In fact, when we think of migration we often forget the lovers separated in the process; instead we recall parents separated from their children, siblings separated from each other, or friends writing to stay in touch across borders.
What about lovers? Surely, they too were separated as a result of migration, both in past and current movements around the globe. When lovers wrote letters to stay connected, what did they say? And, how did the writing of love letters help them to navigate their relationship at a distance and bridge the inescapable distances that threatened to sever their love? More broadly, how did the experience of migration make migrants’ love letters different from other love letters?
My research utilizes love letters. As I discovered, one of the first tasks awaiting a migration scholar interested in studying such rare and extraordinary documents is the simple challenge of locating them. Few, if any, are available in public archives such as the IHRC and the possibility of finding these documents in private family archives requires much more than simply asking migrants or loved ones left behind if they have kept them.
Next comes the challenge of making sense of the letters once they have been found. These are complex documents—fragmentary, highly subjective, silent on key issues, providing little if any context.
Yet, once these rare documents are located, read and analyzed, they do open an amazing new gateway for understanding migrants and their migrations. They allow us to gaze through intimacy at transnational love relationships being negotiated, modified and challenged by migration and separation. They urge us to enter the hearts and minds of individuals whose emotional energies, frozen in these writings, force us to experience migration through the language of longing and desire, of nostalgia and demand, of elation and frustration, of creative imagination and hard realities—all occurring while these emotions were being experienced daily, and in the moment of a distant past. Through these letters, we experience the emotional charge of communication as lovers practiced the art of writing, articulating creatively their reflections, confidences, needs and demands to distant lovers.
In love letters, lovers created worlds of their own. These worlds were not merely family-centric, as the scholarship on Italian migration movements often suggests. By examining love letters in tandem with migration, we are including the voices of women and men as lovers, reformulating our definition of migration as a process of imaginative and personal change and pushing the boundaries of the usual immigration history paradigm of families and communities in motion.
By: Sonia Cancian, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Postdoctoral Fellow at the IHRC, Ania Mazurkiewicz, University of Gdansk, Kosciuszko Foundation Fellow at the IHRC, and Matteo Pretelli, Fulbright Research Scholar at the IHRC
]]>Interestingly enough, the notion of longing and the compression of time is also found in the ways that Cold War exiles from Eastern Europe perceived time while away from their homelands. People who fled their homelands fearing persecution from the Communist regimes tended to perceive their forced migration as a temporary state. Therefore, for them awaiting and longing their ultimate return to the free homeland entailed a time in which exile felt longer than the real passing of time. Furthermore, many of them envisaged that time in their homeland had stopped, with the understanding that once the imposed regime would be taken down the idealized conditions of pre-subjugation period would return. Exiles believed they carried the last hope for the survival of their nations’ culture and tradition. On the one hand, just like separated lovers, the exiles measured time by their heartbeat. On the other hand, the “time of the mind” prompted them to act for the sake of future liberation of their beloved homeland. In either case, the notions of yesterday and tomorrow were more important than today. The biggest disillusions were created when those who eventually returned to their free homeland subsequently realized that time had not only continued to move forward, but that rapid changes had occurred much faster than they could have ever imagined.
Matteo Pretelli, Fulbright Research Scholar at the IHRC
The fluidity of time has had enormous consequences even in migrants’ identities. By definition, language is fluid and constantly changing, and it also plays an important part in migrants’ identities. For instance, the 1st generation of immigrants – who usually preserved a mythical image of the homeland – maintained the use of their native tongue. Yet, this language often has melded with the language of the host society as these immigrants learned to live in their new surroundings. Conversely, immigrants understood their native language as temporally “frozen” in the moment when they left home. The younger generations of immigrants more fully acquired their host society’s language, which is an integral part of their daily lives and their identities. They then had two choices: They could share the use of their parents’ native language (which in the case of Italian immigrants, was often a dialect of the standard Italian) in their domestic space; or they could renounce it, and learn their parents’ language afterwards in its standard form as part of their effort to rediscover their own ethnicity. In the former case, once they visit the homeland they -- and their parents – are amazed that the native language they have spoken all their lives is no longer the language of the homeland, where language continued to change. On the other hand, in many cases, 1st and 2nd generation immigrants speak a kind of hybrid language that has developed over time as a result of linguistic interferences with the host society’s language. In the latter case, the younger generation of immigrants who visit their parents’ homeland have an easier time communicating with native speakers because of their lack of knowledge of their parents’ language that was “frozen” in time.
The evolving dynamics of immigration and its impact in this area are fascinating to observe. Taking a ride on the local bus system in Alexandria, Arlington, Falls Church, or Annandale is like shuttling between events at the United Nations. The spectrum of languages, attire, appearances, and more is a potent demonstration that this region contains one of the nation’s most broadly diverse populations. Some excellent research and analysis of this has been done by George Washington University’s Marie Price and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Audrey Singer (see, for example, The World in a Zip Code). As they have noted, the extraordinary heterogeneity and dispersion of the foreign born here don’t fit neatly into patterns and norms of settlement, past or present.
