Rice. Gum. Toothpaste.
That is what I bought at the store one day last week.
I did not buy those items as groceries for home. They were for someone else. More correctly, they were for a number of “someones” who needed them.
We are hearing many reports about refugees entering the United States either at a point of entry or somewhere else. In a number of cases, they are leaving countries where there is rampant violence which, they fear, will specifically target them.
There are, in fact, some adults and children who have been processed by United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and have been released to join relatives in other parts of our country. Two Las Cruces congregations have established formal ties with ICE to receive these individuals (and families) every couple of weeks. After a brief stop in Las Cruces, they continue on their journey. Each of these congregations collects supplies for their temporary guests. By the way, the gum is provided in case their trip includes airline travel to their next destination. I also took with me children’s books in Spanish (and bilingual books), provided by the Children’s Reading Alliance (arranged by Rhonda Karol).
Project Oak Tree is a similar program, managed by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Las Cruces, which collects supplies to support asylum seekers who await further proceedings related to their particular situations. I recently met with Bishop Oscar Cantu to speak with him before he moves to his new community of San Jose, California. He let me know that Project Oak Tree is active.
And so, for the aforementioned programs, I have donated on my own, from my own funds, rice, gum and toothpaste.
What I have discovered in my own study of American history is that newcomers to the United States were often seen by some previous arrivals as undesirable, unassimilable, and as people who would take jobs away from those who came before. That represented only one approach to those who were seeking freedom and a better life in our country. People have held many positions on this issue across a wide spectrum. That included the perspective expressed by Emma Lazarus in her poem, “The New Colossus.” Jewish immigrants who arrived from 1881 to 1921 quickly discovered that the “Goldene Medina” wasn’t as golden as they thought, but they worked hard, like those who preceded and followed them, to create for themselves a good life in America.
I have written in the Adelante in past years about my paternal grandmother, Anna Karol, being required to report for an interview at a local post office in Kansas City to fulfill the rules set by the Alien Registration Act of 1940. She naturalized in 1941 (this was the basis of my July 6, 2018 Las Cruces Bulletin column). Recently, one of my younger relatives (her grandfather was my first cousin, and her great-grandfather, my uncle, was a member of the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. for 70 years) posed several questions to me in our correspondence on www.23andme.com: Where were my mom’s parents married? When did they come to the United States? And I would add: WHY did they come to the United States? WHERE did they meet? Did they have relatives here already? I am now engaged in a search to find some answers.
Since my maternal grandparents left Lithuania and/or Poland in the late 1880s, I imagine that the increase in attacks on Jews under Czarist rule was, very possibly, one of the reasons they came to America. Fear of being a target of such violence had to be, at least, in the back of the minds of many of our recent ancestors who made their way to these shores.
Once the restrictions on Eastern European immigration tightened in 1921, and again in 1924, Jewish arrivals were limited to a trickle as compared to the previous 40 years. There was strict adherence to the quotas set for the countries with the largest numbers of Jewish immigrants in the past. At times, there were many more spaces available within the quota parameters which American officials did not permit to be filled.
There are always issues of security and safety that are related to entry into a country and to border protection. Even at Ellis Island, not everyone was allowed to stay. No matter what the attitudes of American citizens and residents, it seems that people facing oppression or violence at home still look to the United States as a nation that offers greater safety, security and opportunity than did the countries where they have lived all their lives.
I am certain that Jewish immigrants —and those from other ethnic groups—did not have it easy when they first settled in their communities. If there was already prejudice against them here before they came, I can only imagine how difficult it must have been once they began living and working in American cities and towns that begrudged their presence.
Still, in the United States, newly–arrived Jews were free from state-sponsored anti-Semitism. They could speak Yiddish and/or English in their homes. They could work. They could raise their children as Americans who valued the Jewish heritage that had accompanied them here.
I find echoes of the desires and the journeys of my own family forbears in the new arrivals of today.
I am guided by Jewish teachings about hospitality, com-passion and welcoming. I will continue to provide rice...gum…toothpaste...and prayers for the well-being of American cities and towns as places that will continue to exude warmth, love and hope.
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