IMMIGRANT
By now, we are all familiar with the problems faced by America relative to illegal immigration. But, there was a time, early in the 20th century,
when immigration was welcome and sought after, with many square miles to fill. Just about all you needed to do in order to be an immigrant was was to be healthy enough to remain vertical. If you saw the beginning of "The Godfather Part 2" you got a pretty clear picture of Ellis Island. In Poland and Russia Jews were were confined to "shtetles" ( Little States) within or nearby a city. Unless they were either professional men, land owners,or shopkeepers who dealt in necessities (butchers, bakers, food suppliers , etc.) they were so poor that many of them literally starved to death.This is about my Grandfather on my mother's side.
My Grandpa, Manus (Mike) Sherman, his wife and daughter live just outside of Lublin the 4th largest city in Poland in what we call today the Ukraine. He was a non commissioned officer in the Polish army., from which he defected at the outset of World War 1.He changed his name in order to keep from getting caught.and his passport wouldn't sound any alarms because he stole the I.D. off of a dead soldier. It's about this part where I tell you a couple apochryphal stories that circulated among immigrants.There were dozens of themand here are just two: Jews hated the army. In those days, they had good reason to. They had no loyalty to the repressive country in which they lived and they were treated even worse in the army than they were as civilians.
At Ellis Island many of the men, especially those from Germanywho were fleeing the Kaiser's conscription were loathe to give their real names, and on one day they decided to all say "Ich fergessen" (I forgot.) The closest to that in the ears of a minimally educated official, was "Ed Ferguson." That day a hundred or so Ed Fergusons passed through Ell Island. Here's another one:: Before going on permanent AWOL many would steal the wallets of the dead soldiers, not for the money, but for the I.D.Hence our new family name on my mother's side became Shermann, the second n getting dropped when Grandpa got ajob.Another great incentive was that Ford was paying $5 a dayand once the rumor was confirmedyou couldn't hold back half of Europe from immigration. $5 was a month's income in Poland.
"Mike" had a few bucks saved up from many years of manual labor so he traveled to Detroit, where he got a job in construction, building the Rackham Memorial Building, a Marble palace in the cultural center which also contained the Institute of Arts and the Main Library, also marble clad masterpieces.During this time my mother developed rickets from malnutrition so, her mom sent her to live with her parents who owned a small farm. For the first time in her young life, she was able to eat decent food and lots of fresh vegetables and eventually she grew strong but never achieved what should have been her full height.Grandpa told me that he couldn't believe his good fortune. To be able to live a life that Americans took for granted. He got hired at Ford making more money than he ever imagined.Enough to pay rent, clothes, food, and even some to save.He loved Amerca and learned English as quickly as he could so he could become a citizen. By his accent some would call him Russian(same as A.R.'s). "I can tell by your accent tht you are Russian." His back would stiffen up and he'd look the person in the eye and say, "Not Russian, American!" While he was proud to be an American , he still retained some old country habits. He drank only Corby's whiskey when indulging because it was the cheapest rotgut. He also like Slivovitz, a very potent plum brandy. It was said that after uncorking the bottle, the fumes alone would make you drunk. He loved caviar. Not that expensive blsck stuff that you daintilly put on crackers, but the orange fish eggs that you could smell 2 blocks awa when he opened the jar.And that's the difference between 1920 and 2018. Every family had its own stories of coming to America. I have just skimmed the surface. I have had the good fortune of being 1st or 2nd generation depending on which side you look at. As I was growing up, I heard various aunts uncles and, of course, parentstell me how lucky I was to be born in America.They were right.
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when immigration was welcome and sought after, with many square miles to fill. Just about all you needed to do in order to be an immigrant was was to be healthy enough to remain vertical. If you saw the beginning of "The Godfather Part 2" you got a pretty clear picture of Ellis Island. In Poland and Russia Jews were were confined to "shtetles" ( Little States) within or nearby a city. Unless they were either professional men, land owners,or shopkeepers who dealt in necessities (butchers, bakers, food suppliers , etc.) they were so poor that many of them literally starved to death.This is about my Grandfather on my mother's side.
My Grandpa, Manus (Mike) Sherman, his wife and daughter live just outside of Lublin the 4th largest city in Poland in what we call today the Ukraine. He was a non commissioned officer in the Polish army., from which he defected at the outset of World War 1.He changed his name in order to keep from getting caught.and his passport wouldn't sound any alarms because he stole the I.D. off of a dead soldier. It's about this part where I tell you a couple apochryphal stories that circulated among immigrants.There were dozens of themand here are just two: Jews hated the army. In those days, they had good reason to. They had no loyalty to the repressive country in which they lived and they were treated even worse in the army than they were as civilians.
At Ellis Island many of the men, especially those from Germanywho were fleeing the Kaiser's conscription were loathe to give their real names, and on one day they decided to all say "Ich fergessen" (I forgot.) The closest to that in the ears of a minimally educated official, was "Ed Ferguson." That day a hundred or so Ed Fergusons passed through Ell Island. Here's another one:: Before going on permanent AWOL many would steal the wallets of the dead soldiers, not for the money, but for the I.D.Hence our new family name on my mother's side became Shermann, the second n getting dropped when Grandpa got ajob.Another great incentive was that Ford was paying $5 a dayand once the rumor was confirmedyou couldn't hold back half of Europe from immigration. $5 was a month's income in Poland.
