Blood Pure
In the mid-1970s through the 1980s, I lived in Flushing, Queens.
When I moved there, it was mostly populated by Irish, Italian, and Jewish residents. About half were immigrants and the rest American born. There was an Italian butcher, pasta maker, and grocery store in our neighborhood. There was also a Kosher market and an Irish grocery.
On one side of our row house was an older American couple. On the other side across a narrow alley was an NYPD Lieutenant and his wife. During our first year there, the older couple sold their house to a young Greek couple moving from Astoria. And by the end of our second year, the cop and his wife had moved to Suffolk County and a Korean family moved next door.
I bought the house from the original owner who had lived there from the time the house was built in 1948. He was a returning WW II vet and had raised his family there before losing his wife a couple of years before the sale. We had moved from a studio apartment in Manhattan, and to us it seemed like a mansion though it was three stories and about 1700 sq. feet.
I guess most of the people who had settled down in Flushing were coming from somewhere else. It was a step up from some apartment in Manhattan, Brooklyn, or Eastern Queens. Some of us were native born…others were from all parts of the world. And that is why 50 years later, Queens is still the most diverse place on earth.
Even while I was living there, the Irish store closed as did the Italian butcher. It made way for Korean and Chinese stores that opened to accommodate the more recent arrivals. Today most stores throughout the neighborhood have Korean or Chinese signs.
Maybe it is because many of my relatives were immigrants and I always was among people from other lands at both school and then work, that it never bothered me. I saw too many scrambling to make ends meet. They opened small businesses, bought properties, and revitalized dying neighborhoods. Now that I have watched their children and grandchildren become less “foreign” and more “American,” I know we are better as a nation for it.
I don’t believe for one minute that immigrants are poisoning the blood of the country. That is the same garbage the hate mongers pedaled when my relatives and perhaps yours came here. No one makes the journey across the sea or border for a handout.
It is statistically proven that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than native born. Their children and especially grandchildren are more likely to achieve a higher educational degree than other Americans. They are also more likely to open businesses than American-born residents.
I even predict that within a decade or so, the recent immigrant influx will produce a much more invigorated economy that we would have had without increased immigration. Immigrants do not take jobs from Americans. They do the jobs Americans won’t do. If anything, right now we have a labor shortage. We need more workers of every caliber.
Americans are wedded to the idea that we are all descendants of cowboys when, in fact, we are much more likely to be descendants of the foreign born and perhaps not that many generations removed. My great-great grandfather on my mother’s side fought for the union in the Civil War. His family had already been in America for generations. On my father’s side, his father, aunts and uncles were immigrant Italians. Whose blood was impure? Immigration is what we are all about.
