Giving Thanks Sans Nativism

Instead, the American story that has led to our role as the world’s superpower is one of inclusion, where we understand our diversity to be our greatest strength. 

Like the Pilgrims and Puritans, my people came by boat, in their cases from Scotland, Norway and Sweden. They entered New York Harbor and headed toward Lady Liberty, who has stood sentinel over that shore since 1886, her torch welcoming newcomers to make their home among us. They were processed at Ellis Island. No papers, just hopes. No sponsors, just themselves. They didn’t have much more than themselves to bring. Abject poverty in their home countries drove them to hope for a better life. My great-grandmother in Scotland gave her fourth son to her sister in exchange for passage to the United States for her and her other three boys. Imagine the desperation.

How did your people come, and why? Potato famine in Ireland? Economic hardship and social chaos in Southern Italy? Pogroms of Jews in Eastern Europe or religious suppression in Russia? South Vietnamese migrants fled Communist reprisal after the US pulled out of the war. The Mariel Boatlift carried Cuban migrants crammed into flotillas of small fishing boats to escape Fidel Castro’s totalitarian regime.

America has been a sanctuary for those “distressed of conscience,” as Roger Williams put it. It has also been a safe harbor for those fleeing violence. A land of opportunity for any who would work. A place where people could be judged by their character not their caste. A country guided by the words of the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

We are a nation of immigrants. Only Native Americans are indigenous to this land. Everyone else – other than people of African descent, brought here against their will – came to these shores with a dream of a new start and a new life.

Our laws did little to deter the influx of immigrant dreamers for the first hundred years. The Constitution says nothing about immigration. It only gives Congress the right to determine the terms of naturalization. There were NO federal restrictions on who could come to America. We had open borders.

Emma Lazarus, a Jewish American poet whose ancestors were among the original 23 Jewish families that fled the Inquisition on the Iberian Peninsula in the 16th Century and arrived in New Amsterdam, penned the poem “The New Colossus” as an inscription for the base of the Statue of Liberty. The sonnet concludes with these stirring words:

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!

And yet, at the same time these words were being written, Congress was passing the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882)  prohibiting Chinese laborers from coming to the US and denying citizenship to those already here. 

The nativist impulse has been with us from the beginning, despite the fact that none of us, save Native Americans, can claim ourselves as being native to America. We have manufactured an image of America as a white, Protestant Christian nation. Even though our Constitution refutes that, this illusion persists.

Today, once again, we are experiencing a powerful wave of anti-immigrant sentiment that threatens the best ideals of our nation. Those who have crossed the southern border, whether fleeing violence or political persecution in their home countries, or seeking economic opportunity, are vilified simply for arriving with the same hopes as our forebears and for the same reasons. They are demonized and dehumanized. The Department of Homeland Security recruits officers by using language about these migrants such as “invaders,” “enemies at the gate,” “illegal aliens,” and “violent criminals” all threatening to “dilute our culture” and despoil “our national identity.”

Our faith traditions ground us in values that affirm human dignity and promote human rights. They recognize only one human race and acknowledge diverse cultures. Loyalty to these spiritual values does not have to defer to loyalty to our national identities and boundaries. Welcoming the wanderer, treating the foreigner as one of your own, showing hospitality to strangers: these are religious obligations for all times and places. We are told that we can’t afford to practice this kind of welcome any longer in our country. But we can’t afford not to without losing our spiritual moorings and our authentic identity as Americans.

The former presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church in America, The Rt. Rev. Michael Curry, puts it well: “Our work goes on. Our labor for love continues. We will not cease, and we will not give up until this world reflects less our nightmare and more God’s dream where there’s plenty of good room for all God’s children. Hallelujah anyhow.”

~ George Mason