On the base of the Statue of Liberty is inscribed “The New Colossus,” by Emma Lazarus. I had to Google for the title of the poem, but I can still recite (and even sing) the words by heart:

“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-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”

My grandfather Nathan Joseph and my grandmother Martha Salkin Joseph were among the tempest-tost who landed beside the golden door; as were my great-grandparents Sam Baum and Amalia Neuberger Baum, and Adolph Weber and Fannie Kahn Weber. I daresay, Gentle Reader, that most of you are similarly descended from immigrants, and so are most of the solons in Congress now debating the niceties of 900-mile fences along the Mexican border. (But not the Canadian border. Hmm.)

Before these guys take a chisel to Miss Liberty, shut down Ellis Island and run Lou Dobbs for President, they ought to consider a thing or two.

• Around here at least, immigrants work. I was in a Chipotle a few weeks ago and at 11:30 a.m. a flood of men streamed in wearing dirty work clothes and hard hats, every single one speaking Spanish. It seems like every guy (or gal) I see working construction, pulling weeds, running power mowers, caring for babies, etc. etc., speaks Spanish. But when’s the last time you encountered a homeless person with a Spanish accent?

• Around here at least, immigrants display family values. Sandra Perez — who came to this country illegally from Guatemala at age 20, and rose from taking care of the infants Alex Baldinger and Sam Joseph to becoming customer service manager of Key Communications Group Inc. and, now, administrator of a 1,500-soul Catholic church in Silver Spring (and an American citizen) — always sent Mom and Dad a handsome portion of a not excessively handsome salary. Gogi Sethi, who shared a house with us for several years while he was driving a D.C. cab, brought his Mom and Dad over from India to stay with us for three months. When you drive past those churches with the signs in English and Korean — and it’s not your friends who are attending regularly — don’t you wonder who is?

• Around here at least, it mostly isn’t immigrants who are committing the crimes. Think hard now: When was the last time someone with an accent stuck you up?

When Nate, Martha, Sam, Malchen, Adolph and Fannie stepped off the boat, there was no such thing in America as an “illegal” immigrant. Illegality was introduced in 1921 with the first immigrant quotas, and toughened in 1924 in response to a wave of post-WWI immigration from southern and eastern Europe. That deck was stacked; the quotas were based on the U.S. population makeup in the 1890 census, which had the effect of keeping out certain “undesirables” such as Italians. Some 200,000 Italians a year immigrated to the U.S. after 1890; but the 1924 quota for Italians was set at less than 4,000. (My forebears would have been screwed, blued and tattooed: Russia 2,248, Hungary 473, Lithuania 344, Latvia 144.)

But now, listen to those howls against “amnesty” — as if risking your life to sneak across the Rio Grande, or sail here on a leaky boat, just to escape poverty and hopelessness and persecution at home, and hope for a job planting petunias, were a “crime” like burglary, murder, rape or, er, using your public corporation for a personal piggy-bank.

Immigration built this country; our earlier open-immigration policies made us who we are today, and all of us benefit from immigration that occurred generations ago. But while those immigrants of yore were streaming in, they did indeed trigger the same kinds of social strains that immigrants are triggering today — different looks, dress, worship and languages (and, let it be noted, politics; some of those immigrants of my forebears’ generations were political agitators, trade unionists, Socialists and Reds, not our kind of people dontcha know).

And yes, today’s economy doesn’t offer the wealth of low-paid factory jobs and needle-trade piecework that greeted our forebears. (But we do have a lot of buildings that need building and petunias that need planting, not to mention babies that need taking care of.)

So OK, immigration is a hard pill to swallow. But I know I’m personally better off because Nate, Martha, Sam, Malchen, Adolph and Fannie got in; and I also know the country is better off because of the accomplishments of these particular individuals and their descendants. I’ll bet most of you could tell a similar story. I’ll bet our Representatives and Senators could too. Maybe even Lou Dobbs could.

Frank Joseph
www.tolovemercy.com

P.S. Gore-Obama? Edwards-Obama? Giuliani-Obama for God’s sake? Should I even be asking these questions? Well, should I?