Oscar Handlin : The Transforming Power of the Immigrant Experience

After six decades of shifting through piles of American documents and artifacts, historian Oscar Handlin has always maintained that America “is not merely a nation, but a teeming nation of nations.”

From his earliest studies--and later as one of America’s leading scholars and the former director of Harvard’s library--Handlin focused on the immigrant experience as the key to understanding American culture. Beginning in 1939 as an adjunct professor at Harvard University, he produced a stunning body of scholarly work while birthing a “tribe of Americanists” as he guided countless doctoral candidates as head of the Center for Study of Liberty in America and director of the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History.

Handlin was considered a pathfinder because of his novel use of previously untapped primary resources in his doctoral dissertation on Boston’s immigrants, 1790-1865. For this work, published in 1941, he received the Dunning Prize, the top historical award, In 1952, Handlin won the Pulitzer Prize for “The Uprooted.”

Handlin’s accessible writing style allowed his ideas to travel beyond the academy to the general reading public. From the 1950s until the mid-1980s, he published nearly a book a year.

Handlin’s theories on the metamorphosis endured by all immigrants have assisted U.S. policy-makers in understanding that the umbilical cord linking many second-generation Americans is not ethnic identity but the commonality that springs from their transformation.

Born 80 years ago in Brooklyn to emigrant parents escaping czarist Russia, Handlin grew up in a burgeoning Jewish community. His decision to become a historian was set by the age of 8. During his formative years, Handlin’s passion for the written word would cause him to juggle books while delivering groceries for his father’s neighborhood store. By the age of 19, he had finished Brooklyn College and before he turned 30--and a few classes shy of his Ph.D.--Handlin was invited to join Harvard’s faculty.

Handlin married writer Lillian Bombach in 1977, after the death of his first wife, Mary Flug, a collaborator on several of his early books. He has three children from his first marriage.

Often bringing poetic refinement to his scholarly writing, Handlin has been called one of the “artists of American history.”

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Question: You’ve contended that cultural shock for most immigrants takes five forms: misinformation, blunders, cheats, exposure to the elements and assaults by humans or beasts. Has that changed?

Answer: No, I don’t think so, except I do make a distinction between legal and illegal immigrants . . . . Those who arrive with visas today have less difficulty than people who arrived 50 years ago. Today, a legal immigrant who docks at a port of entry with a passport is treated rather sympathetically. However, the illegals are in quite a different situation. Unlike the legal immigrant, who is given the benefit of the doubt, illegal immigrants are harassed by imaginary or actual enemies, and that makes the entire situation totally different.

Q: You’ve repeatedly written that “emigration is central to American culture.” Have our newest immigrants from south of the border altered this perspective?

A: That remains to be seen how they adjust--given the fact that they don’t have recognized legal status . . . . People come in and out of the country without a federal response to the actual situation, which, I think, creates a feeling of suspicion and hostility that didn’t exist 20 years ago. It also means the illegals have to live a marginal existence, taking whatever jobs become available and because of that, they are not in a position to further their own position.

Q: Did previous generations of immigrants encounter similar barriers?

A: The whole situation changed when, instead of arriving by ship, which could be readily controlled, people started coming by air or just walking over the border. This meant that in parts of the country exposed to this kind of population increases, there developed a great deal of suspicious feelings . . . . This same feeling doesn’t exist against the Canadians who go back and forth, because their numbers are smaller and they aren’t as great a drain on social resources.

In San Diego, this is a big problem because of its proximity to the Mexican border. Also, the Mexican American community is organized in a different way and seems not to be as responsive to the new arrivals. Whereas in Texas--where you have a lot of illegal Mexican immigrants in a city like San Antonio, where 60% of the native population is Latino--the immigrants, whether they are legal or not, are soaked up into a community that takes care of them . . . They seem to feel a sense of responsibility for newcomers, as far as other races can judge.

Q: Do you believe the Administration’s recent commitment to buttress our southern borders will blunt this hostility?

A: If the borders are better patrolled, certainly, some of the tension and hostility will fade.

Q: Will religion remain for new immigrants a cohesive element as it did for the European immigrant?

A: Things have changed. Mexican Catholicism is quite different from the Catholicism of the Northeast, which was shaped by the Irish . . . . The situation may be different, because if you look at Mexico, in spite of a long period of government hostility, people have held onto their religious faith and practices. To what extent they will be able to incorporate that into the United States is hard to say, because the Catholic Church is of a different origin, with somewhat different standards. The church is quite sympathetic to them, but they will still have to adjust within the limits of the existing religious community.

Q: One of the criticisms lodged against today’s unemployed immigrants is their lingering presence in front of lumber yards on street corners. Is this an old pattern?

