Dan's Papers - May 15, 2009

I would like to suggest that we stop calling certain people illegal aliens. It is a horrible way to refer to people and it is inaccurate. They are not illegal people and they are not aliens from outer space here to take over the world. They are undocumented and they are immigrants. In a world where we can now refer to people as African Americans or Native Americans instead of whatever derogatory term was fashionable among bigots years ago, we can surely refer to people as people, instead of illegals and aliens. They may be here illegally by having come across a border unnoticed. That does not make them illegal people.

I am at the present time writing a historical novel about Germans involved here in America during World War II. The story is fiction, but it is based on real people, and one of them had a life experience involving "aliens" that I think is relevant to this article.

He had come to America in 1919 from Germany the old fashioned way, as many of our grandparents and great grandparents did, by stowing away on a boat. Arriving here, he simply marched down the gangplank amidst the crowd, sought out people who were already here who spoke his language, and from there made his way. For a while, he lived in a German-American neighborhood on the Upper East Side in Manhattan known as Yorkville, where both English and German was spoken.

In 1924, he joined the American Army. There was no war on. He was based in Kansas City for a while and then was transferred to San Francisco. For the next 15 years, he worked and earned a living as a waiter, a salesman, a day laborer and a factory worker. At that point, he decided he wanted to become an American citizen and so applied. Or tried to. He found he first needed to register himself as an "alien." He found this offensive, but he filled out the forms and months later he was told he could come down and take the pledge of allegiance. But he never did. He remained a German citizen and later, at the age of 83, he died.

It was an ordinary life, perhaps. But "alien" cuts both ways. Today, so many of us have come here as the children of people who came to America in all sorts of ways like he did. They jumped ship. They were taken here in chains. They hid in the back of hay wagons coming across the border from Canada. The tales of how they did this are common in the legends of many of our families, probably even in those who are currently protesting against the current wave of immigration we are experiencing.

I certainly do agree that the current wave of immigration is a problem. It is massive in scale. But people have always wanted to come to America. And if this government has dropped the ball in allowing more than the country can absorb, why is it the fault of those who got here?

And I wonder - is it more than the country can absorb? Both Democratic and Republican administrations have deliberately followed this policy at our borders.

My thinking is, if that's the way things are, accept it. Offer a smile and a wave and get on with it. If others want to demonstrate against this policy at the 7-Eleven, they can do that too. But don't harass these immigrants. You just make a fool out of yourself. And it will come back to bite you if our current administration finds a path to citizenship for them. Then - hard as it may seem - they will be Americans too. Remember your own family's stories.

Meanwhile, our current economic downturn is getting worse and worse. First, the bad numbers were said to be as bad as the recession of 1982. Next, they said they were as bad as just after World War II. Now you hear the comparison to the Great Depression.

We will get over this, but last week, I read the astonishing statement by our current Southampton Town Supervisor Linda Kabot that, after giving the matter considerable thought, she didn't think it was the Town's job to take responsibility for feeding the hungry here. She thinks that is the job of charities and churches, and maybe the Town could "help out."

She surely has her eye on the Town budget. She's new to the job and has just discovered there is a yawning deficit left to her by a prior administration that apparently felt that what happened after it left would no longer be its problem.

Nevertheless, there is plenty of history both in Southampton Town and elsewhere that, in extraordinary times, the towns and villages did exactly what Kabot says she will not do, which was to take the lead in feeding the hungry.

Richard Hendrickson, the man who measures the weather for the Weather Service every day here in Bridgehampton, remembers that during the Depression, his wife was the director of the Town department that saw to it that hungry people could find a place to go to eat. Richard is 90 years old. He's worked for the National Weather Department since he was 18. Seventy-two years in the same job, he's still doing it well.

These are extraordinary times. Kids are beginning to show up at our grammar schools without lunches because their parents have no money for food. The other day a grocer told me that people have come in quietly asking for food and he has given it to them. There're people now living in the woods in Hampton Bays.

We will get through these extraordinary times. But it is not helpful when the chief executive of our largest town says that it is not her problem when in past times such as these, it was considered otherwise.