Reporter Editorial: The meaning of immigration
One morning in April, Pepe Martinez, co-owner of STARS Café in the Heights, was sworn in as an American citizen along with 152 other people from 38 countries in the federal courthouse in Central Islip (“All American,” April 13).
Officiating at the ceremony was United States District Court Judge Joseph Bianco.
After those to be naturalized took the Oath Of Allegiance to the United States, Judge Bianco spoke about the promise of America, telling a story about his grandfather, who arrived as a young man from Italy in the 1920s, “with nothing, nothing, and becoming an American, and living an American life. What would he say, if when he arrived, he would be told his grandson would be a federal judge?”
Judge Bianco’s grandfather would have been turned away if President Trump’s new immigration proposal had been in effect. The president’s idea is to cut legal — yes, legal — immigration in half by imposing a “points system” favoring immigrants with educational achievement, high skill levels for employment and proficiency in English.
Those not making the cut would have the door to an opportunity for an American life, as the judge termed it, slammed in their faces.
Congressman Lee Zeldin (R-Shirley), who represents the Island, stands with the president on this proposal, which is no surprise. Those looking for daylight between Mr. Zeldin and the president’s policies will go blind in the search.
Shelter Island and the East End are dependent on tourism and agriculture. Those who work in farm fields and vineyards, who clean houses, B&Bs and hotels, who work in restaurants, for landscapers and in construction, didn’t arrive here with high skill levels in computers, the sciences or office management.
They work with their hands and give their sweat to build decent lives for themselves and their families, just as millions before them, whose grandchildren and great-grandchildren now own businesses, work in professions and are living proof the promise of America hasn’t been broken.
The new immigration scheme spun into the bizarre and the dangerous, as have so many of the president’s plans — see the rollout to ban Muslim immigration — when a White House aide argued publicly with a reporter about the meaning of the Statue of Liberty.
Presidential adviser Stephen Miller said that Emma Lazarus’s poem at the base of the Statue of Liberty has nothing to do with Lady Liberty. But the last lines of the poem are worth repeating:
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
What every schoolchild knows to be true, that the statue in New York Harbor stands for a welcome to those seeking freedom and opportunity in our country, is now being touted as fake news, not just by the presidential adviser, but also by some influential commentators, such as Rush Limbaugh.
He’s joined by those bellowing from the creepy quarters of the white nationalist fringe, such as David Duke and Richard Spencer, who has used an anti-Semitic rant to demean the welcome at the base of the statue.
But a young Italian nearly 100 years ago, arriving in the United States “with nothing, nothing …” knew exactly what the statue stood for, and passed his knowledge on to his children and grandchildren.