A: This has always been true. And to some extent, it was also true in the middle of the 19th Century, during Europe’s own internal migration into its major cities. In London, one could find unskilled laborers hanging around at the docks waiting for something to happen; this also happened in New York City and Philadelphia.

But the thing that is different now is not the character of the immigrant, but that the preponderance of places in the economy for unskilled labor has shrunk. It is just the way the manufacturing and farming sectors have developed, which means more is being done by machines, and the employment possibilities for unskilled labor have mostly vanished.

Q: If immigrants continue to be unable to find work, what effect will this have?

A: There is always return-migration. If one is optimistic, one could hope for the possibility of improved economic conditions in their country of origin. But I don’t think that is terribly likely, because one needs only to look at what is going on in the Mexican economy. However, it is conceivable that there will be a greater demand for unskilled labor in distribution, but that is the element about which we can only speculate.

Q: Did previous immigrants face hostility because of their use of welfare and other social services?

A: It is hard to objectively verify each circumstance. Since 1920, federal immigration law has stipulated that people who enter legally must have sponsors, who could become liable for any changes incurred by the immigrants. That has ceased to be a problem in the Northeast, where legal immigration creates little difficulty about welfare, but it becomes a problem with illegal immigrants who don’t have sponsors and immediately have to rely upon the government.

Q: The civic passivity of recent California immigrants has produced little political power for them. Was this common during the European immigrant wave?

A: It is certainly an interesting characteristic. However, there is a tremendous difference between Southern California and Texas, where there is a group of people born in Mexico or of Mexican heritage who have entered politics. San Antonio is run by its Latino population, by such individuals as Henry Cisneros, who once served as mayor.

But this is less likely to happen in California, in either Los Angeles or San Diego. The existing ethnic communities in those cities are polarized. Now, Los Angeles was split before the arrival of these immigrants. That is the kind of city it is, and the kind of political meditators you see in Texas and elsewhere don’t seem to appear in California. It isn’t just the geography; it’s the way the communities are organized.

Q: The recent infusion of immigrants from Asia and Latin America has rekindled racial inferiority-superiority ideas. Will this attitude continue to grow?

A: First of all, that entire theory has disintegrated. Today, there are very few respectable people in the United States, or anywhere else, preaching racial doctrines. Fifty years ago, that kind of thinking was based on a view of genetics, hereditary and certain kinds of characteristics that no longer has any scientific support. That kind of initial barrier has evaporated as it relates to Hispanics. As for Asians, 50 years ago, the hostility in California toward Japanese, and earlier toward Chinese, was far more acute when compared with today . . . .

Our history shows that these people were able to adjust over a period of time and they were able to advance themselves in competition with others. The Japanese and the Chinese, in particular, developed very organized communities that were internally helpful. Their actions were sometimes regarded with suspicion by outsiders, but they were important in smoothing the way for members of their own generation; very few of them were poor or went on welfare.

Q: Gov. Pete Wilson led the campaign to pass Proposition 187. Does this represent a prevailing sentiment?

A: Well, the American public covers a multitude of different kinds of people and perspectives. Americans, when they enter the voting booth, are divided by parties and their own ethnic affiliation and economic status. I believe Gov. Wilson’s position is more reflective of his experience on the front line of this issue as the former mayor of San Diego.

Q: Do you consider Proposition 187 racist, or just a reasonable response to this new immigrant wave?

A: It can be read both ways. I don’t think the Proposition 187 vote was homogeneous. I’m sure among them were racists, while others were making what they considered to be a reasonable judgment of what they see as a crisis. But that doesn’t mean that all the Proposition 187 vote was equally reasonable--as is often the situation.

Q: Are Americans at the end of their tolerance of others, or is this just a return to an old theme?

A: I don’t think we are at the end of our tolerance. The population of this country has practically doubled since the last war, and the racial and ethnic tensions are much less acute today than before. People tend to forget about the Ku Klux Klan. At its zenith, the KKK had about 4 million or 5 million members; there were other groups that it’s hard now to categorize. Some were racists, while others were just fascists.

Q: So our racial tolerance has improved?

A: Well, we don’t have the “Silver Shirts” or the Klan marching around. There are still lots of problems for black Americans, but when you compare the situation with 30 years ago, it has improved and I . . . hope that the same thing will happen in the future.

Q: Have we entered a period of political and economic isolation?

A: I don’t think so. Our whole economy is so global and our population is much more mobile today. For instance, airplanes carry in one week more across the ocean than all the ships once did in a year.

Q: The ethnic diversity of American society has often been held up as one of our strengths. Is that still the situation?

A: More so than ever. You just have to look at certain key positions that were once closed to certain racial groups, like the top position of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. We’ve already had a black American, and now we have a Polish American. That would have been a totally inconceivable event 40 years ago. And the same thing is true in education, business and many other areas.*