They described them as “degenerates, criminals and subversives who can never be assimilated into the United States but would breed their own particular brands of crime and subversion, making no worthwhile contribution to the United States.” Donald Trump? The Freedom Caucus in the House of Representatives? Actually no. It’s a quote from the 1952 “Final Report of the U.S. Displaced Persons Commission,” citing arguments used to try to block post-World War II refugees from coming to America.
I was one of those immigrants, coming ashore in 1948. At the age of 8 months, I wasn’t old enough to be a degenerate, criminal or subversive, let alone make a worthwhile contribution. The only contribution I made was flushed away in the wash. As for my parents, in their 30s when they came to America, they got jobs, paid taxes, bought a home and ended up sending three boys to college. Indeed, that entire wave of 340,000 refugees from diverse nationalities consisted of tough, resolute, hard-working people who had survived Nazi persecution and Soviet oppression, and were hardly coming to this country for a handout. They adopted American values and became citizens, even as they sought to preserve the heritage of the homelands that bitter circumstances had forced them to leave.
The history of America is the history of immigration (also African slavery and genocide of Native Americans, but those are different, more tragic stories). Immigrants helped to build this country, and then repeatedly replenished it with their foods, songs and traditions, which America, with its genius for rebirth, absorbed into an ever-evolving national culture.
And yet, history also tells us that each wave of immigration has invariably been greeted by bitter opposition. I know from experience because I’d get into schoolyard fights with bullies taunting me for being “a DP.” And so it is now: hostility to the 11 million illegals who came to America for opportunity has become a signature issue for the leading GOP presidential candidate, Donald Trump, followed closely by Ben Carson, who’s gained support by bashing Muslims.
All of which inspires me to reflect on my own generation of immigrants. World War II ended in 1945 with upwards of 10 million refugees – those above all whom the Nazis had taken as forced labor after having stripped their economy of its normal workforce by drafting young German males into the Wehrmacht. Two million of the slaves were Ukrainians. Seizing, processing and shipping such a vast number of workers on short notice, then placing them where they were needed was a horrific bureaucratic and logistical achievement.
By war’s end, there were also thousands of Ukrainian writers, teachers, journalists, clergy, artists, physicians, engineers and other professionals who fled just steps ahead of the Red Army after having been targeted by the Soviets as “enemies of the people.” Other nationalities faced similar circumstances. Stalin demanded they all be repatriated and indeed, 7 million were sent back to the Soviet Union – mostly against their will. There, another horrific bureaucracy greeted them to process Nazi victims into another form of slavery in the gulag.
My father, fortunately, knew his way around bureaucracies and registered the family with the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, created in 1944 to cope with the huge refugee wave. That’s how my parents and older brother, along with a couple of million other refugees, ended up in DP camps in Germany and Austria where I was born in 1947. Providing for refugee needs for more than five years was an enormous and expensive undertaking. The United States, both the federal and private sectors, provided massive resources – in today’s dollars, $52 billion from the government. Nineteen accredited voluntary relief agencies added millions more. The United Ukrainian American Relief Committee raised more than $10 million (adjusted for inflation) and was instrumental in resettling 140,000 Ukrainian refugees – nearly 40,000 to the U.S., where a generous community welcomed them with shelter and jobs.
Visiting America recently, Pope Francis made it known that he is aware of the virulent anti-immigrant campaign. In his first public words at the White House, the holy father addressed the issue. An Argentinian of Italian descent, he elaborated on his message when he spoke to a joint session of Congress: “In recent centuries, millions of people came to this land to pursue their dream of building a future in freedom. We, the people of this continent, are not fearful of foreigners, because most of us were once foreigners. I say this to you as the son of immigrants, knowing that so many of you are also descended from immigrants.”
Sadly, Mr. Trump is not an outlier on immigration. He’s successfully appealing to a huge sector in the Republican Party, including shamefully, a good many Ukrainian Americans, immigrants themselves or descendants of immigrants. I often get tirades from them over the Internet. When I remind them of their own immigrant history, they reply that theirs was a worthy immigration, not like the current one with criminals, lazy freeloaders and people taking jobs away from Americans. Never mind that these immigrants include hard-working men and women cleaning the hotel rooms where we stay on vacation, farm workers harvesting vegetables and the grapes we savor at monthly wine-tasting parties, not to mention professionals educated in American universities.
Normalizing the status of the 11 million illegal immigrants now in America is a serious challenge; so is the global refugee crisis. They require serious solutions, both at their source overseas and here in America. What is not serious is seizing and deporting 11 million people who have essentially become Americans. Doing that would require yet another bureaucracy with the perverse effect of creating a police state. Mr. Trump and the millions of his supporters notwithstanding, that’s not going to happen.
We’re now in political silly season. As a Democrat, I welcome the suicidal position the Republican Party is taking on immigration, alienating not only Hispanics but other immigrant communities as well. As an American, however, I’m appalled at the vitriol meted out against this generation of people coming to our shores seeking refuge or a better life. I’m gratified that so many of my Republican friends reject Mr. Trump and his ugliness and encourage other friends – and not just Republicans – to show the same compassion (and wisdom) to this wave of asylum seekers that America showed another generation of immigrants some 65 years ago.