Cries she with silent lips:
“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!”
Those noble words by Emma Lazarus are the last of her sonnet to the Statue of Liberty, entitled “The new Colossus”, and inscribed on a bronze plaque in its pedestal since 1903.
The world-renowned Statue of Liberty is a mighty monument standing on Liberty Island, itself south-west of the island of Manhattan. The grand, 225-ton “mother of Exiles” faces the New York harbor “as a symbol of arriving voyagers of the freedom and opportunity that were offered in the United States of America”.
For some time-and more especially these days- I have never been sure of two things. One, I’ve always wondered to how exactly did the beacon-hand of the Lady of Freedom, Miss Lazarus and America in 1903- more than a century ago- NEVER BARGAINED FOR THE TYPE OF MASSIVE INFLUX that nation has experienced over the past two to four decades.
I still feel compelled to share my thoughts on the issue having recently experienced in Brooklyn and elsewhere in the Tri-State area. I’m referring to the fact that in some parts of New York-and the U.S.A- the presence of THE IMMIGRANTS-THE MINORITIES- is overwhelming. To strangers presence and character of the “minorities” in certain U.S communities can be one of great surprise, sometimes turning to mild dismay.
During a Labour Day, two decades ago, I was taken to a Saturday-night street-fair in the small town of Elizabeth, New Jersey. Amidst the “American” people there, the lights, decorations, stalls and gaiety, for TWO BLOCKS I heard little Puerto Ricans and the (inevitable) East Europeans. AND MOST STUCK THEIR NATIVE LANGUAGES with just a sprinkling of the English to remind me that, yes, I was still in an English speaking country- the U.S.A.
It has been projected that by year 2019, say, the demography, the character, the very face and image of the U.S.A would have drastically “altered” to reflect an ethnic make-up and skin-colour kaleidoscope not as Caucasian or “white” as just twenty years before. Census figures and statistics from the Immigration and Naturalisation Service (INS) give indications, but probably don’t tell the whole visual story. Millions of undocumented “aliens” and “casual” Americans resident in the U.S.A are not on anyone’s records. One has to SEE AND HEAR the change in the population make-up to appreciate it.
Little English being spoken. The community was dominated by descendants of the Italians and Puerto Ricans.
As happened to me in Elizabeth, New Jersey, standing at a certain corner or walking down some sidewalks in Brooklyn, one is hard-put to appreciate that one is dwelling in a borough of a City once dominated by European Irish, English, Italians, Greeks, Jews and some Blacks and Puerto-Ricans, with a few enclaves of Chinese thrown in for good measure. Today’s Brooklyn projects Caribbean nationals from every conceivable territory of the region AND their Brooklyn-born off-spring. Then there are the Hispanics, not only from Puerto Rico or Mexico, but from Central and South America. Add your Chinese of the TAKEOUT/TO-GO Chinese Food fame, Koreans South-East Asians and the latest arrivals, the Russian and other East Europeans, and you have a Brooklyn as diverse, multi-ethnic and COLOURFUL as any city in Brazil or Cuba.
So as I recently mistook Haitians for Guyanese in Flatbush and could not understand any language in some subway cars, I kept asking myself and others: WHERE HAVE ALL THE ORIGINAL WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) RESIDENTS GONE? To South and North Carolina sometimes, I understand. Or to America’s mid-west, I’m not sure. I wonder how they feel about this migration business. I got an answer in a recent poll on the subject conducted by a leading media-house. “Real-real” Americans want immigration to “their” country CURTAILED- or stopped.
In a land of giddy contradictions, I was made aware of the fact that Americans Immigration policy, continually being amended, still accommodates QUOTAS for refugees from South-East Asia and elsewhere. At the same time however, law-makers are calling for more demanding, stricter criteria for those would-be immigrants queuing at the American Consulates around the world. “Fewer Cubans, Jamaicans, Guyanese, Hispanics and Mexicans, PLEASE” they seem to be saying. Perhaps that’s why Vietnam, Japan, and Eastern Europe, among other carefully-chosen parts of the world-in an apparent effort to “balance” ethnicity and colour in the land of opportunity. (MORE LATER).
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