The anxiety against immigrants
A few days after Donald Trump signed his executive order suspending refugee resettlement and blocking the entry of travelers from seven Muslimmajority countries, a colleague at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee described an encounter he had just had with a student.
The student was from one of the countries affected by the ban. She had worked hard to clear numerous hurdles both here and in her own country to enroll. She was happy to have made it to Milwaukee but now her questions centered not on course requirements or other typical undergraduate concerns. Instead, she was seeking information on a different topic: how to transfer to a university, any university, in Canada.
One wonders if the current environment would have prompted notable UWM immigrant alumni such as Golda Meir or Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella to make similar decisions to leave the U.S. educational system.
Despite our history as an immigrant nation, there long has been a latent anxiety in our society toward people born elsewhere. Like other pathologies, it is a chronic condition that flares up in times of national stress. Sometimes, the perceived threat is economic. As the U.S. economy declined in the years after the Civil War, depressed wage levels were blamed on Chinese workers. This resulted in the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which prohibited immigration from China and made it hard for Chinese people already settled in the U.S. to return if they left the country.
Legitimate security concerns often devolve into irrational nativism, generating suspicion of both those seeking to make a new life in our country and longtime members of our communities. Gen. John DeWitt, a leading advocate of
the World War II internment of Japanese-Americans famously stated, “I don’t want any of them here. They are a dangerous element. There is no way to determine their loyalty … American citizenship does not necessarily determine loyalty.”
As a candidate, Donald Trump expressed similar concerns about Muslims in America, stating in a November 2015 interview: “We’re going to have to do things that we never did before. And some people are going to be upset about it, but I think that now everybody is feeling that security is going to rule… We’re going to have to look at the mosques. We’re going to have to look very, very carefully.”
The ultimate status of Trump’s executive order will be determined by the courts. Regardless of the outcome, however, immigration and refugee policy likely is to remain highly politically charged. Budweiser’s Super Bowl ad depicting founder Adolphus Busch’s immigrant journey to America has prompted calls for a boycott. Similarly, ads for building supply company 84 Lumber, Coca-Cola and others have triggered a backlash over their perceived pro-immigrant message.
Clearly, control of borders is vital to the survival of any nation. Poet Emma Lazarus’ invitation to the world’s tired, poor and huddled masses inscribed on the Statue of Liberty’s pedestal was not meant to be unconditional. However, the rules that govern who is allowed to build a new life in our country must be grounded in reality and a clear assessment of our national interest.
Our response to the legitimate danger of foreign-born terrorism must be calibrated and balanced against the benefits of immigration. As a group of high-level former national security and State Department officials noted in an affidavit filed with the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, since Sept. 11, 2001, not a single terrorism death in the United States has been caused by immigrants from the countries named in the executive order. Immigration policies based on fear or cynical political manipulation actually harm our economy and national security and foreign policy interests; they endanger our troops and intelligence personnel serving abroad, and undermine our ability to work with other nations.
Summing up the place of immigrants in the fabric of our society, a speaker at the 1940 New York World’s Fair observed, “They are the only ones to whom it can be accounted a merit to be Americans. For they have had to take trouble for their citizenship, whereas it has cost the majority nothing at all to be born in the land of civic freedom. They have contributed in their way to the flowering of the community, and their individual striving and suffering have remained unknown.” The speaker was himself an immigrant. His name was Albert Einstein.