Immigrants: Legal, Illegal Or Just Human (II)

by Jacob Jaffe

While the United States has been blessed with the many resources required for the industrial age, we have had as an invaluable advantage a vast reservoir of people who immigrated--or were brought as slaves--from all parts of the world.

These peoples provided the labor to make us the most technically advanced nation on the globe. Despite those among us who were--or are--intolerant toward newcomers, we have had the largest influx of "foreigners" in history. When I was a child, I recall the title of a book referring to our numbers as 100,000,00. Now--while I may be old, I'm not that ancient--we have tripled our numbers, passing the 300,000,000 million mark.

Even the most xenophobic would find it difficult to deny--or disprove--that the diversity and numbers of our peoples have enriched us not only economically but culturally as well. Let me divest myself of impartiality by mentioning that my father was an "illegal" -- not that my grandmother nor any parent gives birth to a child whom they consider to be illegal.

Although my grandfather and his two sons immigrated to escape pogroms and military conscription in Russia, they intended to bring my father, then ten years old, and my grandmother, to this country. They were very similar to immigrants whose men folk come first, get jobs, establish themselves and then have the means to bring the rest of the family. However, they did not realize that World War I and the Russian Revolution would upset their plans. What was to be a short separation lengthened into over eight years.

At the time, Congress, politically divided then as now, found a patchwork compromise: you could bring in your children with one stipulation. They had to be minors. Well, my father was no longer a minor! Our family would have been devastated if he declared his correct age--he would have been immediately deported from Ellis Island. So he stated his age as being two years younger.

I asked my grandson's elementary school assembly, where I had been invited to discuss my novel "Land of Dreams," what my father should have done. Hands waved frantically and then all but one youngster agreed, "He should lie!"

About the Author Dr. Jacob Jaffe is a psychologist who has taught at Columbia and City Universities. He is also a psychotherapist and the author of two novels,"Hobgoblins"a political-psychological thriller and "Land of Dreams,"based on his family's immigrant experience. Find out more, visit http://www.jaffeauthor.com