"They're coming to America"

America

“Free,

Only want to be free.

We huddle close.

Hang on to a dream.

On the boats and on the planes,

they're coming to America.

Never looking back again,

they're coming to America...”

                                        Neil Diamond

I heard this song yesterday on NPR. It brought back so many memories of the 1970's. Do you remember the 'boat people'? Refugees from Vietnam, Cuba, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic were washing up on our shores almost daily. They would come in crudely made and enormously overcrowded boats, with only the clothes on their backs. So many came that the U.S. adopted a policy called Wet Feet/Dry Feet. If they were intercepted at sea by the Coast Guard, they were sent back to wherever they came from. If they made it to dry land, usually in Florida, they were allowed to stay. They were almost always people with 'no formal right of entry', asylum seekers, who were either starving to death, or oppressed in their own countries.

Last night on the evening news, there was a segment about children who are coming across our southern boarders without adults to accompany them. There was a clip of about thirty kids, some as young as six, who had been intercepted and were being fed and given water. People risk their lives every day to come to America.

My own forebears came here in the 1840's because of the potato famine in Ireland. Almost one-third of Ireland's total population immigrated at that time. Starving people looking for hope. In the days when America needed people to work in its factories and service industries, we were welcoming to almost anyone who wanted to come. Today, when we are struggling to provide jobs for citizens, we're not as receptive to the plight of the poor.

America is no different from many other places that have heavy immigrant populations. We don't have a compassion deficit so much as limited resources. When we are strapped for cash, we pull back the welcome mat and, in a country that has had an open-door policy for most of its existence, that feels hostile. I am confident that America will rebound from this economic crisis and once again open its doors.

Independence Day is a good time to reflect on our history—where we came from and where we are going. What sort of country do we want to be in the future? Do we want to continue being the land of the free, where everyone comes to fulfill their dreams—or not?

                                       In the spirit,

                                       Jane