October 3, 1965
Stranger Danger! We are all Immigrants !
October 3, 1965
Stranger Danger! We are all Immigrants !
Lyndon our Beloved President of record just a minute ago ;a noted Texan known for his support and promotion of Civil Rights signed the landmark Immigration Bill that we are living with today. Restrictive, discriminatory practices allowed us to pivot for the diversity of what it would mean to be an American citizen. Who says history is not full of conundrums as we cycle back and forward of what we thought might be if we had a crystal ball?
2025- minus 1965 equals 60…
Are you older than 60?
Where were you in 1965?
Africans and Chinese….. the people we may have wanted to disinvite have so deeply shaped the American cultural landscape. If we had public immigration policies that were designed to both intimidate and exclude.
It backfired in a big way. What turned out to be for our collective good was not exactly what was expected. Bill passed and signed to promote the extension of familial ties to European immigrants already here in larger numbers left the door wide open and shifted the narrative. Education and a better quality of life attracts gifted and talented of all sorts. They have given their best and their brightest.
Look closely at our country’s history and your own story in a new way today as we celebrate the anniversary of a dramatic shift in how we think we might welcome the stranger. We have not been as hospitable as one would dream and have a lot of explaining to do. Even as we try to ban books, the stories sustain us.
While we as nation are really struggling with a sense of who belongs here, and who feels left out. Let’s just say for the purpose of my argument we are all immigrants. We know who was already here and how they were treated.
We like some better than others and we have created a narrative that we are not in each other’s best interest. I have been reading a wonderful book by Michael Luo who takes on our heretofore model minority and traces the incredible story of the Chinese people in America. Building the country and the infrastructure, they were already here.
Settler colonialists, interlopers willing or unwilling, we traveled here by “choice” or so the tale goes. Once in, escaping or dragged ; we were encouraged and required to disavow any connection with the past and assimilate to the dominant culture. Agree quietly, that some are better than others. They are not like us . It is our policy that we get to determine whose rights need we respect.
It would also be in our best interest to not allow or to suggest that working class white folks, or people of color might actually be compatible allies. It would become very important that land, education and shared interests would be desecrated to preserve an identity built on an artificially constructed based on white supremacy. Edward Blum though not officially a lawyer saw the benefits to defining class actions that coerced Asian Americans to belive the pie was even smaller .
Who is understood to “native” to the land has varied as long as we declared an independence from those systems and institutions responsible for our loss of freedom.
Who belongs here and who owns the land and who is the best or most capable steward? Who gets to be considered indigenous or who is worthy to become a citizen somehow got twisted largely dependent on who you might ask and when does greed and fears of the stranger literally trump all else.
Lyndon Johnson was propelled into the presidency after the tragedy of a murdered third generation Catholic immigrant who became President. Kennedy passionately postulated that we were as **A nation of immigrants; distinctly part of an expanded notion of an inclusive American identity. First published by the **Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, New York, N.Y., 1963, the essay chose to highlight how our role globally diminished totalitarian, communism and promoted ideals of education and American eceptualism globally in the post War era. Fears that we would not have enough had to address the tendency toward to retreat to isolationism. There are tremendous benefits, real, imagined, and practical of being a good global citizens working for the public good. We nor anyone can do it alone.
Johnson as President identified legislative priorities that included, passage of comprehensive civil rights legislation, a War on Poverty which would be antithetical to a rich and generous nation. It was also very important globally to rid the appearance of discrimination in the nation’s preference for certain immigrants.
The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 sought to preserve the ethnic mix of the American society by the reunification and preservation of families. What a marked contrast to immigration policies that are built on separating families and destroying basic civil and human rights as a marker of a crueler intolerant American society. The amendments to the McCarran-Walter Act were a compromise that in practice would limit African and Asian Immigrants.. By 1970, the Chinese population in the United States would grow exponentially to over five million Chinese Americans in the United States.
Immigration from Asia, Africa, and Latin America transformed the country. Most families never spoke of the loss or their decision to come here as young adults. So many questions, how do you go back to a place you have never been; when this is home. I don’t feel threatened at all by the immigrants; but increasingly feel unsafe in a place that I do not recognize as welcoming where we are unwilling to care for each other. We are not at our best and we can be and do better with our collective efforts.
NOTES… and More to read for yourself…
https://www.wbur.org/cognoscenti/2021/02/03/racism-in-america-janna-malamud-smith
https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/when-did-you-become-white
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