What does, however, ring familiar is a counter response to the growing non-native population. Interestingly, the locus of intensity for this reaction isn’t to be found in Fairfax and Arlington Counties, with the greatest number and percentage of foreign born, but in neighboring Prince William County, on the outer ring of suburban DC. And intense it has been. In October of last year, the county board enacted measures aimed at curtailing illegal immigration, including a policy that directs police to check the residency status of any criminal suspects they believe might have entered the country unlawfully. Almost no day goes by without some news coverage pertaining to this decision, its after effects, and its varied reception by locals. (For a couple of the most recent items in the Washington Post, see:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/27/AR2008042702432.html
and
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/20/AR2008042002136.html.)
As I sat down to make note of these circumstances, I received in the mail a little piece of analog comfort food to offset what sometimes feels like an unrelenting electronic diet – the latest publication catalog from the University of Illinois Press with history-related titles. Besides being thankfully reminded that knowledge still, indeed, can come from books and not just new media, I felt a little tinge of sadness to think, I believe accurately, that so many of the really exceptional-looking volumes listed will be read only by other specialists. How many of the newer Latino/a immigrants and those who live among them in Northern Virginia will read the new book Memories and Migrations, which has the promise of “introducing readers to the ways in which Latinas have shaped history?” The historical insights in a book like Making Lemonade out of Lemons, on Mexican American labor and leisure, could likely bring substance to ideas and attitudes as they continue to be shaped in places like Prince William County. Will such insights be discovered and learned in such places where the contest has been joined? It appears that the extraordinary new compendium American Dreaming, Global Realities, edited by Donna Gabaccia and Vicki Ruiz, has the true potential to help readers re-think immigration history, as the sub-title says, something that could be profoundly important in the way the general populace approaches today’s migration developments. Will this fresh approach to the subject be experienced and absorbed outside of the scholarly guild?
Probably the answers to these questions, as they long have been, are that ultimately the pure research and scholarship does wind its way down to the larger public, through the media, through adaptations in other forms directed at more general audiences, or through the gradual updating and reshaping of pre-collegiate education. But these forces are indirect and eventual. Of course, the disconnect between town and gown is nothing new, and I should add that few academic institutions I know of have worked harder to address this than the IHRC, with the very active engagement of staff, supporters, and advisory council members in historical documentation efforts, local community-driven research initiatives, and public history student projects, to name just a few.
I believe that people who make enforceable decisions about immigration do so with some notion of history. The past -- their sense of it -- is almost always invoked as a basis for their thinking. This happens inside the beltway, near the beltway, and beyond. Professional historians have a huge challenge to find better, more immediate ways to get their informed sensibilities directly into the minds of these people. It’s a challenge worth persistent response and attention – and maybe even some rethinking.
Earning the Latino vote has become a main target for all Presidential candidates. Although it is not viewed by the public as important as arguments over Iraq and the war on terrorism, immigration law reform has become a priority in the political agenda. In 2006 and 2007 President Bush failed to gain Congressional support for new legislation. This political fiasco was only partially solved with the 26 October 2006 signing of the Border Secure Fence Act. This law authorizes the construction of a 700 mile fence along the U.S.-Mexico border in order to deter individuals from illegally entering the United States.
In the debate over the reform of immigration law candidates have differed. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/19/us/politics/19candidates.html?scp=2&sq=immigration+presidential+candidates&st=nyt; http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9805EFD91038F933A25751C1A9619C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=2; http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/05/us/politics/05debate.html; http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/23/opinion/23brooks.html
Among the Democrats, Hillary Clinton, strenuously searched out the Latino support, and obtained the endorsement of Antonio R. Villaraigosa, mayor of Los Angeles and one of the most outstanding figures of the Hispanic community. Senator Clinton endorsed a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants in the United States who have a job, pay taxes, and have a clear command of English, whereas she proposed hard penalties to employers who exploit illegal workers. Yet, in Spring 2007 she opposed a bipartisan bill to reform immigration law because it did not include a measure for immigrant family reunification. These positions have mostly been shared by the two other main Democratic candidates, Illinois Senator Barack Obama and South Carolina Senator Johnny R. Edwards.
In the Republican field, candidates’ voices were less homogeneous. Arizona Senator John McCain maintained the most moderate stance. He has called illegal immigrants sons of God who compassionately deserve a chance in the United States. But, seeking votes among a conservative electorate, he has also emphasized the reinforcement of the Southern border over reform of immigration law.
Italian-American candidate Rudolph Giuliani was even more ambiguous. A moderate Republican when he was mayor of New York City, Giuliani adopted policies against the criminalization of illegal immigrants, who become eligible for the city’s educational and medical public services. In 1996, he even intervened to impede public officials and physicians from denouncing illegal immigrants. Giuliani welcomed to New York any immigrants - even if illegally in the United States – who wished to work hard. However, in search of conservative voters Giuliani too switched his former stance, emphasizing instead the need to fight illegal immigration through the introduction of identification card. Pointing out the importance of a “safe” border and recalling his mayoral policy of using policemen to end criminality in New York (“Zero Tolerance”), he endorsed an increasing allocation of Patrol agents along the U.S.-Mexican border to deter further illegal accesses.
