I had planned on a more frivolous entry for today, but Monday I read Barbara Shelley’s commentary on The Missouri Independent website and I think it is far more important than anything I could offer. She was an respected reporter with the Kansas City Star in my reporting days and remains a respected observer of our times. In this entry, she puts human faces onto the victims of President Trump’s vicious immigration policies that show no concern for who is hurt by them—people or our nation.
Once in America, immigration was a sign of our greatness, of our country’s promise, and our ancestors (yours and mine) came here to seek it. Now those people are villainized with lies from our President.
It is heart-breaking for one who memorized in his school days Thomas Wolfe’s Promise of America to read Barbara’s description of what President Trump has brutally cancelled in our national character. Perhaps you memorized it, too:
” So, then, to every man his chance—to every man, regardless of his birth, his shining, golden opportunity—to every man the right to live, to work, to be himself, and to become whatever thing his manhood and his vision can combine to make him — this, seeker, is the promise of America.”
Here’s her commentary about the crushing of that promise:
Friends and family arrived bearing flowers. Smiling volunteers pointed the way to seats.
Everyone loves a naturalization ceremony. I attended one recently at a branch of the Kansas City Public Library and watched 71 new American citizens swear allegiance to the Constitution of the United States. Even more immigrants had taken the oath earlier in the day.
“This room is full of the most brilliant minds that the world knows,” Wasim Khan, a cultural leader, told the group. “You guys are the teachers. You know what it takes to be here.”
After the ceremony, as League of Women Voters volunteers swooped in to invite the new citizens to register, I asked a few people how long they have been in America.
Eight years, 12 years, too many years to count.
Naturalized citizenship is a long, expensive process and everyone who achieves it does so through a combination of grit and good fortune.
I’ve attended several of these ceremonies over the years to cheer on people I’ve had the privilege to know.
One was a piano teacher who came here from Kyrgyzstan to study at American universities. Several others arrived as refugees. They overcame language barriers and all the hardships of poverty to arrive at their naturalization ceremonies as educated, hardworking contributors to their communities.
The recent ceremony was no different from others I’ve witnessed, but I couldn’t summon the usual measure of joy.
Rather, I kept wondering what a naturalization ceremony will look like once the xenophobic policies of the Trump administration have been fully brought to bear.
Last year, I signed up to participate on a team that would sponsor a refugee family, in cooperation with a resettlement agency. I told myself that it would be a satisfying act of resistance in case Donald J. Trump won the presidency.
Along with others, I welcomed a family of eight at Kansas City’s airport on a snowy evening 12 days before Trump’s inauguration. They were exhausted and one person was ill but they were here and we were ready to introduce them to America.
We had no idea how difficult that was going to be.
Within a week of taking office, Trump had slammed the door to new refugee admissions and cut off funding for the families who had recently arrived.
The resettlement community had anticipated the first move. It was gobsmacked by the second. With an executive order, Trump wiped out money that was supposed to pay for rent and utilities, medical screenings and other services for hundreds of people who had entered the United States legally in the last 90 days.
Agencies went into emergency fundraising mode, but Trump’s action was crippling. The agency I volunteer for lost nearly $1 million of federal money it had counted on. Part of that amount was already spent in rent deposits and other costs.
It’s nearly impossible to cover a gap like that through donations. Within weeks two agencies in Kansas City laid off close to half their staffs. A smaller nonprofit laid off its entire refugee services staff. A mid-Missouri agency shut down its resettlement program.
My role in the resistance now includes scanning job ads for something that might work for adults who speak only a little English and will have to ride to work on the bus. I’ve become familiar with the difficulties of booking an appointment at the local Social Security office — and good luck once Elon Musk gets through with that program.
The family that my team works with was routed from their ancestral home and spent years in limbo in a neighboring country. The adults are fully aware that the leader of the United States does not want them here.
Their status is legal, but they are afraid. They grieve family members left behind in a refugee camp, clinging to hopes of a reunion that may not happen in this lifetime.
In my head, I construct sentences that begin with “at least.”
At least they aren’t here on humanitarian parole status — a category of immigrants more endangered than refugees.
At least they have a place to stay, a small rental house in a hollowed-out part of Kansas City. A recent New York Times story reported on newly arrived refugees in St. Louis languishing in motels on highway interchanges because the resettlement agency there was unable to pay apartment leases.
At least members of my family have friends. Immigrants from their home country have sought them out and embraced them.
The situation could always be worse. But it is bad enough.
Refugee resettlement is a way of participating in the global good. Therefore, it is not a priority in Trump’s “America First” agenda.
The immigrants whom I witnessed as they became naturalized citizens last month represented 36 nations, including some of the most troubled, like Haiti, Somalia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
They had cleared a high bar to get to the ceremony. All of them passed a civics test that most Americans would find daunting. They were deemed to be of “good moral character,” a standard that we don’t necessarily demand from our nation’s leaders.
Congratulations to the new Americans. May we always find a path for them.
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Or, may we rediscover the greatness that provided a path for them and have the courage to admit the disgrace we have allowed our President to bring to the Promise of America.