Immigration Wars: Forging an American Solution (14 page)

What the demographics do mean, of course, is that Americans will grow increasingly multiracial. Reform opponents raise the same tired arguments their predecessors raised for two and a half centuries: that the newcomers will not assimilate; they won’t learn English; they are disproportionately criminal, welfare-dependent,
and subversive of American values. History repeatedly has proven those objections misplaced. Where would we be if we had allowed those arguments to prevail in the nineteenth century or at any time since then? Certainly, we would not be the most powerful, prosperous, and generous nation on earth. Nor will we continue to be if we allow those arguments to prevail today.

Although today’s immigration wars are eerily reminiscent of those that have been waged throughout American history, today’s circumstances are different from anything we’ve seen in the past, in two major ways. For the first time, our nation faces a population decline that we may not be able to reverse without immigration. Second and relatedly, the diminishing ratio of workers and those whose social services depend on them is shrinking alarmingly. As a result, it has never been more important to America’s future to get our immigration policy right.

Indeed, continuing to get our immigration policy wrong threatens to add burdens to our economy rather than to disperse them. Traditionally, American immigration policy was geared toward bringing in the brightest and hardest-working immigrants. Today, work-based visas account for only a small fraction of American newcomers. Meanwhile, other countries are reshaping
their immigration policies and putting out a welcome mat to replicate past American success. It is America whose immigration policy today fails to reflect its own values and history.

Our nation’s future depends in large measure on fixing our broken immigration policy. We need to correct the mistakes of the past but must not heed calls of immigration critics to throw the baby out with the bathwater. We must ensure that the immigrants who come do so for the right reasons—and once they are here, that they assimilate into American culture and heed American values. But we must also recognize that throughout our history, immigrants indeed have assimilated and have strengthened our nation in every imaginable way. That is the type of immigration we need in America’s third century.

Our nation was forged by the immigrant experience, and an American immigration policy that addresses the unique needs of the twenty-first century must build upon that foundation and embrace newcomers who will help our nation continue to prosper and lead the world. By setting aside partisan division, embracing our nation’s values and its immigrant roots, and learning the lessons of our own history, we can help restore American greatness and set a future course of freedom and prosperity.

^“
I
T’S TIME TO RETIRE THE AMERICAN DREAM
.”

So wrote the commentator Robert J. Samuelson in a September 2012
Washington Post
column titled “The American Dream’s Empty Promise.”
¹
The term has become so devoid of meaning and so illusory, Samuelson argued, that we “ought to drop it from our national conversation. It’s a slogan that shouldn’t survive—but it will endure precisely because it’s an exercise in make-believe.”

What a sobering commentary on the state of our nation. And certainly in terms of economic opportunity, of the next generation climbing to greater heights than their parents’, it may reflect reality, unless and until we change it.

But immigrants are one group of people for whom the American Dream remains vibrant and tangible. Millions of people continue to aspire to American citizenship, and make tremendous sacrifices and take enormous risks to attain it, in order to earn a share of the American Dream. For them it is not a slogan; it is the purpose. And because they cherish the opportunity to become Americans, immigrants will always be necessary to keep the American Dream alive.

Perhaps more than any other public policy issue, one’s position on immigration often depends on one’s encounters with immigrants. And certainly no public policy directly touches a greater number of lives than immigration—not just for those who come here, but those who greet them and those who are left behind. In formulating American immigration policy, given our nation’s values, we must keep the human dimension first and foremost in our minds.

In a June 2012 speech to the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, Senator Marco Rubio made this point very eloquently:

The people who are against illegal immigration and make that the core of their argument view it only as a law and order issue. But we know it’s much more than that. Yes,
it is a law and order issue, but it’s also a human issue. These are real people. These are human beings who have children, and hopes, and dreams. These are people that are doing what virtually any of us would do if our children were hungry, if their countries were dangerous, if they had no hope for their future. And too often in our conversation about immigration that perspective is lost. Who among us would not do whatever it took to feed our children and provide for them a better future?
²

Even though many generalizations can be made about immigrants, there is no typical immigration story. Among millions of immigrants there are an equal number of individual stories. And those stories impact millions of others.

Here are seven short stories of immigrants and the lives that have been touched by them that illustrate the impact immigrants have on America today.

Nina Shokraii Rees was born in 1968 in Tehran, Iran.
³
Her father was the head of the biology department for Tehran University,
and her mother worked for Iran Airlines. They led a tranquil life until the shah was overthrown in 1979 and replaced by the current theocratic regime. The Shokraii family hoped that the regime change was temporary, even as some of her father’s colleagues were killed or disappeared.

Nina’s French international school was shut down. She went instead to a neighborhood public school where girls were segregated from boys and every subject was connected to Islam. Life changed for everyone, especially girls and women, who now had to cover themselves. The regime “discouraged any manifestation of personality or beauty,” Nina recalls.

Every Friday, Nina would go on a ski trip. The bus ride was the only time girls could associate with boys. Once on the slopes, the sexes were segregated again, and the girls had to ski fully covered. Nina had heard of many women and girls being arrested for not being sufficiently covered but didn’t think it would happen to her. One time she skied down a slope and her jacket didn’t cover her knees. A twelve-year-old Nina and several others were arrested.

The experience was harrowing. Nina’s parents had no idea she was in jail. She wasn’t even allowed to call them. She had no idea where she was and no one told her what to expect. After
three days, Nina was interrogated and released. “That was what prompted the exit” of her family from Iran, she says.