"Mike" had a few bucks saved up from many years of manual labor so he traveled to Detroit, where he got a job in construction, building the Rackham Memorial Building, a Marble palace in the cultural center which also contained the Institute of Arts and the Main Library, also marble clad masterpieces.During this time my mother developed rickets from malnutrition so, her mom sent her to live with her parents who owned a small farm. For the first time in her young life, she was able to eat decent food and lots of fresh vegetables and eventually she grew strong but never achieved what should have been her full height.Grandpa told me that he couldn't believe his good fortune. To be able to live a life that Americans took for granted. He got hired at Ford making more money than he ever imagined.Enough to pay rent, clothes, food, and even some to save.He loved Amerca and learned English as quickly as he could so he could become a citizen. By his accent some would call him Russian(same as A.R.'s). "I can tell by your accent tht you are Russian." His back would stiffen up and he'd look the person in the eye and say, "Not Russian, American!" While he was proud to be an American , he still retained some old country habits. He drank only Corby's whiskey when indulging because it was the cheapest rotgut. He also like Slivovitz, a very potent plum brandy. It was said that after uncorking the bottle, the fumes alone would make you drunk. He loved caviar. Not that expensive blsck stuff that you daintilly put on crackers, but the orange fish eggs that you could smell 2 blocks awa when he opened the jar.And that's the difference between 1920 and 2018. Every family had its own stories of coming to America. I have just skimmed the surface. I have had the good fortune of being 1st or 2nd generation depending on which side you look at. As I was growing up, I heard various aunts uncles and, of course, parentstell me how lucky I was to be born in America.They were right.
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It seems to me that a root of these problems is not evaluating people as individual human beings as such. Trying to evaluate their character, their intelligence, skills and productivity, rather then guessing their ethnicity, or disparaging their accent in English, color of the skin etc.
I am continuously surprised how frequently people blame, for somebody's lack of success, all sorts of irrelevant things rather than the lack of knowledge and of the ability to understand.
Best regards.
Maritimus
Never forget the axiom: "People get the government they deserve."
Best regards.
Maritimus
Shrugged. But if you create a new nation whose laws have a similar justice, you cannot guarantee the moral choices that will be made by the people who will be born there afterward.
I did not say there "is no national interest", but it is not the vague, collectivist catch-all rationalization as commonly used, which you can read a few lines above your supposition to the contrary: "There are valid specific national interests, such as defense when properly defined; an unqualified generality "national interest" used to control people is not valid."
As Ayn Rand put it:
"There is no such thing as “the public interest” except as the sum of the interests of individual men. And the basic, common interest of all men—all rational men—is freedom. Freedom is the first requirement of “the public interest”—not what men do when they are free, but that they are free. All their achievements rest on that foundation—and cannot exist without it.
"The principles of a free, non-coercive social system are the only form of “the public interest.” -- from “The Fascist New Frontier”, Ford Hall Forum 1962, anthologized in The Ayn Rand Column.
and
"A nation, like any other group, is only a number of individuals and can have no rights other than the rights of its individual citizens. A free nation—a nation that recognizes, respects and protects the individual rights of its citizens—has a right to its territorial integrity, its social system and its form of government. The government of such a nation is not the ruler, but the servant or agent of its citizens and has no rights other than the rights delegated to it by the citizens for a specific, delimited task (the task of protecting them from physical force, derived from their right of self-defense) . . . .
"Such a nation has a right to its sovereignty (derived from the rights of its citizens) and a right to demand that its sovereignty be respected by all other nations." -- from “Collectivized ‘Rights’” in The Virtue of Selfishness http://anthemfoundation.org/for-profe...
and on immigration in particular, when Ayn Rand was asked at the Ford Hall Forum in 1973 about the conservative protectionist position on immigration -- “What is your attitude toward immigration? Doesn’t open immigration have a negative effect on a country’s standard of living?” -- she answered:
"You don’t know my conception of self-interest. No one has the right to pursue his self-interest by law or by force, which is what you’re suggesting. You want to forbid immigration on the grounds that it lowers your standard of living — which isn’t true, though if it were true, you’d still have no right to close the borders. You’re not entitled to any 'self-interest' that injures others, especially when you can’t prove that open immigration affects your self-interest. You can’t claim that anything others may do — for example, simply through competition — is against your self-interest. But above all, aren’t you dropping a personal context? How could I advocate restricting immigration when I wouldn’t be alive today if our borders had been closed?"
glitch in the machine.
But I do find Herb's story moving. And I am very much troubled by the difficulties of (legitimate) immigrants. Although I gave Trump my vote, it wasn't out of xenophonbia, or a great enthusiasm for his proposed Wall. It was to keep Hilliary Clinton's Socialistic policies from being enacted.
Who would that policy serve if not the nation.
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