Trump on immigration

C. C. and Neeltje Schaap, circa 1870

Decades ago, I visited a little Christian school in Inwood, Iowa, and read a story or two to kids, middle-schoolers, as I remember, stories from my first book, a collection of tales about Dutch Reformed people from the region. Occasionally, I'd used Dutch words in those stories, especially when I guessed--and sometimes knew--that Dutch-Americans would do the same thing. Words like vies and benauwd, and huis bezoek had no good English equivalents, so those words hung around subsequent generations even when the old country language had departed.

When I read the stories, I'd use the Dutch words, then stop on a dime and ask the kids if they knew meanings. The vast majority of students were of hearty Dutch-American stock, but what happened over and over again was that southeast Asian refugee kids--Vietnamese, Lao, Tai Dam--knew meanings far better than the Vissers, the Ipemas, and the Hoogendoorns. 

None of them had grown up with those Dutch words, and it was highly unlikely they'd regularly heard them, since their families spoke a different language. Still, those kids were the ones with ready answers.

A friend, a linguist, a Dutchman was not at all surprised. "They do it all the time," he told me. "They're constantly determining meaning by context because they don't speak English well. They have to listen carefully, make snap judgments," he told me. "They get really good at it."

Last week, I had lunch with a man who grew up in the area, part of a large family, a farm kid, who claimed that, like other Dutch immigrants at the turn of the 20th century, his father loved theology, even though he'd never had much of an education in the Netherlands. 

They'd been renters. He told me how his father had moved the family, often thinking there were more opportunities elsewhere. His father didn't own land, didn't reach that level of the American Dream. 

But his kids got an education. This kid, this man, eighty years old or so, claimed he wasn't a terrific student. He quit high school in the mid 50s, when that wasn't totally rare, but then swung a deal to get back into Western Christian High, just down the road and finished up just a year later than his class.

I don't think he'd say his family was impoverished. Besides, they had an abundance of other gifts, including the determined ability to be happy with what they did have and a hearty work ethic. 

This man was being courted by a local institution as the kind of donor who could reach into his pocket and fund a new building or an academic chair. He himself had kicked around a bit in life, done a number of different things, accumulated an education, learned a trade, earned a Ph.D., in fact, then became an entrepreneur, the son of immigrant parents who'd come to this country with nothing but expectations and a robust hope to have a better life.

Maybe we dislike immigrants because we know they work harder and do better than we do--or our own kids. 

The most significant motivation for my great-grandfather Schaap to come to this country in 1868, was religious. A man I met from Parkersburg, Iowa, told me he'd looked at old plot maps of the town in the 1870s and found C. C. Schaap's name on a small lot down by the river. "He was likely poor," the guy told me, sweetly, as if breaking bad news. 

They lived in four or five different regions of the country before ending their lives here. It's doubtful they ever learned English. They're buried in Orange City. 

Yesterday, Donald Trump, who was given millions by his father, announced plans to drastically reshape legal immigration in this country. Here's the lede from Fox News: "The Trump administration on Monday issued a long-awaited rule strengthening the ability of federal officials to deny green cards to immigrants deemed likely to rely on government aid." And that's Fox News. For different spin, have a look at the way the American Friends Committee explains the new policies. 

With Trump's new rules, I wouldn't be here, neither would the vast majority of Euro-Americans. It's that simple, and what our President is doing is that wrong.