“An immigrant nation in denial” Ellis Henican Column, amNewYork, June 25, 2010
It’s one big country — with two competing minds.
All across America, people are struggling to get their heads around the idea of immigrants, legal or otherwise.
This is strange because almost all of our ancestors came from someplace else.
But while New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg is working hard to make people appreciate the crucial role of immigrants in our economy, Arizona is jamming through a tough-as nails immigration law.
And South Carolina, which just nominated an Indian-American woman as the Republican candidate for governor, is asking crazy questions about the Civil War and whether a Sikh-turned- Christian is Christian enough.
Nikki Haley, 38, is one step away from replacing the married guy who pretended to be hiking the Appalachian Trail while he was secretly visiting his Argentine girlfriend.
On balance, that is good news. But still.
Even though Haley was born in the state, served three terms in the legislature, embraced the majority faith and has a name that doesn’t sound Indian at all, her background remains a hotly debated issue.
Phillip Bowers, the GOP chairman in Pickens County, complained that Haley “can’t seem to make up her mind about her faith.” And when the Palmetto Patriots asked her what started the Civil War, she never mentioned slavery.
“You had one side of the Civil War that was fighting for tradition, and I think you had another side of the Civil War that was fighting for change,” she said oh-so-delicately.
Hate to sound like a New York snob here. But aren’t we so much better at the immigration and diversity thing? Immigrants are people, not slogans, to us.
Here was Bloomberg Thursday, standing with some major CEOs, launching a campaign to wrestle the immigration debate away from the yahoos.
“If you want to solve the unemployment problem in America,” he said, “open the door to immigrants who will come here and create businesses. When the tide comes in, everybody’s boat rises. We need more immigrants, not less.”
As they say in South Carolina — duh!
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