Giuliani was harshly criticized by another Republican candidate, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, who made the fight against illegal immigration a cornerstone of his presidential campaign. Despite talking positively of a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants in 2005, during his bid for Republican ticket he accused Giuliani of having transformed New York City into a illegality “sanctuary”. Romney then proposed severely curtailing Federal funds to cities, such as San Francisco, which avoid criminalizing immigrants without documents. Both Giuliani and Romney had criticized the bipartisan bill in 2007: the former considered it as a compromise, the latter remained adamantly against the idea of conceding temporary visas to individuals illegally residing in the United States.
Two minor Republican candidates, Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson and former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, had tough anti-immigrant stances as well. Thomson even proposed to curtail funds to cities and states which did not turnover illegal aliens to the Federal authorities and he requested to officially declare English as the national language. Huckabee advocated for curbing immigration from countries which sponsor terrorists. Furthermore, although during his governorship he provided support to illegal students, he proposed a national plan to expel illegal immigrants within 120 days
In recent years American media have paid a lot of attention to the surging public interest in the Chinese language and the increasing Mandarin Chinese language programs in the US.
]]> Traditionally the Chinese language had been taught mainly within Chinese immigrant communities to preserve cultural heritage among next generations. The normalization of US-China relations in the 1970s led to the establishment of Chinese language programs in American schools. However, up to the early 2000s, the Chinese language was still much undeveloped compared to other commonly taught languages such as Spanish, French, German, Italian and Japanese. A 2002 survey of college and university courses shows that less than 3 percent of total enrollment in foreign language is in Chinese, and the number of the enrollment at American elementary and secondary schools was even lower, with only 0.3 percent. (http://askasia.org/chinese/publications.htm, www.actfl.org/files/public/Enroll2000.pdf, http://www.adfl.org/projects/index.htm).Realizing (again) its lack of understanding of non-Western societies and cultures after 9/11, the US government designated several languages as critical for its national security and launched the National Flagship Language Initiative (NFLI) in 2002. NFLI provided funding to major US universities to develop institutional and national infrastructure required to produce highly proficient language graduates in strategic languages such as Arabic, Chinese, Hindi/Urdu, Korean, Persian/Farsi, and Eurasian languages (Russian, Central Asian). http://www.nflc.org/nfli/languages.asp; http://www.nflc.org/projects/recent_projects/nfli; http://www.iie.org/programs/nsep/flagship/ In 2006, President Bush launched the National Security Language Initiative (NSLI) which was designed to increase the number of Americans learning strategic languages through new and expanded programs from kindergarten through university and into the workforce. http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2006/58733.htm; http://exchanges.state.gov/nsli/fact_sheet.htm
With China’s fast economic development and increasing global influence, Mandarin Chinese has been given intensive attention as one of the critical languages. In 2005, the National Security Education Program chose Chinese as the prototype for a new major development of the NFLI: the Chinese K-16 Flagship http://www.actfl.org/files/public/NFLIChineseK-16PilotProjectPR.pdf In Congress, Senators Joseph Lieberman and Lamar Alexander introduced the US-China Cultural Engagement Act in May 2005 which aimed to provide $1.3 billion to enhance Chinese-language education in K-12 schools, expand the exchange of artists, scientists, and students between the US and China, and promote scholarly studies on contemporary China. http://www.nccaonline.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=22&Itemid=36
This surging public interest in Chinese language and culture contributes to Chinese immigrants’ interaction with and integration into the American society. In the Twin Cities, social and cultural events organized by Chinese immigrants have attracted more and more Americans not of Chinese origin (http://www.caam.org/modules/wfchannel/index.php?link=home;
http://www.mn3c.org/home.php). The Ha Family Entertainment, a local troupe performing Chinese dance, has witnessed increasing demand for Chinese cultural performances in American schools and local festivals (see this audio slideshow of its lion dance in the New Year’s party of Yinghua Academy, the first Chinese immersion school in MN: http://www.startribune.com/slideshows/15475716.html). During the late December 2007 and mid-May 2008, it has been scheduled for 18 performances in various circumstances including the grand opening of a law firm and other cultural activities of large corporations such as Target, Best Buy and the Marriott Hotel (http://www.ha-family.com/)
While the surging American public interest in Chinese language and culture has provided unprecedented opportunities for Chinese communities in the US, a historical reflection cautions us about the potential challenges and risks as well. There had been similar American public interest in the Russian language in the 1950s and 1960s and in the Japanese language in the 1980s, and both cases remind us that American interest in foreign languages and cultures had been usually triggered by the fear of the US government of those cultures as existing or potential challengers: the Soviet Union as an “evil” communist rival and Japan as a formidable economic competitor. In the current case of China, things may be even more complicated as China may be perceived as a combination of both. This in turn will place Chinese Americans in a trap of being perceived as potentially disloyal and harmful to the US national interest.
Recent history indicates that this potential risk is not imagined but is lurking right around the corner. In 1982, with increasing Japanese economic competition, Vincent Chin, a Chinese American, was mistaken as Japanese and beaten to death by two white Americans working in the declining auto industry hit hard by its competitive Japanese counterpart. In 1999, Dr. Wen-ho Lee, a Chinese American scientist from Taiwan, was falsely charged as a spy for mainland China, a case clearly revealing the US government’s fear of the “red China” and its readiness to cast suspicion and exert persecution on Chinese Americans.
