Lunch and Learn Focuses on Immigration in the United States
The silence hung in the air, carrying the full weight of long-ago memories mingled with teeming outrage.
Rabbi Anne Laurent was telling stories.
Amadou, an immigrant from Burkina Faso in West Africa, went first to Brazil then walked hundreds of miles to the United States, seeking refuge and ways to support the family he left behind. Since crossing our border, Amadou has spent more than a year in ICE detention, the last 11 months at Delaney Hall just 26 minutes from where we sat. He dreams of walking in a straight line for more than 60 seconds without encountering a wall.
Claudia came to Delaney Hall to see her life partner, Carlos, before he was going to be deported to Colombia, the country he fled 25 years earlier. Each widowed, Carlos and Claudia built a life together that was destroyed simply because he went to an appointment. She waited hours for just a few precious minutes to hold Carlos’s hand across a long table in a crowded room. She cannot leave the country, so It was likely the last time they will see each other.
Rabbi Laurent’s grandfathers were both proud Frenchmen from Brittany, a place with its own traditions, culture and language. When the Nazis occupied the region, its citizens were presented with an untenable choice – resist and fight or be quiet and comply. Each man chose a different path, the consequences of which soon became clear in the lives and minds of the generations that followed.
The question – resist or comply – informed the core of the discussion at our Lunch & Learn on April 23. Titled Citizenship, Immigration, and Deportation: Then and Now, it was both a lesson and reminder that many of the things we are experiencing today have been part of our American experience for hundreds of years. Because, of course, who among us is not from an immigrant family?
“They are so unlike us, they shouldn’t be amongst us.”
Professor Gary Darden, who teaches at Fairleigh Dickinson University, provided maps, statistics and dozens of images to illustrate the history of immigration to the United States.
He reminded us that the first wave of immigration came mostly from Ireland, Germany, Sweden and included many Catholics. Following the pogroms in Czarist Russia, came Jews, Slavs, Italians and others from Southern and Eastern Europe. Fast forward to the 1990s, and two-thirds of immigrants to the United States came from Mexico, and the number of people from South and East Asia increased dramatically. Also included, the domestic migration of African Americans to the industrial Northeast and Midwest from the rural South.
The dominant immigrant group at any time in our history has always been the one that faced the most hatred, discrimination and anti-immigrant sentiment, according to Prof. Darden. Without exception, no matter their origin, immigrants have been characterized as dangerous and disloyal, accused of stealing elections and causing economic distress. That story stays the same, even though the people and the places they come from change.
The government’s treatment of immigrants, however, has arguably worsened. We saw photos of immigrants to Ellis Island in the early 20th century getting hot soup and a hot bath as they came for a new life in this country juxtaposed with recent images of children separated from their parents, sleeping behind barbed wire on concrete floors. It feels like things are getting worse.
Political motivation has been tied up with anti-immigrant behavior for decades, too. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1962 was passed with the support of elected officials in the western United States to keep immigrants from working on the railroads. Both the Emergency Quota Act and the National Origin Act in the 1920s went to extreme measure to limit Jewish and Slavic immigrants and favor white immigrants from Northern and Western Europe.
The costs of today’s anti-immigrant policies are becoming increasingly clear. Innovation will suffer as nearly one-third of all patents granted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office go to people not born in the United States. Federal deportation strategies in places like New Jersey, Texas and California may result in the loss of more than 6 million jobs.
Much of the anti-immigration rhetoric is fueled by the far-right media echo chamber, and the loudest voices are from places where there are limited immigrant populations. Commentators (and agitators) like Tucker Carlson promote the Great Replacement Theory with posits that immigrants (in any era) are taking over for white Americans. The sad irony, and infuriating reality, is that the people who are doing the replacing are most often the ones screaming the loudest – white men.
“History repeats itself, sometimes tragically.”
One of the most illuminating stories Prof. Darden shared was one that is not taught in schools. It was called “Operation Wetback,” a program of the U.S. government during the Eisenhower Era in the 1950s where the Border Patrol, local law enforcement and armed vigilantes deported 1.3 million people. These immigrants, many of whom were citizens of the United States, were walked to the border with Mexico and told to keep walking. The parallels with what is happening now at the border are astounding.
Resist or Comply?
Both our speakers answered the question “resist or comply?” clearly and without hesitation.
Prof. Darden said “I told myself that if I ever live to see a repeat of what happened in 1930s Europe, I was not going to be quiet. We should all be irritated, and we should not be quiet.”
Rabbi Laurent, a Jewish chaplain who volunteers regularly at Delaney Hall to support detainees and their families, was even more direct.
“We are at an unstable moment in history, and people feel incredibly off-kilter… we do not live in a stable democracy, and we need to choose between safety and conscience, between being quiet or whether to speak up.”
She went on to remind us that the commandment to love the stranger is mentioned 36 times in the Torah, and to her, it is the soul of Judaism.
“If we jettison that, what are we preserving?” she asked plaintively. “How do we explain it to our children, our grandchildren or to the world?”
Special thanks to Cantor Rebecca Moses from Temple Sharey-Tefilo Israel for opening our program by sharing her family’s immigrant story and the commitment of this community to do the work. Thank you to the entire Lunch and Learn Committee led by Beth Randall Branigan and Miriam Korn Haimes for creating such a meaningful session, to VP of Advocacy Susie Botwinick and Director of Advocacy Sarah Cohen for their work, and to all who attended.
As NCJW/Essex becomes Tovah, these are the kinds of community-focused, educational and impactful programs we will continue to offer. Our independence will allow us the autonomy to dig deep into the issues that affect our community and offer the hands-on service opportunities where we can make a difference together.
