Mayflower shoves off

a different perspective on migrants

Immigrant concerns in the northerneastern U.S. of A. began on 16 September 1620. Huh? What on earth is she talking about, you’re asking yourself.

The Mayflower departed Plymouth in southwest England on this date four hundred and four years ago today, according to This Day in History.

They were illegal immigrants from the Native American perspective. Ok, if not illegal, they most certainly were illegitimate as this was hardly a place where banners existed welcoming English fleeing their homeland for various reasons.

I am certain we ought call that unwanted immigration is our most sustained national narrative, like it or not. The Native population when the Mayflower arrived watched warily, as did that group along what we call the James River in the Virginia Tidewater, when newcomers arrived. Gradually the indigenous communities suffered incredible devastation far greater than what we fear today. So destructive behavior has occurred but we generally don’t talk about it in polite company.

The English who departed sought a better life, whether it was to assure access to religious freedom or to operate as what we would now call entrepeneurs in a vast, wild new world. Pretty standard British set of reasons to emigrate from a seventeenth century society descending into what a generation later became the English Civil War.

Does that sound at all familiar?

I am not justifying illegal migration then or today but wonder if most migration isn’t in fact considered illegitimate, morphing into illegal the longer it occurs? What I am saying is that the movement of people for personal reasons, often to improve upon the priorities of their lives—whether it’s a better standard of living, ensuring freedom to worship the deity they find appropropriate and meaningful, or fleeing to assure their children do not suffer at the hands of gangs or paramilitaries in their homelands—will continue. I can’t imagine as long as this nations remains a vision of hope and prosperity, which we are even now in the eyes of so much of the world, that anything will deter people from coming.

How do we respond to that? It strikes me that is really the question that matters. We have had intricate, significant immigration reform legislation repeatedly. We tried stop Asians in the 1920s. We stopped other populations. Then we revoked those prohibitions. We have tried immigration reform, a more urbane way of describing our messy legislative process to regulate who comes in. It never deters the immigrants forever, though laws like Simpson-Mazzoli during the Reagan admnistration reassure us until we feel overwhelmed again.

Here is the deep, dark dirty secret: a growing economy needs more workers to keep growing, even as the jobs vary and skills morph. Businesses often seek those workers the rest of us eschew because they fuel economic growth otherwise hard to achieve.

Some advocate walls to prevent illegals yet the economy relies on them, despite decades of pretending otherwise. One obvious example (and irony, perhaps) is the building trade in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. where Hispanic workers, undoubtedly many without the obligatory green cards, put in countless hours to provide for their families. Under educated for office or higher tech positions, these workers—usually men—collect somewhat randomly in locations where work site managers know to find them, facilitating the building trade. I fully acknowlege I am speculating, though not deliberately fabricating, that these individuals may not earn the minimum wage nor do they receive benefits packages but they work hoping to save to in turn start their own legal businesses. It’s a more American story than the Rockefellers or other immigrants who have come over the centuries.

Do immigrants commit crimes? Yes as do those who have been here for decades. I suspect violence is linked to all communities in this country, regardless of when they arrived.

Do immigrants reduce resources for others? I am not sure since illegals most definitely do not want to make themselves known, a feature now baked into so many aspects of our health care, education, or other public systems where documentation is obligatory.

I know immigration is now the third rail in our politics and that several of you have told me how much it bothers you that some are getting away with things your forebears did not. I understand that. I simply think it’s a much more common phenomenon than we generally see. I do not minimize your concerns but don’t know what will fix it all. I am unconvinced most people actually want to remedy the challenge as it provides us all with some important benefits such as cheaper food, accessible housing, and a vast service industry in restaurants, housecleaning, and the like.

I don’t have a solution; I readily admit it. I don’t know what my own family’s origins were though I did the obligatory online searches to confirm my father’s and mother’s families came in the 1770s via North Carolina. I doubt they were considered anything other than unwanted in an era where those already here probably resented them. Those who emigrated from their homelands undoubtedly knew they weren’t wanted but allowed optimism to override the anxieties; I suspect today’s migrants are similarly aware but driven.

Today we focus on the negative because we fear it costs each of us: health care, state driven benefits, and other benefits of a modern society. I do not know how much of that is hyperbole versus fact nor do I think most people can skillfully or accurately provide that data because it depends on the perspective we use. It’s not a question of absolute yes or no as far as I can tell.

Because we are ahistorical in this country, we can’t see that perhaps immigrants bring us hope as fewer Americans have children so the future economy faces new challenges. It’s also possible that new immigrants won’t help us but that is certainly not our experience so far. The Wall Street Journal did a massive story on this point earlier this month, linked below, so it’s a problem we increasingly discuss as a society.

Change is scary for all. But it is also how the melting pot we call America persists, with new ideas, energy and hope versus fear, ignorance, and doubt. This controversial behavior nor the controversy itself isn’t going to end soon, however, by all indications.

That leaves us the responsibility as citizens to figure how we want to handle it. That strikes me as a wide open question today, one ripe for measured, civil conversation on solutions rather than merely admiring the problem again.

How do you see it? I genuinely welcome thoughts as I am running out of them. This problem won’t disappear with the election of 5 November by a long stretch.

Thank you for reading Actions today—or any other day. Please feel free to circulate if you find this of value. Thank you so to those who support this column with paid subscriptions rather than as occasional readers: your support matters a great deal.

It’s cloudy as a tropical depression is off the Carolinas, churning some clouds our way. We are desperately low on rainfall that I hope it rains buckets but we did have some color earlier this morning.

Be well and be safe. FIN

Paul Kiernan, “How Immigration Remade the U.S. Labor Force”, Wall Street Journal, 5 September 2024, retrieved at https://www.wsj.com/economy/how-immigration-remade-the-u-s-labor-force-716c18ee?mod=Searchresults_pos1&page=1

The History Channel, “1620: Mayflower departs England”, This Day in History, 16 September 2024.