This potential risk has been made even more delicate by recent efforts of the Chinese government of boosting Chinese language programs abroad. Since 2004, the Office of Chinese Language Council International (Hanban), a government agency promoting the spread of Chinese around the world, has started opening Chinese language and cultural centers (Confucius Institutes) abroad. It has sent over 2000 voluntary teachers abroad and up to July 2007, there had been more than 170 Confucius Institutes established in more than 50 countries. The US has the largest number of Confucius Institutes (18), followed by Thailand (13). http://www.hanban.org/en_hanban/index.php
While current American attitude towards the spread of Chinese language programs is welcoming in general, there has been no lack of concerns and suspicions about China’s political influence and expansion of power (http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0104/p17s01-legn.html, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89350477) Therefore, while emphasizing its purpose of promoting cultural exchanges and friendship, the Chinese government needs to be cautious about both guarding against any tendency to misuse its energy for unwarranted purposes and avoiding being mistaken by other countries as disguised expansionism or neocolonialism (http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10853534). Also importantly, the Chinese government needs to be cautious about the delicate impact of its increasing global influence on Chinese immigrants and their descendants abroad.
On the part of the US, a more efficient way seems to be supporting the learning of Chinese and other foreign languages not simply for national security but for long-term solid cultural understanding. Its support for foreign languages cannot be just responsive to constantly rising and ever-changing crises but should be based on sincere respect for and acceptance of different cultures. A fundamental guiding principle for foreign language programs in the US should not be “clash of civilizations” but be cultural coexistence, mutual enrichment and co-prosperity. By enlarging foreign language programs, the US also gains a great opportunity to engage and understand its own diverse ethnic communities and to better integrate them into the mainstream society rather than single certain groups out as suspicious aliens when needed or convenient.
Researchers, policy makers, immigration lawyers, and social service providers often focus on the issues confronting individual immigrants while overlooking how embedded each individual is within communally oriented transnational families, tribal groups, and clans.
]]> Those who study families make use of systems theories to understand that what happens to one individual or smaller group with the family (subsystem), affects the entire family system. Through such a multidimensional lens we can discern the basic elements needed in comprehensive immigration policy reform so that families and communities are not pulled apart by the process instead of reunited and integrated.The importance of one person in the family getting a foot in the door to citizenship through military service has become obvious since 9-11 when it became possible for “non U.S. citizens” to earn the right to become citizens through active duty and honorable service. During the past 6 years, more than 37,000 “green card warriors” have achieved citizenship through this program; more than 7300 requests are pending the 7-10 month review process; and 20,500 non citizens are estimated to be currently serving in the armed forces. In some cases, soldiers have served 2-3 tours in Iraq and/or Afghanistan before making application.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/03/27/greencard.marine.folo/
Although one or more family members may be citizens, that does not guarantee that immigration laws and judges will treat other family members who are not citizens with the best interests of the family in mind. In a lecture focusing on this topic Professor David Thronson reports that some “mixed status” families, where a child has one parent who is not a natural born or documented American citizen, can be problematic when it comes to deportation. Although he argues that family and immigration laws are closely related, the family part is “often missing” from debates about immigration reform. When one aspect of immigration policy encourages family reunification and another aspect promotes family separation, it is clear that the systems are not working well together.
http://www.unlvrebelyell.com/article.php?ID=11788
There are numerous examples in the news every day. Because Congress has failed to act on reform and it is politically popular in the post 9-11 environment, more than 40 states have been busy trying to crack down on undocumented immigrants whether they are parents or minors. Under the guise of the rule of law, families are separated when parents are pulled away from jobs, arrested, and deported. An estimated 2 million mixed families are living in fear that their breadwinner won’t be home for dinner if stopped for an auto violation or found to be working without appropriate documentation.
http://www.columbiatribune.com/2008/Mar/20080328Feat002.asp
Another example of a family who has played by all the rules but still found themselves in a difficult situation is a South African family living in Ohio who were recruited to teach in the U.S. and later applied for permanent residency. Although the married couple’s application has been processed and their pathway to citizenship made clear, this is not the case for their 18 year old son. Due to immigration law stipulations, they were not able to apply for their son’s residency until after theirs was approved in 2005. Meanwhile, the son was becoming ineligible as a minor as he waited for the delayed paper work to be reviewed and approved. The parents are worried that he could be picked up and deported since technically he is no longer a minor and does not have documentation.
http://www.limaohio.com/story.php?IDnum=51001
The problems confronting children and immigration agencies are the topic of a forthcoming conference in Chicago that is addressing the absence of communication and collaboration between child welfare and immigration systems. One sponsor of the program pointed out that “many families today are dealing with both the immigration and the child welfare system - –yet the professionals representing these systems rarely work together.” The hope is that the conference will bring together both parties to stimulate dialogue and cooperation for the benefit of families and communities.
