Chain migration

“Chain migration” is exactly how my family ended up in this country. And I’ll lay odds it’s how your family got here too. Our great-grandparents came over to join their cousins, then they brought over their siblings, then THEY brought over their parents, till the whole family was here.

And yes, our families DID come legally. But that’s only because back then, the laws were much looser (or, before the Civil War, non-existent). Immigration law when my ancestors arrived was basically “Get off the boat, sign this paper. I can’t spell your name right so this is how your name is spelled now. Oh, you see your Uncle Pietro here? Good, go to him and get outta here, there’s a line behind you. NEXT!” There was no “merit-based”. Your ancestors and mine weren’t doctors and lawyers in the old country. If they’d had the skills and “merit” to be well-off in the old country, they wouldn’t have had to leave for a better life here.

And then, as now, the people who were already here - whose own families had immigrated here just a few generations back - resented the newcomers for “taking our jobs”, threw ethnic slurs at them, said they didn’t want people from these shithole countries, pushed for laws to try and keep them out. My family were welcomed to the States with signs saying “No Irish need apply”, with people calling them Wops and Polacks and Micks and Krauts, sometimes getting violent, and telling them to go back to their own country.

But they couldn’t. Because THIS was now their own country.

So they stayed, and they worked their asses off doing shitty menial jobs for shitty pay or starting small businesses, and they made a life for themselves and their families, and they brought their extended family over to join them.

Years later, their kids and grandkids fought for our country in two World Wars. Grandpa Risi even exchanged gunfire with Italian troops whose ranks included his first and second cousins. His loyalty was solidly with America, even before his own family.

And you know what? America didn’t stop being American because the new people weren’t “real Americans”.[i] The people whose ancestors came over on the Mayflower didn’t stop speaking English. But they did start eating pizza and bagels. They didn’t stop singing their favorite hymns. But they did start listening to jazz and rock (the offspring of blending African, Latin, and Jewish musical ideas). And I promise you, no one will have to stop watching the Super Bowl[ii], or baking apple pies[iii], or drinking Budweiser[iv], or setting off fireworks[v] on the Fourth of July, or going to the church of their choice[vi], because of today’s immigrants. But I bet we will start eating more pupusas, listening to more Ethiopian music, encountering lots of cool new cultural ideas and weaving them into our own lives and putting our own unique spin on them.

And a generation from now, those new things will be a treasured part of American culture. Which, no doubt, people will want to defend from the pernicious ways of whatever group is trying to enter the country next. And those people will be wrong too.

Because immigrants and their families aren’t what stand in the way of making America great. 

They – we – ARE what make America great.

© John M. Munzer

---

[i] Strangely, the people who use that phrase never seem to be referring to the Sioux.

[ii] The climactic game of a sport based on British rugby – which is a game based on the original football, which only Americans insist on calling “soccer” – which in turn is a game that was first played 2,000 years ago in China.

[iii] An idea we got from the Dutch.

[iv] A recipe for beer from the Czech town of Budweis.

[v] Invented in China.

[vi] To listen to the teachings of a brown-skinned Middle Eastern Jewish rabbi, who spent the first few years of his life as a refugee in Egypt, and is famous for being brutally killed by Italian soldiers.