Even though this year’s is not a major election, any election gives us the opportunity to stop and think about some of the major issues being discussed. As we prepare for next year’s election – which will, no doubt be major – there are some topics that have been and continue to be subjects of great interest (and even controversial).
For example, the subject of immigration and refugees seems to appear everywhere. I’ve read more than once that opposition to immigrants has long been the norm in the United States. While I’m aware that such sentiments have existed, I’m reluctant to believe that other sentiments weren’t equally (or more) prominent.
The other day, I was poking through the online archives of The New Yorker (a benefit for subscribers) and I happened upon the following in the August 27, 1932 issue (though it refers to an earlier time). It certainly shows that, as is the case now, the “anti” position wasn’t the only point of view:
This week we turn this department over to Mr. Louis Gaylord Clark, who did the Talk of the Town Department long before we were born. The titles, the quotation marks, the italics, and every word are his. Mr. Clark – ‘old Knick’ – was editor of the Knickerbocker Magazine between 1834 and 1859. The Knickerbocker Magazine was founded in 1833 and published at 139 Nassau Street. We are sorry it is gone. –THE NEW YORKERS
This ‘wooden country’ of ours is really beginning to be thought something of ‘on the other side!’ As the English cockney said of Niagara Falls, ‘It is very clever: very!’ AMERICA! – Let us think how many at this moment are ‘on the seas’ approaching our shores! Every hour on the coasts of the old world representatives from the different nations of the earth are departing for this republic; every hour some vessel crowded with exiles from tempestuous kingdoms and principalities is nearing our shores, or, while the ‘shouting seaman climbs and furls the sail’ in our harbor, is landing its human freight upon our piers. Come along, future ‘fellow-citizens!’ We have thousands of square miles where the epidermis of the earth has never been scratched. There is room enough and there is work enough for all: nor on this side of the ‘big brook’ shall any of you ‘come nigh to perish with hunger.’ What a proud thing it will be deemed, by-and-by, to be able to say, ‘I am an American citizen!’
Guy St. Clair is Series Editor for Knowledge Services, the series from Verlag Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin, the scholarly publishing house specializing in academic literature. He also teaches at Columbia University in the City of New York, where his subject is knowledge services, an approach to managing intellectual capital that merges information management, knowledge management, and strategic learning. His personal interests are varied, with primary attention given to all forms of classical music (especially opera), art (special interest in the works of the Impressionists), design (focusing on Art Nouveau), travel, and, to a certain extent, natural history (he is a great lover of elephants, thinking of the elephant as one of the noblest of creatures). Guy thinks of himself as someone who observes what is around him and learns from what he sees.
Thanks Guy for sharing this more welcoming message about immigrants to our great country in times past. As the descendant of two sets of Italian immigrant grandparents, I am grateful for their bravery and wanting a better life for themselves and their families. Their grandchildren include two attorneys, two librarians, an accountant, a teacher and other professionals who love this country and are grateful for grandparents who sacrificed so much to give us a better life. I know our country is richer because of the many stripes of immigrants of the past, the present and future.
Thanks, Deb, for that thoughtful response. We have so much to be proud of, and I hope our children and grandchildren will be able to benefit from what our immigrant forebears left us. And what we will leave them.