The Earth Hearing

by Daniel Plonix

  “More people in the country means a larger economy,” Brandon told them. “Can you doubt it, Mr. Galecki?”

  “No, but this neither necessarily translates to an increase in the purchasing power of the native-born population nor does it make it easier for them to find or keep their jobs. If anything, the endless stream of laborers willing to work at lower wages exerts a downward pressure, notably on the pay scale of the young and the least educated. And of computer programmers.”

  Brandon helped himself to another slice of pizza. “What happened to ‘Give me your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free’? Have we become so heartless?” His curls swayed as he shook his head, bemused.

  “Breathing free is one thing; handing over a part of our paycheck is something else,” Galecki retorted. “We no longer have a sink-or-swim marketplace, which forced immigrants to make it by their wits, community connections, and entrepreneurial savvy. We are now a welfare state, which, reaching deeply into the pockets of the American people, provides support to all, immigrant and native-born alike.”

  “Come on, let’s get real,” said Heather. “What are we talking about here? Three hundred dollars a month worth of food stamps?”

  “Three hundred dollars hell.” Galecki regarded her coldly. “Those without a college degree usually draw on public services in excess of the taxes they pay. And when you account for the food, medical services, subsidized-housing, school, police, and public works, it typically comes to a small fortune handed to a low-skilled immigrant over a lifetime.”

  He inspected his glasses then wiped them. “It’s not merely the prin­ciple of being forced to subsidize a substantial number of people from other countries. My objection has a pragmatic side to it. The extent to which the social net remains viable is contingent on a high enough percentage of middle-class people refilling the coffers. You all understand what I am saying. You can see the outcome of too many outstretched hands and too few who pay in excess of services received in a city such as Detroit or Chicago. You cannot have free-for-all education, free-for-all health care—and free-for-all immigration.”

  “It is not as bad as that,” objected Susan. “Not every immigrant is a high school dropout or lacking a college degree. Not by a long shot.”

  “About half are, about twenty million people. As a group, the uneducated, low-skilled immigrants are a combined net drain large enough to pay for higher education of every American who desire—and more. Anyway, why should it be bad at all?” Galecki looked at the surrounding faces. “Here is the thing,” he stated. “Immigration is not a service Americans provide to the rest of the world but something whose extent and nature is to benefit the citizens of this country. Let us switch to a merit-based immigration system. Each incoming family ought to be a net economic gain for our society, or at least hold the potential given the couple’s skill set, assets, or proven accomplishments—with their ages and looming retirement prospects factored in. I am but echoing what James Madison, the Father of the Constitution, stated when he talked of immigrants the country ought to seek out and welcome. He wished for immigrants who may ‘increase the wealth and strength of the community,’ immigrants who are the ‘worthy part of mankind.’”

  Galecki added, “Do you realize that only 5 percent of those who immigrate are coming on a visa of extraordinary merit of one stripe or another? In fact less, once you factor in the many millions of uninvited foreign squatters in our midst.”

  “What you said sounds sensible, up to a point,” said Susan, considering it. “Yet, there need to be more to immigration policy than whipping out the abacus and tallying up the would-be immigrants’ figures on the financial balance sheet. First, the right of someone to bring in a foreign national in the context of a marriage ought to trump any collective consideration. I guess that’s obvious. Second, there are those without a track record or credentials who are entrepreneurial, hardworking, and historically have been forces of innovation in our country. This kind of people should be welcomed in.”

  “Yes, indeed,” said Galecki. He tapped his fingers on the table. “But the devil is in the details, Susan. How are the authorities going to identify such people? For every Sergey Brin, Jacob W. Davis, and John von Neumann who wash up on our shores, there are countless Jesuses, Marias, and Diegos who also drift in.”

  “You have a thing about Mexicans, don’t you?” Heather said darkly.

  “I have a thing about their massive settlement of our country, yes.”

  The other guests looked at him with varying degrees of alarm or curiosity.

  “Hundreds of Nobel Prizes are a testimony to our achievements and discoveries,” Galecki said and wiped his mouth with a napkin. “We have pioneered skyscrapers, heralded aviation, and are the only nation to have landed people on the moon. In contrast, the Mexicans have invented the burrito.”

  “Hey, don’t knock burritos!” called out Lee, vastly amused and not hiding it.

  Galecki plowed on, “With an ingenious moving assembly-line, Amer­icans have economized the manufacture of the automobile, changing it from an expensive curiosity to a ubiquitous mode of transport,” he stated. “Americans were at the heart of the computer revolution, from the mainframe to the minicomputer to the personal computer, from the microprocessor to a universal operating system, and from the ARPANET to the Internet.” He looked at the faces in the room as if to invite a challenge. “Now, some of our most noteworthy innovators have been immigrants or sons of immigrants. But they did not hail from Mexico or Central America—either in the last few decades or during the influx of Mexicans in the 1920s.”

