Lamm Rebuttal

I was recently sent a copy of a speech given in 2005 by then Governor of Colorado, Richard (Dick) Lamm by conservative relatives. I’m not going to reprint it here but it made me so angry that I felt I had to try a rebuttal. I am sure that greater and better minds than mine have done this already, but I need to express my outrage at the faulty assumptions that he makes. I also researched former Governor Lamm. He is a democrat with serious Libertarian leanings who ran on the Reform Party bill. Most of his other views would appeal my relatives—his positions on abortion, Social Security and Medicare, and the environment to name but a few. Because my relatives are senior citizens. You will often find people clamoring for other people’s protections to be taken away, but never their own. Again, I repeat, I am not an expert. I have researched these topics only lightly. This is my opinion, but what people forget when a man like Lamm stands up to speak, is that his too, is only an opinion. I will try not to comment on things about which I know little. I am, however, an immigrant, legal and for a brief time through no fault of my own, illegal. *** Lamm was praising a book called Mexifornia, by a man the article misnames as Victor Hanson Davis. His real name is Victor Davis Hanson. They are odd bed fellows as Professor Hanson is a neoconservative historian. Hanson believes that immigration, both legal and illegal is destroying California (emphasis mine). Lamm’s first point is that bilingualism is inherently destructive. He does add that “It is a blessing for an individual to be bilingual; however, it is a curse for a society to be bilingual.” I will say that I do believe immigrants to America should make a great effort to learn English. This is not for the country’s benefit, but for their own. Their lives will generally be easier, more doors will be open to them, and success in their chosen fields will be less difficult. That said, my neighbors have been here for nearly 40 years. They were born in Italy. Their English is broken at best, at worst, incomprehensible. They own a successful iron works and their children are strongly bilingual. Lamm cites Canada, Belgium, Malaysia and Lebanon as countries facing “crises of national existence.” Having recently driven through Quebec to Montreal, I was surprised to hear it was a region on the edge of collapse. I am not going to downplay the times of turmoil that each of these countries have faced, but I would not take the alarmist tone that the former Governor employs. Evidently he was known as Governor Gloom during his term. Yes, there are conflicts, but he does not cite countries where hegemony has not led to peace. He does not mention religion, not language as the major part of those conflicts. He does not mention the turmoil faced by countries that attempt to repress with force the separate identities of their people. Second, former Governor Lamm says, “Invent ‘multiculturalism’ and encourage immigrants to maintain their culture. Make it an article of belief that all cultures are equal. That there are no cultural differences. Make it an article of faith that the Black and Hispanic dropout rates are due solely to prejudice and discrimination by the majority.” I believe he should do some research on the term. Just a brief search on my part leads to this quote by William James in his Pluralistic Universe (1909) "…the idea of a plural society would be crucial in the formation of

philosophical and social humanism," that the embracing of a multicultural society could help build a better, more egalitarian society. How does Lamm propose that we rank cultures? By age? “Americanism” should then be abolished. By productivity? Of what? Goods? Art? Peace? The production of McDonald’s and the export of Brittany Spears? His attempt to say that Black and Hispanic dropout rates are somehow due to their respective cultures is spurious at best. By that standard, then the high rate of alcoholism and drug abuse among white suburban youths is due to American culture. Is Paris Hilton’s behavior or Ted Kaczynski’s due to “American” culture? Yes and no. The answers to this are far to complex to sum up in a sound bite—but no politician on any side seems willing to admit that. I know of a country that believed it was one race. That its culture was superior to all others. It shut its borders for over two hundred years – in order to “protect its culture” and fostered nationalism amongst its people. When it’s border was finally forced open all that nationalism went into aggression and imperialism until it attacked a giant neighbor on November 7th, 1941. Nationalism scares me more than multiculturalism. I find it’s a misguided loyalty to that principal which leads to most wars and aggression. It’s a slippery slope from “some cultures are better than others,” to believing oneself part of the Master Race. His third point is really just a restating of the second, that diversity is the opposite of unity. He quotes Benjamin Schwarz editor and writer of a startling array of articles for The Atlantic Monthly, “The apparent success of our own multiethnic and multicultural experiment might have been achieved, not by tolerance but by hegemony. Without the dominance that once dictated ethnocentricity and what it meant to be an American, we are left with only tolerance and pluralism to hold us together.” We are left with only tolerance to hold us together? I thought that was part of the definition of tolerance. I am not naïve. I am, in fact, something of a cynic. I don’t believe that we can all hold hands and it will be all right. I am a Gen-X’er, not an ageing Boomer with visions of the summer of love in my head. I believe that multiculturalism is an admirable goal but that some give and take must be made by all cultures. Like I said, I think immigrants should make every effort to learn English. But I don’t think that means that you toss your home culture out the window. Remember my neighbors? I’ll bet you the inside of their home is a little piece of Italy. And it hasn’t made them bad Americans. That’s another thing about this rhetoric. Lamm believes that we must stop quoting George Santayana. That the past cannot tell us about where we should go in the future. I don’t agree with that. You see, I’ve heard these things before. About the Irish, and the Italians, and the Chinese, and the Vietnamese…and on and on. That they are destroying America. That they have disgusting habits. That the country is going to hell because of them and not the “right” thinking Americans. Hanson’s book put forth that California would collapse in three years if immigration were not stopped. It came out in 2003. In fact, his next three points are simply continuations of his first three—that the drop out rate amongst Blacks and Hispanics is out of hand. I would argue that the very dropouts that frighten

