If you hang around Congress these days or happen to visit the White House, there are three words that you dare not utter. One is “obstruction,” another is “collusion” and, for some unexplained and sad reason, the latest dirty word in the Republican-controlled House and Senate is “immigrant.” As a relative of many Holocaust survivors, I truly resent the current hateful campaign against immigrants.
There’s no doubt that there are millions of Americans who came to this country many years ago, but to this day have not attained citizenship. But they work hard, raise wonderful children, pay taxes and are the pillars of their houses of worship and communities. The vast majority of them didn’t sneak over the Mexican border, but rather came here by plane or boat, and may have come at the invitation of longtime citizens.
No matter where you or I go, we see these people. They staff our restaurants, cut our lawns, work at other modest-paying jobs that no one else will take, pay taxes and eke out a meager living. But they are living their version of the American dream, and aren’t sitting around collecting welfare checks. They aren’t criminals, and they raise their children to be studious and hard-working. Their children are the so-called “Dreamers.”
Despite the fact that these people take those jobs that no one else will, there are many members of Congress who want them immediately deported to the countries they left 20 or more years ago. These lawmakers stand on the floor of the House of Representatives and pontificate on how we have to deport these people en masse. There isn’t one member of the U.S. Congress who can trace his or her family lineage to the Indians who were in this country long before the rest of us arrived. There might be one whose family came to America on the Mayflower, but those family members were immigrants at the time.
Five years ago, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg released a study on the economic impact of the city’s immigrant population. It concluded that immigrants accounted for over $3 billion in revenue for the city, state and federal governments, and that they had jobs that would go unfilled if their population disappeared. Last year, on a trip to California, I drove through hundreds of square miles of vegetable and fruit farms, all of which rely on migrant workers, who are also a target of this Congress.