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/03-28-2008/0004782136&EDATE=
There are other ways that families and communities can benefit from dialogue about immigration and what kind of nation we want this to become. Since the winnowing of the more extreme candidates who were running for their party’s nomination for the presidency, we are less likely to be hearing nativist and reactionary rhetoric about immigrants from the remaining three candidates. In the absence of comprehensive reform some states (New Jersey and California) are trying to make a positive contribution by passing state versions of the Dream Act—a proposal to enable children of immigrants to pay in-state tuition at state colleges and universities even if there parents are not documented. In other states (Minnesota is an example), the governor and some legislators are arguing against state Dream Act laws as a way of enforcing the rule of law while punishing the children of parents who came to work in the U.S. without papers. Depending on the outcome of the November elections, it may be possible to reintroduce a federal Dream Act that would make it possible for all children, regardless of parental heritage, residency, or legality to achieve a higher education.
http://www.alternet.org/rights/80643/
In a op-ed column entitled “disorder at the border”, Timothy Egan applauds the fact that the political demagogues have left the stage, leaving the three most moderate voices on comprehensive immigration reform still standing. This fact may well put an end to the seemingly futile and very expensive effort to build a wall across the Mexican-U.S. border. Property rights seem to conflict with where the wall needs to run and not many are seeking to have their agricultural land, back yards, or college campus divided by a wall topped with razor wire and patrolled by armed borders guards and minutemen vigilantes. The deportation of undocumented immigrants and the separation of families that results is also not going very well in Arizona—a state with an estimated half million undocumented workers. Although a new state law has been passed placing penalties on the businesses who hire them, not a single person has been found, despite numerous reports and profiles that have been followed up on by police. Whatever the results of the fall election, it is likely that persons from Arizona and the southwest will be involved in brokering a deal that leads to comprehensive reform.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/29/opinion/29egan.html?ref=opinion
Responding to the ongoing controversy about his minister, Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama in his speech, “A More Perfect Union” last Tuesday opened up a teachable moment about race and American history.
]]> Drawing heavily on the cadences of the Declaration of Independence, Obama illuminated the rhetorics of the Black church.Although the media coverage leading up to this year’s St. Patrick’s Day has highlighted how Catholic leaders have tried to make sure that the holiday’s festive nature and secular activities do not interfere with start of the more somber occasion of Holy Week, those interested in immigration history might think about the significance of ethnic holidays in relationship to the larger story of migration and assimilation.
]]> In a blog on the New York Times website that has elicited a lot of comments [http://egan.blogs.nytimes.com/?scp=1-b&sq=Egan&st=nyt], Timothy Egan provides a brief history of the city of Butte, Montana, which in the early-twentieth century had a larger per capita population of Irish immigrants than any other city in the United States. Egan argues that rather than dwelling on the “blarney and excess in celebration of all things Irish” that St. Patrick’s Day typically engenders, Americans would be better off remembering the Irish diaspora’s troubled history and the fact that in his Irish-American opinion, “misery is our currency.” For Egan, this means focusing on the various famines that drove the Irish to leave Ireland in the first place, and the often brutal conditions that greeted them in places like the mines of Butte.Although I appreciate Egan’s point about infusing the holiday with “real” Irish and Irish American history, he misses the point that from its very beginnings, St. Patrick’s Day in the United States was about playing up the good and ignoring the bad. In the nineteenth century, Irish American leaders praised Protestant Scots-Irish who contributed ideological ammunition to the American Revolution alongside the Irish Catholic foot soldiers who died for the Union Army.
I think that St. Patrick’s Day would best be refitted as an ecumenical holiday celebrating all immigrants and their contributions, as an editorial from MIT’s newspaper argued a number of years back [http://www-tech.mit.edu/V118/N14/ring.14c.html]. Irish Americans could maintain their special connection to the holiday by presenting their forbearers as the first significant non-Anglo, non-Protestant, and non-coerced migrant group to come to the United States. In this regard, the Irish had to bear many of the burdens (although not all) that immigrants from around the world would later face.
If activism can be introduced into this new-fangled holiday: even better. Although in the past decade a greater number of Irish immigrants have left the United States to return to Ireland and take advantage of the country’s thriving economy than have come here, as an article in the San Francisco Chronicle notes, there are still approximately 50,000 undocumented Irish immigrants living in the United States [http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/03/15/IRISH.TMP]
. Activists in San Francisco have sought to use St. Patrick’s day as a forum and opportunity to discuss immigration reform and the fact that undocumented immigrants do not only come from Mexico and other Latin American countries, despite popular conceptions. I’ll drink a beer to that.
Soon after diplomatic relations were established in 1950, the first tiny wave of Vietnamese students arrived in Poland. Due to the protracted armed conflict in Indochina many of them decided to stay. The failures of Poland’s so-called “real socialism” did not offer many economic opportunities in Poland, but it did offer hope for change. Over the next twenty years the numbers of Vietnamese students and professionals increased. But the major influx of the Vietnamese people to Poland came later, along with democratic changes in Poland in the 1990s.