Mr. Lamm are those who are imitating American culture the most—a culture of instant gratification, that cannot see the end result of staying in school. I would point out too that it is America’s stubborn resistance to teaching languages in elementary school that leaves us behind the world economy upon graduation. That big businesses are investing in “ethnic identity,” and the “cult of ‘Victimology.” Funny, I thought old white America was exploiting the Victimology angle just fine. Again, is that their culture or our culture handed to them on every TV station? That dual citizenship is a tool to divide loyalties and encourage diversity over unity. He cites the unity of Athens and Sparta against the Persians, but then draws the conclusion that local patriotism led to Greece’s downfall. He seems to forget that Athens and Sparta were always disparate city/states with radically different “cultures” that united briefly against a common enemy. I cannot fathom his objection to dual citizenship. I know very few people who keep it for a variety of reasons. He then says that “PCism” is keeping things from being discussed. That charges of racism stop discussion. He does not mention that Victor Davis Hanson is a part of that cabal of neoconservatives who do not permit discussion of current American foreign policy without crying traitor. *** As I said, I am not blindly naïve. I believe that immigration reform is desperately needed in this country, but not for the reasons that former Governor Lamm suggests. I know that America cannot support all of the tired, poor, huddled masses or wretched refuse of the world. But to forget the words on The Statue of Liberty, to forget that America is “Mother of Exiles,” is more dangerously un-American than anything the immigrants can bring. Most Americans have no idea how extraordinarily difficult it is to become an American citizen. It is difficult to become a citizen of any country, but I can only speak as one who has gone through the American system. I was born in the Republic of South VietNam, in a town just south of Saigon, as far as I know. I was in an orphanage for the first year and a half of my life. I was then adopted by an American Air Force Major and his wife, brought to the United States and raised as an American. Due to either the incompetence of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, or the convoluted nature of immigration laws, I did not become a citizen. Most people do not realize that foreign adoption does not make a child a citizen. If a child is adopted from a foreign country, and his/her adoptive parents do not make him/her a citizen, then at 18 he/she will find themselves an illegal immigrant—no matter how little control he/she had in the process. Many people I have met who were also adopted from VietNam during the war had to instigate citizenship proceedings after they turned 18. Believing that I had a Green Card, I filed for citizenship in 1995 as I was finishing college. After holding my paperwork for a year, the INS informed me that they had no record of my having had a Green Card and that I would have to start from scratch. At that point I had been in the country for 23 years. They told me this a month before

my wedding when I had hoped to go to the Caribbean for my honeymoon. I had to shelve those plans. Now, I believe that my parents did instigate citizenship papers for me when I was a small child, based on things in my file which I demanded from the INS under Freedom of Information, but the INS will never admit this and I have no way of proving it. I was told that my best option was to apply for citizenship as though I had entered the country to marry my husband. This meant a wait of three more years. Three years in which I could not vote, serve on jury duty or get a passport. After my citizenship was approved I had to wait a further year before my name came up to be sworn in. I was sworn in 10 months before 9/11/2001. Five years of trying to be a citizen—trying to do the right thing. Approximately $500 in fees and that was after I told them that I was not giving them more money to initiate citizenship proceedings until they gave me back my money wasted on trying to convert my non-existent Green Card, and not counting the time taken off from work and school to come to Boston and the cost of transportation. Not counting the stress and grief. This was also with English being my first language, with an excellent education behind me. I had been a valedictorian in high school. I attended Amherst College. I was precisely the kind of person to whom they would want to offer citizenship. I cannot imagine doing that when English is not your language, when you do not understand the procedures. Since 9/11 the price has increased. From approximately $100 for initial filing to $250. I believe that it would now take well over $1000 to file for citizenship and that isn’t counting translator fees and legal fees. A few years ago I began working for a firm that placed home health aides to allow the elderly to stay in their homes, rather than having to go to nursing homes. I would say that 99% of our hires were foreign born. They were all legal immigrants as I checked their backgrounds thoroughly. I encouraged every single one of them to become an American citizen, not for America, but for themselves—for the rights they would be afforded, for the protections. Yes, there were bad eggs, but for the most part, those women and men did an extraordinarily difficult job that American citizens didn’t want to do. They did it with good humor, grace and skill. Often with faith. Most of them were paying $265 dollars/year to renew their work permits because they did not have the larger fees required to become citizens. Oh, and when I did report fake ID’s to the Homeland Security Immigration Services they did NOTHING. They did not take a report from me. They did not take action, because the same person with illegal ID turned up a few months later. They told me it would be looked into and I would be interviewed. I never heard from them again. I guess they were too busy spending taxpayers’ money on new stationery. This country was based upon a few words:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Notice that it does not say that Americans are created equal, but all men. We have extended the definition of “men” in subsequent generations, to include Black men, to include women. I do not think we should limit its definition. Do you know why people want to come to America? Because in many cases if they stay where they are they will have no life. They will be murdered, or the quality of their lives will be such that they wish they could die. They have no liberty in their home lands and so they pursue happiness by coming to America. Will America cease to be a land that grants those three things?