Emmigrate

My father forwarded me this “non joke” and I immediately put it in the trash. But then, this morning, I pulled it out of the trashcan and looked at it again. I had been bothered by it and was determined to give it a rebuttal. Read the joke:

A Somali arrives in Minneapolis as a new immigrant to the United States. He stops the first person he sees walking down the street and says, "Thank you Mr. American for letting me in this country, and giving me housing, food stamps, free medical care and free education!"

But the passer-by says "You are mistaken, I am Mexican".

The man goes on and encounters another passer-by. "Thank you for having such a beautiful country here in America!"

The person says "I no American, I Vietnamese."

The new arrival walks further, and the next person he sees, he stops, shakes his hand and says "Thank you for the wonderful America!"

That person puts up his hand and says "I am from Middle East, I am not an American!"

He finally sees a nice lady and asks suspiciously, "Are you an American?" She says, "No, I am from Russia!" So he is puzzled, and asks her, "Where are all the Americans?"

The Russian lady looks at her watch, shrugs, and says...

"Probably at work!"


Something about this joke reeks of bigotry and malice toward immigrants. My tendency is to look at such a joke as an allegory with many symbols and to read into it, hopefully, both the obvious message that it is trying to send and the underlying, subtler ones as well. Here are some ideas so far:

1. The obvious message is that immigrants all come to America to live off of our giant welfare state while the rest of the population has to go to work every day. That much is obvious. According to the Center for Immigration Studies, “The proportion of immigrant-headed households using at least one major welfare program is 24.5 percent compared to 16.3 percent for native households.” That doesn’t seem like that much of a difference to me, but, ok, one has to admit it IS higher. The Center also says “The low educational attainment and resulting low wages of many immigrants are the primary reasons so many live in poverty, use welfare, and lack health insurance, not their legal status or an unwillingness to work.” How someone could statistically measure a group’s “willingness to work”, I am not sure, but, ok, I agree. I am assuming the poem on the Statue of Liberty:

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

would mean that we are not receiving all the world’s best, most-educated peoples. They will need some education and time to catch up.

2. I was especially troubled by the claim that America provides its people with a free education, free healthcare, food stamps, and free housing. Huh? Free education: do they mean free high school education? Because, I think we all know that you can barely even get a shit job with one of those. Do they mean a free university education? Because, I used to work for the Federal Government answering questions about financial aid, and there is almost no one, and I mean no one who gets their entire university education paid in the US. You have to be poor and I mean dirt poor before that happens. Free housing? If, by that, you mean the slums we call public housing, even those people pay reduced rent. But, the rat-infested, drug-ridden ghetto is nothing for anyone to brag about. Food stamps I’ll just leave alone. Anyone who feels that they need help in order to buy food (one can only buy food with them, let’s remember) will not be in any way hindered by me. Shall we starve them, or what? Jeez.
3. The assorted foreigners that are represented include all the old and current enemies of the State: Somalia (anyone who has seen “Blackhawk Down knows what I mean), Vietnam (most Americans still remember the horrors of this “conflict”), Russia (no real war, just a lot of bad sentiment and meddling), and the Middle East (let’s group all of those countries together since we don’t like any of them and they are all violent suicide bombers), and the current representative country of the most-recent debate on immigration: Mexico (of course they’re lazy—they even take off of work to go demonstrate against us.)

I understand that this current debate is hard for extremely conservative Americans. They forget how their ancestors also came to America and had to start from the ground up. They shouldn’t forget, though, that their wealth and social status are a privilege and a blessing. They wouldn’t be so bold as to say a 40-hour week means they deserve all that they have if they were saying it to a Chinese sweatshop worker. America is an extremely wealthy country. One would think that with this great wealth also comes great generosity, shown through caring for their own. But, an American would be more willing to donate money to a victim of some earthquake somewhere rather than encourage any kind of domestic social service. If we are going to allow immigrants into our country, which the current administration is doing, the same administration that the Bible-bangers and neo-conservatives got there and kept there, then we should give them a helping hand as they struggle to stand on their own. Again, from the Center for Immigration Studies:

“There is no evidence that the economic slowdown that began in 2000 or the terrorist attacks in 2001 have significantly slowed the rate of immigration. More than 3.3 million legal and illegal immigrants have entered the country since January of 2000.”

“Immigrants account for 11.5 percent of the total population, the highest percentage in 70 years. If current trends continue, by the end of this decade the immigrant share of the total population will surpass the all time high of 14.8 percent reached in 1890.”

With our invitation comes a responsibility to be a good host and guide. It is, after all, the American way.