In 2001 the Polish Office for Repatriation and Foreigners counted as many as 40 thousand Vietnamese living in Poland. Today's estimates suggest their number from 30 to 50 thousand, third only to France (500 thousand) and Germany (100 thousand). However, in a recent census, only 1,808 declared their nationality as Vietnamese and only 436 as having Polish citizenship. (A total of 775,000 people in Poland did not declare any nationality at all.) http://www.stat.gov.pl/cps/rde/xbcr/gus/PUBL_PUBL_Demographic_yearbook_of_Poland_2007.pdf
The reasons for giving ambiguous answers are complex but the single most important factor is Polish government’s very restrictive visa policies. Although the numbers of deported Vietnamese nationals are relatively low, the threat of forced repatriation to Vietnam is enough to influence any “head count” of this group. Especially that the repulsive immigrant policies resulted in the increase of the illegal immigration. At the same time, Poland’s attractiveness was further elevated with the country’s accession to the European Union. http://www.cafebabel.com/en/article.asp?T=T&Id=8039
For some, Poland is just a transit point en route westward but for many others Poland is “a promised land”. The European Commission’s report of 2003 informs us that only Ukrainians were granted more permits for settlement in Poland than the Vietnamese, followed by Russians, Armenians, and Belarusians. (http://ec.europa.eu/justice_home/doc_centre/asylum/statistics/docs/2003/country_reports/poland.pdf )
Migration and trade have developed in tandem. The single largest Vietnamese company in Poland sells its products not only in EVERY Polish grocery store but also Europe-wide. (http://www.tan-viet.com.pl/index.php?mod=ofirmie&kat=&id=&lang=en).
The Vietnamese embassy in Warsaw points to an increase in bilateral trade from $20 to $330 million between 1992 and 2006. http://www.vietnamembassy-poland.org/nr070521165956/news_object_view?newsPath=/vnemb.vn/cn_vakv/euro/nr040819110934/ns070919142436
How are the Vietnamese perceived by Poles? The majority of Poles regard the Far East newcomers as hardworking, intelligent and honest (E-polityka; TNS OBOP, Jan. 2008). An article by Nguyen Thi Hoa, Wiktor Kaspian and Pham Viet Anh found the Vietnamese immigrants are predominantly highly educated professionals, not always able to secure a job that would enable them to employ their professional skills (http://nigdywiecej.org.pl/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=93&Itemid=15). Many have been trained in engineering and art. Some even hold Ph.D.s in Polish language arts!
The first poll that asked Poles about their attitude towards the Vietnamese people (not the immigrants) was conducted in 1998. It showed that among various nations, they were close to the middle of the ranking, the most liked being the Americans, the least – the Gypsies (Chart on page 2 http://www.cbos.pl/SPISKOM.POL/1998/K_158_98.PDF ) The same poll in 2007 showed that Polish attitudes towards the Vietnamese had become less favorable ( Chart on page 3 http://www.cbos.pl/SPISKOM.POL/2007/K_144_07.PDF ), perhaps as a result of increased immigration.
The most prevalent stereotype of the Vietnamese in Poland is that of a market stall merchant, fast food bar or restaurant owner. The image comes from the single largest Vietnamese community in Poland residing in Warsaw. Dariusz Bartoszewicz and Tomasz Kwaśniewski of Gazeta Wyborcza estimated that in the "Deccenary markeplace Stadium” alone there are over a thousand trading booths operated by Vietnamese retailers. There are over 30 big restaurants and 300 bars in Warsaw operated Vietnamese immigrants. As a result, a majority of Warsaw residents incorrectly believe Asians to be the single biggest immigrant community in Poland. (In fact it is peoples from the former USSR.) Three-quarters of respondents to a poll admitted that they either shopped or ate at the Asian facilities. http://miasta.gazeta.pl/warszawa/1,34862,2956397.html
According to Teresa Halik, many poles perceive Vietnamese migrants as a tight, hermetic and isolated group. (In fact, she titled her book--written with Ewa Nowicka--The Vietnamese in Poland. Integration or Isolation?). Warsaw is still not London; Vietnamese people admit they do feel they are outside the mainstream of Polish society.
Still, one can find Polish initiatives aimed at discovering and promoting Vietnamese culture. One of the major Polish dailies „Gazeta Wyborcza” helped to promote an event organized by Polish young artists’ organization. A cultural project “Viet Nam at Play” included a “Vietnamese village” staged in the Warsaw Mokotów Fields. The event promoted the painters, photographers, musicians and naturally - the cuisine of Vietnam. Poles attended a “Vietnamese week” in October of 2005 and a film documentary by Anna Gajewska “the Warsavians” about the Vietnamese living in Warsaw. (http://www.warszawiacy.art.pl/film.php) (The trailers from a Vietnamese movie festival can be viewed at http://www.arteria.art.pl/5smakow/smak_gorzki.php ).
Scholarly research on the Vietnamese in Poland has followed. Teresa Halik has recently published The Migrant Vietnamese Community in Poland, which focuses on state policy and public opinion. She concluded that the Vietnamese are not only a “stable element of ethnic landscape of Poland, but also present one of the major and better-organized communities of immigrants aiming to stay in Poland”.
