Oh, all you immigrants and visionaries, what do you hope to find here, who do you hope to become?
–Michael Cunningham, By Nightfall: A Novel
I love this line from Michael Cunningham, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his novel The Hours, which was later made into an Academy Award-winning film. It’s a line that seems to crystallize the appeal of America for the immigrant, in the voice of a destination that whispers that here you can follow your dreams and transform yourself.
Immigration is always in the news these days, especially as a tool of fear-mongers who often portray immigrants in sub-human terms. You have seen ample evidence of that in recent months of the current election. I will admit that there are problems with our system of immigration that need to be addressed in a clear-eyed and humane manner. That is obvious. But that is on us and not on the people who seek to make a home here.
Myself, I am personally heartened by the idea that people are still drawn to this nation, that they still see us as their last best hope. That, of course, echoes the words of Abraham Lincoln who in addressing Congress in 1862, during the Civil War, said:
In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free – honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth.
He saw this nation as the last best hope of earth and that has long been the perspective of the oppressed and hopeless around the globe. A place where there is still hope for a better life for their families and the opportunity to become something more than they were allowed to be in their own homeland.
A place they can envision themselves calling home.
I personally like that these people still see us that way and seek to make a home here even though we have often not lived up to our outward attractive appeal. That they still come means that we have not lost our way yet, that we still have the ability to welcome them and weave them into the everchanging fabric of our nation.
How many other nations can say that? Are people abandoning all they once knew so they might swim rivers and cross deserts, risking their lives, to get into Russia? China? Iran or Saudi Arabia?
You know the answer– no.
I don’t want to become a nation where people wouldn’t want to come here. That has been the one quality that has differentiated us, providing the basis for American Exceptionalism. That is a term that generally makes me cringe, mainly because the people who spout that term the most are America First nationalists and their ilk. They often cite it as justification for any behavior, abhorrent as it might be, that furthers their aims.
The point they don’t seem to understand is that it is our welcoming nature and the opportunity we offer to all that makes up our exceptionalism. The idea that we are the last best hope is our sole superpower.
To take that away, to close ourselves off while vilifying those who seek to make this land their home, also takes away that exceptionalism. There is nothing exceptional in rank hatred. It makes us smaller, mean-spirited and cruel.
It weakens– no, it rips apart– the fabric of our nation. It is important that we remain that last best hope, for the oppressed around the world and for ourselves as a nation, because once that is lost our own hope is lost with it.
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