  Heather groaned. “I think this is all the white supremacy talk I can take for one day.”

  “I think of it in terms of culture,” Galecki said. He gave her a sidelong glance. “But you, apparently, think of it in terms of race.”

  He pushed his glasses up on his nose. “Anyway, had the best and brightest been deserting Mexico by the millions, its government would have constructed a wall on its northern border all on its own to keep those people in. As it stands, we have been allowing in poverty and educational failures: mostly uninspired people from rural Latino cultures, about half of whom are high-school dropouts. And via family reunification visas, each Mexican ends up bringing on average six others, which has ballooned to millions upon millions of immigrants from Middle America.”

  “Where is your sense of humanity?” demanded Brandon. “You sound like a far-right extremist.”

  “Sense of humanity?” A flush crept up Galecki’s face. “How about taking care of our own—taking care of the millions of fellow Americans who live in trailers and lead lives of quiet desperation relieved by opioids.” His voice was rising. “Or is this not humane enough for you?”

  “Don’t respond, Brandon,” Heather told him. “You are just feeding the troll.”

  “I am sorry,” said Galecki turning his attention to her. “Are you an emotional causality of my microaggression? Shall we declare the bathroom upstairs an emotionally safe space? I am sure Lee can scrounge up some crayons.”

  “I don’t care for hate speech,” Heather said testily.

  “You really mean speech you hate, or at least speech that dissents from yours, don’t you?”

  “Now, now children,” chided Lee and wagged a finger over Heather’s vexed sigh. “Continue if you would,” she told Galecki.

  “Many of the incoming folks from rural cultures are industrious,” he said. “But this doesn’t mean I want them as roommates now and forever. Don’t you get it? Well over one million Filipinos, Salvadorans, Chinese, Mexicans, and their uncles and elderly parents are pouring in each year. Many of those newcomers do not bring a mindset of progress and innovation, nor an appreciation of the rule of law principle. Many of those newcomers are members of low trust societies, where greasing people’s palms and unconcern for the broader society is a way of life.”

  Heath
er released a long-suffering sigh. “Each generation of immigrants has given birth to a new generation of citizens who take their place as professionals and all-around Americans. This has been the engine of our vitality. We’ve had immigrant waves before—and similar anti-immigrant rants and scaremongering every step of the way.”

  Brandon nodded in agreement. “The second generation, native-born, have the opportunity to be anything they wish.”

  Galecki slapped the table in front of him for emphasis. “And so they do, and so they have. Indeed, many of them have grown up and embody the spirit of what’s best in America. Having said that, many second-­generation Latinos—and more so, third generation Latinos—have alar­ming rates of incarceration, high school dropout, and out-of-wedlock births. This is not how it has played out with the third generation German Americans, has it now?”

  An awkward silence descended in the room.

  Brandon said slowly, “Making our country an asylum for mankind was an integral part of what we have wanted the United States to be. We have a long history of presenting ourselves in this way to the world.”

  Susan turned her head to him. “Is there no point where self-interest trumps compassion for the other? You can’t unload the entire southern hemisphere on the North.” Heather made a dismissive gesture. “This is not so theoretical,” persisted Susan. “A survey ascertained that about a third of all the adults in Liberia want to come to America, a third of all the adults in Sierra Leone, a third of all the adults in Mexico—those and others. In total, over one hundred and fifty million adults want to immigrate. Would you admit them, along with their kids and their spouses and their parents and their brothers-in-law who in turn may bring along their spouses and parents and sisters-in-law?”

  “Maybe not all,” Brandon said, looking uncomfortable.

  “So, you are going to turn away some of the hundreds of millions of poor ‘huddled masses who yearn to breathe free’? some of the ‘wretched refuse’?” Lee’s eyes opened wide in mock outrage. “Are you going to put yourself as God and gauge petitioners on a scale of human suffering and needs, deciding who gets in and who stays out?” She was taunting. “By what right would you refuse anyone—you, whose great-grandparents stood where they now stand. You, whose ancestors have usurped this land and therefore have no legitimate claim over it.”

  Are we having fun now? transmitted Aratta to Lee.

  He received from her something akin to an amused laughter.

  What do you make of all this? she transmitted.

  Humanity is segregated to about two hundred countries with national governments whose mandate is to look after their own fiefdoms. I empathize with the concerns and considerations voiced in this room. This aside, given the plight of the biosphere, the existing paradigm won’t do. Yet, the path forward is far from obvious or simplistic, as the Terraneans are prone to envision and take.

  Galecki held up his palms to call their attention. “Imagine yourself back in the time of your parents or grandparents, early 1960s, in rural America. Crime is nil, doors are left unlocked, and the community was real and meaningful.

  “So, it is just another dinnertime, and you are seated next to your father at the table while your mom passes you the salad bowl. ‘Pops,’ you say, ‘why don’t we let tens of millions of people settle here from India, Somalia, China, and Honduras?’ Your father looks at you quizzically. ‘Now, why would we want to do that, son?’ Can any of you look Pops in the eyes and give him a convincing answer? One that would make a compelling, overriding sense?”