Krystyna Iglicka of the Center for International Relations in Warsaw has even observed that: “Today, Poland is probably the most striking example of a Central European country that is gradually shifting from a major sending country into a country of net-immigration and transit migration.” (http://www.migrationinformation.org/Profiles/display.cfm?ID=302 )
Clearly, Poland is undergoing rapid change. Many Poles are ready to open their homeland to strangers. However, 65% of them state that they have not yet personally met an immigrant. It can only be hoped that they will not change their attitudes to foreigners as they do so.
A tragic traffic accident this week has provided yet another opportunity for an outpouring of anger directed toward undocumented immigrants.
]]> No one can be unmoved by the deaths of several children after a twenty-three year old woman apparently ran a stop sign and crashed into a school bus in Cottonwood, Minnesota. However, it is chilling to see the speed with which the tragedy has been exploited as an opportunity to rant against all undocumented immigrants, and—in some cases—against all immigrants. A colleague in south Central Minnesota sent out a plaintive email today decrying the media frenzy and the many loud demands to “send them all home”. What is the relevance, he asks, of her ethnicity or her immigration status? Ironically, the relevance of the case lies not in the characteristics of the driver, but in current legislation that denies drivers licenses (and thus opportunities for driver education and automobile insurance) to undocumented residents. ]]>When it comes to elections, immigrants have opinions too. Over one third of the foreign-born in the U.S. are citizens. How does this election year look to them?
Immigrants have many reasons for becoming citizens. Some want to sponsor the immigration of relatives. Others want to act now in order to avoid paying fees for naturalization that have increased rapidly in the past few years. Others want to share the citizenship of their children or to express loyalty to their new home.
At least some recently naturalized citizens also admit that an important motive has been the desire to participate in American politics and especially to express their choices in the upcoming presidential election. Historically, naturalizations have increased during presidential election years.
Newly naturalized Latino voters are particularly concerned about immigration policy in this year’s elections. Recent news reports quote immigrants as feeling upset by local and federal campaigns that target illegal immigrants: they maintain that too often the result of these campaigns is hostility expressed against all Spanish-speakers or against any person who “looks Mexican,” regardless of legal status or citizenship. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/05/us/politics/05hispanic.html?em&ex=1202360400&en=90b43483ea8b4d1f&ei=5087%0A
Even more than other Americans, newly naturalized citizens pay attention to candidates’ positions on immigration policy. Some claim not to find much difference between front-runners Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John McCain, all of whom favor some version of the immigration reform bill that failed to gain Congressional approval in 2007. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-op-dustup5feb05,0,50671.story Still, Hillary Clinton seems to be doing particularly well in attracting the votes of Hispanic voters, both old and new: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18718803
Overall, too, those candidates who focused most intensively on the threat to Americans of illegal immigration have not done well in this primary season. Cuban-Americans in Florida were especially vigorous in supporting for McCain over Mitt Romney, who ended his presidential campaign last week. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120217267552142823.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
Ironically, it appears that newly naturalized immigrant voters are in other ways not all that different from longer-time American citizens. Polls in 2007 showed that between half and four-fifths of all American citizen support the creation of a pathway to legalization for undocumented workers.
Minnesota’s foreign-born population has always been somewhat distinctive. So are the scholars who have studied immigration and refugees at the University of Minnesota.
The University of Minnesota has good claims to having actually “invented” the scholarly study of immigration way back in the 1920s. Here at the U, it was historians who began the study, focusing on some the groups that made their own state distinctive. Blegen Hall, on the University of Minnesota west bank campus, is named after one of these historians, Theodore Blegen, the son of Norwegian immigrants who specialized in the study of Norwegian migration to the United States. His colleague in history, George Stephenson—a descendant of and specialist on Swedish immigrants--offered what may have been the first immigration history course in the country in the early 1920s and published one of the first general introductions to the history of immigration his book in 1926. Blegen and Stephenson were early practictioners of what is today called “transnational” history. Both lived and taught for in the homelands of their ancestors; they also attracted graduate students from abroad during their long careers at Minnesota.
By the 1960s, younger historians hired by Blegen’s and Stephenson’s generation took up the study of immigration anew, focusing on the immigrants from southern and Eastern Europe who were attracted at the turn of the twentieth century to the mines, industries and cities of the Great Lakes economy. These new historians—Rudy Vecoli, Hy Berman, Clarke Chambers, Timothy Smith—helped to found important research collections, including the Immigrant Archives which eventually became the Immigration History Research Center (IHRC). The IHRC soon also began to collect documents and encourage scholarship that focused on the shift from labor migrations to refugees arriving from war-torn Europe after 1945.
As new waves of refugees began to re-shape Minnesota’s population in the 1970s and 1980s, a third generation of scholars quickly recognized scholarly opportunities and organized the Center for Refugee Studies. During its two decades existence, the center collected rich materials both on refugees from Southeast Asia and on the organizations that worked with these newcomers. Its archives are now housed in Andersen library at the IHRC.
Today, over 100 scholars at the University of Minnesota study migration or the cultural pluralism that accompanies histories of migration. For over 90 years, a distinctive “Minnesota” school of scholarship on immigrant and refugee life has used the changing population dynamics of its home state to grapple with issues of continuing importance not merely to the region but to the nation.
