“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free”
The wonderous words on the Statue of Liberty…a symbol of freedom, inspiration and hope…the very meaning of immigration.
But if truth is more important than just words, not one poetic word of this is genuinely accurate.
We have been kidding ourselves about this for a very, very long time. And the mistaken attitudes about what is really going on and on continues as if nothing can change them.
We are proud that we established America as the land of hope and opportunity; proud as if we actually opened our arms to the World for their good.
We celebrate our 250th anniversary this year. That’s not bad even though we still are youngsters compared to our European and Asian counterparts.
And yet because we committed the sin that past World powers did – we stopped educating our children – we are not the country we have been for many, many years. Just ask your Grandma what life in America was like in her time and if you are lucky enough to have a Great Grandma ask her too.
In fact, we opened our arms to immigrants because without them this country would never have survived, would never have become the greatest power in the history of the World, would never have provided opportunity, validity, education, industry, the brilliance of medical research…nothing.
We glibly, proudly say we are a nation of immigrants…but no sooner do we say it, we ignore it. It is just another self-congratulatory proclamation that makes us feel good.
The fundamental truth about immigration is that in the last 40 years our country – our government – has been unable to agree on a singular approach to an immigration policy that would encompass mutual needs and solidify an approach that works for all.
As we look at the hard truths of history keep this in mind: when educators changed the way they taught reading, the nation changed it. When educators decided to stop its heavy reliance on memorization, the nation stopped teaching that way. When math educators changed the way the teaching of arithmetic, every classroom in America complied.
But there has never been a single textbook on American history that was acceptable to a majority of those who teach it… and so no such singular approach to understanding the truths of our history exists.
THE REALITIES OF IMMIGRATION
We got serious about needing immigrants when the farming/plantation South chose to “import” black slaves from Africa to provide free labor to make its commitment to agriculture work. It would never have been able to produce as it did in competition with an industrializing North without that free labor. When the North freed the slaves – and took that free immigrant labor away – the North and South fought the bloodiest war in our history…against ourselves.
As our industrialization grew, as Ford established what became assembly lines to manufacture its cars, America opened its doors to those from Ireland, Italy, the Scandinavian countries to find employees to work in this new industry. As Texans saw the need to gain help in the growth of its agriculture and in the very maintenance of its State, it opened the door to Mexicans. New Jersey became the Garden State when it opened the door to Latinos to care for its gardens and lawns. The orthodox Jews who managed New York City’s diamond district as well as its retail shops, brought in jewelry makers from China. As America’s healthcare industry bloomed immigrants from India appeared in our hospitals as physicians as others began to dominate the physical therapy landscape. Just examples, but without that flow of immigrants the America we have known and know now would not exist.
There were moments in time when open doors were closed or subject to limitations. And there are stories of how many immigrants swam ashore to get into this country. We might laugh at this but it was true. There were the tens of thousands coming to America through Ellis Island but many more finding other ways.
If World War II opened the doors of America so that everyone worked – women, blacks, unions prospered, companies throughout the country ceasing to manufacture their products but instead building a war machine unparalleled in history. Immigrants were among them all.
America saw the development of a middle class-the first such economic status ever known.
But the War also produced the complete roundup of all Japanese Americans – citizens and otherwise – to be held in detention camps (concentration camps?) until the war’s end.
As time went on and the liberalization of America continued, our government began to find it difficult to produce legislation which put in place a coherent, acceptable, sensible and humane immigration policy understood by all. Bills were introduced, argued over and denied.
Those were the years when working together in Congress “no matter what” was the way things worked. As that working arrangement waxed and waned over time, Congress simply gave up on the effort to agree on an immigration policy. The matter was “put to bed.”
The men and women in his audience in the lobby of his New York office building shouted their approval as if they were all paid actors. And they were.
When he won the election over a Hillary Clinton who did not know how to defeat him, the best he could do was talking about closing the borders, greatly limiting the arrival of immigrants from a select number of nations – none of which were white – and building a 400 mile wall in the Southern area out of corrugated metal boxes which could be broken through with a hack saw…at the cost of one million dollars a mile.
And then when his failure to get the professional assistance he needed in a job he admitted not knowing how to do and after his seeming dismay during Covid, he lost reelection to a man who had run for President three times before and had been totally ignored, Joe Biden.
Flooded borders overwhelmed the system and any chance at bringing it under control.
Mr. Trump’s second term has revealed what has happened to the role of immigration in America. Today, long-term legal immigrants are refusing to come to work on Texas farms and in restaurants around the country and even on farms out in Suffolk County, Long Island.
The issue of ICE and Kristi Noem and immigration leaders leaving service ripples through the news every day.
Even without the Iran War or the argument with the Pope, Mr. Trump faces the midterm elections under great duress as the issue of immigration haunts America every day.
Congress is silent. No new legislation exists in most areas of government.
Congress no longer works together in any way that is detectable.
No wonder America is divided.