The family moved first to France. But eventually her father, who had studied at the University of Florida and the University of North Carolina as a Fulbright Scholar, was offered a position at Virginia Tech. But he had to start from scratch in an entry-level teaching position in the biology department.

For Nina, the transition was difficult. English was her third language. And although Blacksburg, Virginia, was a college town, it also was extremely rural. She was only one of two foreign students in her high school—“everyone else,” Nina says, “was native-born American and many had never ventured beyond southwest Virginia.” And many didn’t take kindly to an Iranian girl in their midst during the hostage crisis. One student vandalized her locker with acid.

She finished high school as quickly as possible, and despite not yet having fully mastered English, was admitted to Virginia Tech, largely on the basis of acing the Advanced Placement (AP) exam in French. “I got mired in the freedom of college and the love of learning,” Nina remembers. “But I used the opportunity to assimilate more than learn.”

After college, “I didn’t know what I wanted to do except to
move out of Blacksburg,” Nina says. She moved with a friend to Washington, D.C., where she worked in the suburbs at Neiman-Marcus. There a customer urged her to try for a job on Capitol Hill. Since moving to America, she was very interested in political science and civics since “the system here is so much more rational than Iran’s.” She placed her résumé in every congressional mailbox and got a volunteer job interning twice weekly for Senator John Warner of Virginia. From there she was hired as a staff assistant for Representative Porter Goss of Florida. Meanwhile, she earned a master’s degree at George Mason University. There she developed what she describes as conservative views. Life in Iran had taught her that “people should be able to make decisions on their own, and government shouldn’t be so centralized.”

Nina took a position at Americans for Tax Reform, where she discovered her passion for education policy while working on an unsuccessful California school voucher initiative. She met leading education reformers such as Arizona legislator Lisa Graham Keegan and Jersey City, New Jersey, mayor Bret Schundler. “Something about that issue really resonated with me,” Nina explains. “It’s so simple. If you’re four years old and you don’t have access to a good school, you’re out of luck.”

After working on school choice at the Institute for Justice, Nina was hired by Secretary of Education Rod Paige in 2002 to help lead a new office for educational innovation and improvement. After leaving in 2006, she became a senior vice president at Knowledge Universe, a for-profit company focused on early childhood education and online learning. In 2012, she was hired as president and CEO of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. Her goal is “making sure every child has access to a high-quality education regardless of where they live or their economic circumstances.”

Nina says her experiences in Iran have “everything to do with the way I approach my work and life.” She identifies with children who face educational challenges, knowing that so many are unable to take advantage of opportunities. She is determined to give kids more choices and to free the educational system to allow greater innovation. “We talk about these things in terms of ideas and policies,” Nina reflects, “but through school choice you can make an immediate difference in a child’s life.”

Nina applied for citizenship when she was twenty-one, and the process seemed to take forever. “Every time I went into the immigration office I felt like I was in a third-world country, like I
was back in Iran.” The system was bureaucratic, impersonal, and inefficient. She laments that many who try to navigate the system lack the resources she had.

But she bristles at the notion that the American Dream should be retired. “I wake up every day believing” in the dream, she declares. Had she remained in Iran or even France, Nina is certain she would never have had the opportunities she has had here. “If you have the drive and desire to make it, there is nothing that can stop you.”

“That’s exactly why you need more immigrants!” Nina exclaims. “They’re the ones who believe in the American Dream. Many Americans take it for granted.”

Nina Shokraii Rees never will take it for granted. And with her passion and determination, she will make her adopted nation one where many more children’s dreams can become a reality through expanded educational opportunities.

If all you knew was her name—Laura Osio Khosrowshahi—you might assume that her long struggle to attain American citizenship must have something to do with Middle Eastern origins.
And indeed there are a large number of such stories. But in fact Laura’s story is the far more remarkable one of a young woman whose family has lived in America nearly as long as it has been a nation—and whose struggle is to regain her American roots. It is a classic yet perverse story of a truly dysfunctional American immigration system.
⁴

The Osio family first settled in Mexico when it was still New Spain. Some of the family members emigrated to California in the late 1700s and lived there when it was acquired by the United States. The Osios freely traveled back and forth between California and Mexico, and the family was truly binational.

Laura’s father was a United States citizen born in Denver. By then the family was physically divided by immigration laws. Laura’s paternal grandmother wanted to raise her family in a Catholic country, so they moved to Mexico when Laura’s father was seven. Because American law didn’t permit dual citizenship, he renounced his U.S. citizenship when he turned eighteen, but he later reclaimed it when the law was changed to allow it. Like his forebears, Laura’s father had roots in both Mexico and the United States. He owned a home in Los Angeles, and as Laura remembers, “he never failed to say he was born in Denver.” Laura’s mother was a Mexican citizen.

Laura was born in Mexico but spent every Easter, Christmas, and summer in the United States starting when she was three months old. She was bilingual from the beginning. From as early as she can remember, Laura was “obsessed with the Constitution,” and the type of free government it established. “It treated the individual with so much dignity and respect. It allowed the individual to attain his full potential. It said so much in so few words,” Laura explains. “As a Mexican, I was always aware of the fact that if I was arrested, I would be presumed guilty until proven innocent. With the U.S. Constitution, it was completely the opposite.”