Mother of Exiles

714,984

That was the population of Columbus, Ohio, when I moved here in 2000. In 2018, the population was estimated at 879,170. That means that in just 18 years, this city has grown by 164,186 people. It wasn't because the birth rate exceeded the death rate by that much. It's because people came here from other places...people like me.

I'm an immigrant. I'm not what you probably think of when you hear that word. I was born in the United States. I'm a citizen. I'm white (with some Seminole and very distant African ancestry). English is my first language. The language spoken by the largest non-English speaking minority in my birthplace was German (Deitsch, specifically). But I'm not from here. I wasn't born in Columbus, not even in Ohio. I didn't need a passport or a visa to come here. No guards stopped me at the edge of the city. Nobody in the government of Ohio or Columbus or Franklin County gave me permission to come here, and I didn't have to risk my life swimming across a river to sneak in.

Like most immigrants to Columbus, I came here looking for a better life. My mother, widowed at the age of 22, brought me to Ohio from our hometown in Pennsylvania as she pursued an education in Cincinnati. Like so many immigrants, she found a new spouse in this new place and started a business--multiple businesses, actually. After moving around to a couple different places in the eastern and northeastern parts of the state, we finally settled in a deeply impoverished part of southern Ohio, a former boom town that fell into ruin when the steel mill and shoe factory both closed. The Appalachian accent was so alien to my ears that I struggled in school my first year there because I couldn't understand the teacher. I was mocked by other students for "talking funny."

I found myself ostracized not just because of my accent, but also because of my parents being "rich" (ie., not on welfare), and for being Catholic in an area dominated so heavily by a handful of Protestant denominations that it was a commonly held belief there that Catholics are no more Christian than Buddhists or Hindus are. Like many immigrants who "refuse to integrate," my mother moved me to a Catholic school and indoctrinated me in the belief that we were culturally and intellectually superior to the natives.

Twenty years later, after being immersed in Appalachian culture, marrying one of the natives, spending my twenties either unemployed or underemployed, and finally watching my marriage end, I fled to Columbus for a better life. I'd made new friends who offered me a place to stay and referred me to a job opening. I went from making $6.35/hr at a Wal-Mart in southern Ohio after having worked there for a year and a half to making $9.50/hr on my very first day as a maintenance mechanic in a distribution warehouse in Columbus, and got a one-dollar-an-hour raise after just a month.

Let me repeat that: For my own selfish financial advancement, I immigrated to Columbus without permission and deprived a Columbus native of a job that paid 65% more than I could earn back home. Like so many immigrants, I sent much of the money I earned back home to support my children, while I slept on the floor of an overcrowded apartment I shared with three other people. A few years later, I married another immigrant and we had a couple "anchor babies" born in a Columbus hospital.

Over a period of 18 years, 164,186 of us did this. Some of us came from poorer parts of Ohio, some of us from poorer states outside Ohio, and some of us from Mexico, India, Somalia, Nepal, and many other countries, all for the same general reason: to flee a bad situation and take part in the prosperity of Columbus. This city has not suffered for it. Rather, we have fueled its economy, labored in its businesses or started new businesses of our own, and helped the city to prosper and grow.

When people immigrate to the United States from other countries, they don't come to settle in some stateless, city-less area belonging solely to the federal government. They come to cities in states, cities they aren't from, just like I did. I didn't have to ask the federal government for permission, even though I crossed state lines to come here, and nobody else should have to, either. Even if my mother had had a criminal record, we wouldn't have been denied entry to Ohio. Nobody even checked. She didn't have to show proof of income or have an Ohio employer jump through any hoops to get us here. Had she been convicted of a crime in Ohio, she would not have been deported back to Pennsylvania. It should be no different for anyone moving to Ohio from Sonora or Ontario.

My point here, in case it's not yet crystal clear, is that if a new neighbor moves in next door to me, the effect on me, on the rest of the neighborhood, on the rest of the city, and on the rest of the state, is no different at all whether that person comes from California or Honduras. The only difference is a legal fiction, a difference that can vanish with the stroke of a pen. People favoring strong immigration enforcement will talk about the sanctity of "the rule of law." This argument reminds me of a scene in the movie "Labyrinth." The protagonist is stopped on her journey by a guard who says, "None may pass without my permission!" She simply asks the guard's permission, and he, somewhat confused, grants it. If the gravest offense of illegal immigration is simply that it's a violation of the law, all we have to do is repeal that law. Voila! It's no longer illegal! Think of how much money we could save by eliminating the Border Patrol, most of ICE, and that ridiculous wall project!

Culturally, economically, environmentally--in every way you might name, immigrants from California or Honduras impact us the same. It's one more person, taking up one more person's worth of space, eating one more person's worth of food, generating one more person's worth of garbage. Domestic immigrants, be they from Pennsylvania or Portsmouth, are every bit as much a burden as are immigrants from other nations, yet we don't restrict, regulate, or even monitor their immigration at all. Coastal flooding or some other disaster could cause a couple million displaced American citizens to suddenly seek asylum in Columbus, and we could not and would not do anything to stop them. In fact, the U.S. Constitution prohibits it. Rather, we might ask the federal government for help providing accommodations for the newcomers. More likely, we would just have a boom of new construction and businesses coming to the area to take advantage of the increased labor pool. Remember, in 1800, the population of New York City was just 60,000. In 2018, it was estimated to be close to 4.8 million. Did such growth bankrupt and destroy that city? Quite the opposite!

We let American outsiders move into our cities without raising an eyebrow. There is no moral or practical reason for it to be any different with newcomers from different countries.

The New Colossus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows worldwide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

                                     - Emma Lazarus, 1883