A CRITICAL CHANGE
This is what seems most obvious – a long as holding national political office- the House of Representatives and the Senate – can become lifetime jobs, those politicians will do everything possible to remain in office.
And so today’s Democrats who have long lost their successful supporters – blue collar working class Americans – are talking about trying to reach that audience again as mid-term elections loom.
Today’s Republicans remain in hiding certain that if they oppose the White House in any way they will be “primaried” and driven out of their jobs.
If America term-limited the President of the United States, it is time now for America to term limit our legislative bodies.
The problem is that a Constitutional Convention to make these changes will only take place if the very people we are talking about vote for it. And it becomes obvious that they will never do so.
We suggest two six-year terms for the Senate, and two four-year terms for the House.
This standard becomes known to those running for political office at this level and if they want the job they know it has a beginning and an end.
Allowances could be made for those in office now so that they may serve an additional term and that will be all.
When serving on the Supreme Court became a lifetime job men lived to be close to 50 years at the most. Today that national average is close to 80.
It is time that a Supreme Court position should be limited to perhaps 15 years so it too will not be a lifetime job and the ebb and flow of this very political position should be much shorter to fully express public opinion as it shifts and varies over the years.
These changes are major and need public support at a level that becomes a national demand. Without such a demand, ideas like this will be ignored.
FAILING
There is a national misunderstanding about what America is.
We want to believe that we are One nation indivisible.
We pledge allegiance to the idea as children and at baseball games. Our national anthem proclaims it.
Our language is the same (regional accents not withstanding). Even our money proclaims it.
None of it has any meaning at all. It is about wishful thinking and feeling good – as it should…but that’s all it is.
We have lived and worked in seven States from the deep South to New England and over the course of a lifetime in several professional positions, we have worked, though not lived in many, many more.
America is not one entity…it is fifty entities with attitudes, ideas, feelings, beliefs and activities a little bit different – one from the other.
The differences may be incidental but they are real.
What makes us feel so broken and divided now…more than at any time we can personally remember… is that tens of millions of Americans hate our government and love the man who hates it too – unless it follows his direction.
The other half wants a government which with all its foibles and activities that seem to interest only those in government – actually does care about all the people in the country.
One side cannot ignore what people in government do, including earning money illegally through “inside” investments, or about a government seeming only to care about people of color or gay and trans people at the expense of all others. Their term “woke” about government has become a curse word to them.
The other side wants America to be more like its self-image – caring and concerned and committed to providing opportunity and decent work at decent wages for all those who need it.
They care about government making certain we can educate our children and provide medical care for those who need it at at less than crippling cost.
But those government “haters” can make the case that we do not educate our children anymore and that healthcare is nothing if not very expensive and getting worse.
And they are right.
Among the industrial nations of the World, America stands 24th in healthcare, 28th in educating its children.
No single party or those representing it seems to care about education anymore.
When we suggest you ask Grandma or Great Grandma about the past they will tell you about time in school spent reading great novels, listening to classical music, actually doing art work as well as shop for boys and cooking classes for girls.
And so today, years after all of these activities were removed from our schools…there is no great American novelist, no great American painter, no great American classical music conductors like Leonard Bernstein or classical pianists or violinists, no great Broadway playwrights in dramatic or musical theater. All gone. Gone.
We talk a great deal about classes for two, three and four year olds but no one has ever studied or reported on what these classes actually teach children when those young minds are so open to learning.
We have never heard of a study of charter schools. Are those children better prepared to be in college than those attending the public schools that were supposed to adopt great charter school approaches. No one knows. Or cares.
And so today two-thirds of our children do not read at grade level and it is only slightly better in math.
But in America today all we have to do is look at commercials showing young people not wanting to marry or have more than one child and believe that their parents ought to be raising that child because they are too busy to do it.
As higher and higher tech capabilities end work possibilities of work for college graduates, we are beginning to see the closing of small colleges around the nation.
As political parties slowly disappear including our two major parties, that long held system of government is open to forces outside the system to have greater impact – whether they know enough or not.
Less is rarely more.
Unless America wakes up to what has happened, to what little impact we have left on the World and only because of our military power – which apparently may no longer be enough – where are we?
When our national knowledge has weakened so badly that would be politicians can speak of the need for common sense – even though there can be no common sense without knowledge – there can be no guessing about the future…it is here.
Do we have the strength and courage to face the truth and change it…or…
“As political parties slowly disappear including our two major parties, that long held system of government is open to forces outside the system to have greater impact – whether they know enough or not.”
Can the two major parties disappear? Seems unlikely although that would be a good thing.
5/19/2026
Our friends across the pond (The U.K.) may see their long established two party dominance (Labour; Conservative) evolve into a multi-party system, which may prove to be a good thing in the long run. Watch the political currents the next 6 months or so. A three party arrangement for America (hard right/MAGA; progressive/socialist Democrats; and a center/independent party) might be worthwhile. The Electoral College would likely have to be scrapped.
Prof. Stephen R. Rolandi
Larchmont, NY