money -- real issue, but central?

Money

The nation’s major anti-immigration organization, FAIR, focuses on the cost to taxpayers.  They put a lot of effort into this green eye-shade labor, but accountants better than I have scrutinized their work elsewhere.  I offer five responses, not about their worthy details.

1.       Obviously, for many people, if it seems possible to discern what God asks of us, and we come to believe that God has asked us to welcome immigrants, the cost is interesting but not terribly important.  We’ll do it.

2.       Same point, slightly revised. Obviously, for many people, if it seems possible to help good people in real need, and we come to believe that many immigrants fit that description, the cost is interesting but not terribly important.  We’ll do it.

3.       The arguments made about the costs associated with Latino immigration were made about the Irish in the middle of the 19^th century.  While the Irish were fleeing from famine and poverty, and for a generation after the disaster, they (we) were a burden, including an economic burden.  But since then, we have proved ourselves to be a huge benefit to the nation.  So for people who are careful and thoughtful about history, the arguments about cost suddenly seem transparently bogus, unless FAIR can explain the difference between Latino immigrants and Irish immigrants.

4.       The United States is a shrinking country, except for immigration.  Average family size for people born in the USA is already below replacement level.  So Social Security is certain to fail unless we permit immigration.  Assuming for the moment that all of FAIR’s numbers are right, and immigration is a financial drain (I don’t accept it, but assume for the moment), what cost in their whiny list comes close to balancing off the financial catastrophe of destroying Social Security? 

5.       Just Maryland, for the moment: Maryland’s Dream Act is about in-state tuition rates for students who have: (a) settled in Maryland (at least five years), (b) paid taxes for five years (they and/or their parents), (c) shown themselves to be serious students and likely successful citizens by three years in a Maryland high school, earning a high school diploma, and performed successfully in college for two years, earning at least 60 credits.  Maryland taxpayers have already invested in these students for at least five years.  Now, we are two years away from cashing in on the investment, when they enter our workforce with a college degree.  Will we help for the last two years?  Not only justice, but also finance suggests we should!  Isn’t this a no-brainer?

Why care about immigration? family story ...

Irish immigrants had a rough time, but don’t always remember it that way.

My great-great-grandfather, John O’Keefe, came to the United States because of the Potato Famine, which killed a third of the Irish and displaced another third. But the music about Ireland that these refugees sang a generation later was syrupy-sweet. The story that my family retains about this ancestor is that he walked through Cork for awhile before he emigrated, and that he never slept without a roof -- that is, that his neighbors were hospitable to him, everywhere, every day. The family story suggests that young O’Keefe was easy to get along with, but it focuses on hospitality. And for sure: to get a picture of the devastated countryside, you have to go to some other source.

John O’Keefe was a stone mason in Knocknagree, County Cork; I am not sure what his work was here in America. He settled in Rockport, Massachusetts, and stayed there awhile. One evening, a neighbor came to see him. “O’Keefe,” he said, “I like you, so I’m telling you. We have decided that we don’t want Irish Catholics here, and we are going to burn your house down tomorrow. I like you, so I’m giving you warning, and you have time to pack up and leave.” He packed and left, and moved to Peterborough, NH, where some in-laws helped him settle on a farm.
In that time, businesses often had signs in the window that announced simply: NINA. That’s not Nina as in “the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria.” That’s NINA as in “No Irish Need Apply.” But we think of ourselves as irrepressible, and maybe we are. John’s son, John Aloysius (in retrospect, we identify him as John A the First; they were many more), received a good education in a one-room red schoolhouse on the side of a mountain a few miles outside the town of Peterborough. His teacher there was related to Thornton Wilder, perhaps his grandmother. It seems that she was a good teacher; it is sure that he was a good student. John A. went on to Harvard.

Just 15 years after the flight from Rockport, the family was back in the Boston area. John A. O’Keefe did well enough at Harvard (#2 in his class) to earn a slot as speaker at graduation in 1881, giving the “salutatorian address.“ He spoke about prejudice against Catholics, telling his classmates that they had been taught falsely that the Church was on the side of tyranny. When he finished, his WASP classmates were silent. A Jesuit from Boston College, Fr. Walsh I think, stood and applauded -- alone. That was 131 years ago, and we still chuckle about it.

It was his generation that established Irish power in Massachusetts. He was headmaster of Lynn Classical High School, and later another city school in Lynn was named for him. He supported the early labor movement, including the famous strike at the shoe factories in Lynn. In his generation, John (“Honey Fitz”) Fitzgerald was elected the first Irish mayor of Boston, displacing the previous patrician class.

The descendants of John O’Keefe are not as abundant as the stars, but they did proliferate. We are mathematicians, scientists, astrophysicists, chemists, geologists, (no biologists), doctors, lawyers, undertakers, politicians and activists, managers, glass-makers, teachers, soldiers, cops, tax resisters, engineers. At least 12 of his descendants went to Harvard. My great-grandfather was an educator who supported labor unions in their early days. My grandfather was a pediatrician who was very proud of his work with immigrants, including many Eastern Europeans, particularly Poles. My father was an astrophysicist who supported the civil rights movement -- hiring colorblind, marching, and collecting signatures for fair housing petitions.

Family lore does not record whether the house in Rockport was actually burned, after the offensive Irish with all their “Rum, Romanism and Rebellion” had left. What does remain in family lore is etched in stone, in New England granite: we remember that we too once were “strangers in a strange land.” But by God’s grace, we have seen much good and done much more.