

    Answer: the bennies! They’ll bleed the system dry. This is not accident. It’s by design.

    Recall that iconic sign from the Great Depression: “Jobless Men Keep Going. We Can’t Take Care of Our Own.”

    Reply
  • M

    MikeNov 8, 2010 at 10:34 pm

    Mexico is not the U.S. We have no obligation to devote our time and resources to make Mexico a better country, when all they do is blame us for their problems.

    What we do need to do, and all administrations to this day have failed to do, is secure the border of this country. That way immigration can be regulated.

    You are one of the few people who is grateful to live here, too many are not.

    Mike

    Reply