Interested in reading more about the “Minnesota school? http://ihrc.umn.edu/publications/pdf/MinnesotaSchool-1.pdf
]]>Prompted by the approaching holiday air travel season (still a new thing for most Poles), I began to wonder about the people first traveling home to Poland for Christmas from their new homes elsewhere in Europe before returning again to New Year’s parties with their new friends in London, Stockholm or Madrid.
In March 2007 the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs asked the Institute of Public Affairs to prepare a socio-demographic analysis of Polish job migration within the European Economic Area before and after Poland joined the EU (May 1st 2004).
http://www.msz.gov.pl/files/docs/DKiP/ekspertyza-isp-finalny%2024%2004%2007.pdf
The results are the same. For the last 3 years, it has been is the young, the educated, and the articulate that leave Poland. Open job markets in the West (except for Germany, Austria, Belgium, Luxemburg) lure the young. According to a study cited in the UKIE’s report 32% of Polish respondents under age 24 declared a willingness to leave Poland. By contrast, only 20% of Poland’s unemployed and 22% of Poland’s blue collar workers declared their willingness to seek employment abroad.
Is this a “brain drain”? With higher education still free in Poland, many get their diplomas and leave in order to wash dishes in British, Irish, Swedish or Spanish restaurants and bars. Conversely, Polish news magazines feature stories of the most successful migrants who have begun careers in engineering, banking, and science.
Some Europeans have even suggested that the EU create a “Blue Card” policy. (Does that sound familiar to American readers familiar with “green cards”—which are actually not green at all?) It should--for the blue card proposed by the European Commission on October 23rd would offer two years legal residence and work permits in any EU country but only for a highly-qualified non-EU citizen. Upon the completion of the two year period, it would be possible to move to another EU country, provided a job offer is secured, or one would have to return to his/her country of origin. Hence the big difference between green and blue.
http://euro.pap.com.pl/palio/html.run?_Instance=cms_euro.pap.pl&_PageID=1&s=szablon.depesza&dz=szablon.depesza&dep=72291&data=&lang=PL&_CheckSum=1799484197
It is not easy for the European Union to compete with the U.S. or Canada to attract well educated immigrants. For example, EuroPap found 85% of well-educated immigrants from the Maghreb countries residing either in the U.S. or Canada. At the same time highly qualified immigrant employees constitute 1.72% of EU’s workforce (the comparable figure is 9.9% in Australia 9.9%, 7.3% in Canada).
Many Poles see this “blue card” proposal as restrictive in yet another way since it protects but also potentially drains the educational resources of newly admitted member-countries such as Poland. If a company receives a job application from an engineer from India, it would be able to employ him with a “blue card” only if no Polish or Hungarian engineer applied. Poles do apply for such highly qualified jobs since they can earn 10 times what they would for the performance of similar tasks in their country of origin.
To read more on this initiative go to European Commission’s webpage
So is Polish exodus to Western Europe just another wave of Polish emigration, comparable to early migrations of laborers to France or the United States. Not quite. Today’s departers often expect to return and it is easy for them to do so. Migrating within the EU they need not give up their Polish citizenship. Maintaining close family ties poses no major troubles. In my view, a person moving from Gdansk to Dublin is little different than an American moving from Detroit to a better job in Seattle.
Over the next few weeks the new cheap airlines, that have opened direct connections between the Old and New Europe, will once more carry loads of people who want to be HOME for Christmas. Some will soon return for good. Others will choose to remain in the West and thus add to the new wave of well educated, predominantly young people who no longer tend to think of themselves as Poles only, but rather consider themselves Europeans of Polish origin.
In Europe, the times are definitely a-changing!
Aliens can be deported; citizens cannot. In a “nation of immigrants,” families routinely include both aliens and citizens. That’s why deportation so often raises troubling issues.
The case is not an unusual one. Recent raids have revealed that about two-thirds of unauthorized immigrant workers are parents. About two-thirds of those children are citizens who cannot be deported with them. Experts estimate that three million American children have deportable parents. Unlike other citizens, furthermore, these children cannot sponsor their parents’ applications for family reunification visas: only adults can do that.
Deporting large numbers of “illegals” sounds easy but it isn’t. When deported parents cannot support their American-based children from abroad, as many cannot, (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2007/11/18/AR2007111800871.html), the children inevitably become dependent on social services.
Angry commentators who insist “illegal immigrants” are using their children as “human shields” must either accept American responsibility for the long-term care of the citizen children of deported parents or insist that children inherit their parents’ guilt.
Few Americans will easily accept the punishment of children for parental errors, especially when most evidence suggests children of foreign-born parents are meeting or exceeding the integration of earlier generations into the American mainstream. The vast majority possesses strong English language skills. Immigrants’ children do as well in school as other low-income American children. Recent reports note immigrant children’s involvement even in mainstream groups like the Boys Scouts and Girl Scouts.
In fact, the angriest few are willing to punish children. To date, however, the 14th Amendment to the Constitution—passed to guarantee birthright citizenship to emancipated slaves—has been upheld by the courts for the children of even hated and excluded foreigners. Denying or revoking the citizenship of the children of unauthorized immigrants would require constitutional amendment. It’s unlikely that many Americans would support this kind of tinkering with the 14th Amendment.