Many roads across our borders

What is the color of an American? What does his or her face look like? Is she/he long of nose? Broad of forehead? Do racially distinguishing marks exist? Is there one skin color?

To those of us who are mongrels, the simple answer is, “No.” To those with direct bloodlines to another country, who are assimilated by birth or naturalization, the answer is also, “No.”

To the Indian tribes who once ranged freely “from sea to shining sea,” the answer is, “Yes.” There was an indigenous American before the first “immigrants,” aka “explorers,” aka “colonizers” began to transform the land into one that separated whites from others. But time and intermarriage has changed even that paradigm.

The question of immigration has recently regripped the hearts, minds ? and hopefully the conscience ? of our nation. Post 9-11, we find ourselves fearful of that which is foreign, and somewhat panicked in an attempt to secure our borders.

Waves of immigrants have created the United States. Chinese to build the railroads. Japanese for agriculture. Polish, Irish, Mexican, Honduran, British, French, Spanish, German, Russian, Cubans, Vietnamese, Ecuadorian, Serbian, Korean, Persian, Indian, Haitians, African ... Every nation on the globe can likely be represented within the confines of our country. Some fled persecution. Some fled starvation. Some fled genocide. Some have simply reached for something better for themselves and their children.

My great-grandfather, Adolf Weber, and his older brother, Ferdinand, emigrated to America in 1907. Ferdinand arrived first, in May, on the ship Carpathia. Adolf arrived on Nov. 17, via Liverpool on the ship Arabic. Copies of the manifest in the archives of Ellis Island indicate that he paid his own passage and that he had in his possession $10. His destination was Brooklyn. He was 22 years old, 5-foot-7, and of healthy complexion, with dark hair and brown eyes.

I like to imagine him stepping off the ship onto the land of his new home, eyes wide as a 22-year-old’s might be, and filled with anticipation of creating a life for himself. It is this dream of a better life that fuels the move to live in and be a part of America. I am the heir to his immigration, as are my children. While he was a German, his lineage became American.

We have approximately 5,655 miles of land border between Canada, Mexico and the United States. Short of building something akin to the Berlin Wall, closing the treaty-defined lines that delineate our territories is a behemoth task. The desire for a better life will never dissipate, and the historic question of how to manage immigration will continue.

I would like to believe that as we evolve as human beings, our compassion for others can assume a guiding hand in policy construction. As each succeeding wave of immigrants gains a foothold in the United States, it seems as if they forget how they arrived. Angry defamations or generalizations of character cast individuals as a formless and faceless mass, ignoring the separate human beings who constitute a particular body of people.

Yes, my great-grandfather immigrated “legally.” There really weren’t other options at that time. He could have swum the Atlantic ... but a ship, which arrived in New York, was a more reasonable choice. If he had been persecuted, if he had been starving, if his land had been enmeshed in war, would he have come at any cost? Likely. As would I. We humans have a tremendous commitment to survival.

As a nation, we’ve alternated immigration policies of open arms and closed doors. We’ve claimed rights for “white people only.” We’ve embraced the downtrodden, only to turn them away or complain about the languages and cultural oddities they bring with them.

The primary goal of our borders is to provide control over who enters our nation and the discretion to have it be our choice and on our terms. It is my extreme hope that as we further our dialogue about who and when and why individuals may enter the United States, we engage our hearts as well as our minds; that we learn to ask the right questions, and not act merely out of fear.