  No one said anything.

  “We are a distinct people,” Mr. Galecki said quietly. “People with a distinct ethos residing in a distinct territory over which we hold sway.” He gestured widely. “Our territory, our land, is not one vast homeless shelter or an airport terminal or an unsettled frontier.

  “The government of Iran has no mandate to inundate its country with Chinese and Japanese, and the government of the Philippines has no mandate to flood its country with Germans and Russians. A nation ought to protect and enshrine its core cultural identity.”

  “Oh, please,” said Heather. She drew her lips in an indulgent smile.

  Galecki ignored her. He leaned forward. “It is said society is a contract between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born. And I think we have dropped the ball on this one,” he stated. “No group, no generation, no administration has the mandate to establish an immigration policy that may irrevocably alter the character of its nation—and I am talking here about a value system and an outlook on life, not skin complexion.”

  “I share Mr. Galecki’s sentiments on this one,” said Susan. “At the very least, the immigration act in 1965, which ushered a massive demographic change, should have been ratified only by a supermajority of the people in a national referendum.”

  Brandon’s expression grew pensive. “Most Americans can list off the places their ancestors came from, which are from all over the world. In recent years, there has been an effort to recast our national cultural identity to one that is ethnically-based and limited to people of Christian traditions who have hailed from Europe. Americans are united by a set of ideas, not race, ethnicity, or religion.”

  “Exactly,” said Heather.

  Galecki was silent for a minute. “I would not push the ‘all over the world’ notion too far,” he said at last. “Until the 1970s—for centuries—almost all Americans had their forbears originate in Europe with a min­ority, of course, from western Africa. As for your other point, it is true that some overt civic principles drew some of them to America, along with a host of other reasons that mostly had to do with conditions in their home countries.” He stretched his legs out in front of him. “Yet, it is equally true that the United States granted citizenship only to white Europeans, who as a matter of course were expected to share with Americans a broad heritage along with an array of sensibilities and unarticulated values.

  “It was only in 1946, the government finally allowed for one hundred people to immigrate from India each year.”

  Galecki smiled weakly. “Look, I am not trying to sell you on racial notions held by our forefathers. I disagree with them. This notwithstanding, I don’t care for rewriting what was. For better and for worse, our ancestors’ guiding tenet is articulated best in the constitution of Liberia.” He pulled out his mobile device and shortly found the pertinent paragraph. “‘In order to preserve, foster and maintain the positive Liberian culture, values and character, only persons who are Negroes or of Negro descent shall qualify by birth or by naturalization to be citizens of Liberia.’” He turned off his device. “The race in question was different; the principle was the same.

  “Back in the day,” he said, “Thomas Jefferson proposed to emancipate all black slaves; to train them in crafts, science, arts, and agriculture; to extensively equip and arm them. Then to send them away to chart their own destiny in another land. Concurrently, he called to recruit and bring over a comparable number of white people as immigrants. Abraham Lincoln was convinced blacks were unassimilable and wanted to ship them all out of the country. He found the prospect of ‘blood mixing’ abhorrent. Teddy Roosevelt believed that as a group the blacks were inferior. Using Haiti as case in point, he inferred that blacks were not capable of governing themselves.

  “Until but fifty or sixty years ago, most Americans did not want to assimilate with or have people of color in their midst. Until but fifty or sixty years ago, a common sentiment has been articulated by John Miller, the senator from California, when he talked about a future land ‘dotted all over with American homes, the abodes of a free, happy people, resonant with the sweet voices of flaxen-haired children.’ During his time, in the 1879 referendum, virtually all the people of California voted against immigration from China.” It probably was for the same reasons present-day Chinese would oppose mass immigration of blacks into China, he thought.
>
  “In short, racism,” declared Brandon.

  “Yes,” Galecki agreed. “Many thought culture is derived from immut­able race-based behavioral traits, which would make genuine integration impossible, both in the short-term and in the generations to come.” He suspected that many blacks in America also had held a deeply racial outlook, but he didn’t feel like getting into this. His mouth twisted in a wry smile. “In addition, tribalism was at play: ‘It’s ours, beat it! We don’t want you here, you are not one of us!’”

  He continued, “Among some Americans of European ancestry, the wish to preserve what was and the fear of losing it gave rise amid some to hatred, flares of hostility, and spikes of bestial violence—along with most vile expressions of racism.”

  He thought it over for a moment. “When you peel away their xenophobia and their hyperbolic claims, you can see that the racial bit was toxic garbage; however, concerns over cultural differences were often real enough.

  “Foremost, they were after preserving a community with a particular texture, broad inarticulate outlook of certain hues—the cultural ocean they wanted to swim in and have their grandchildren grow in. Therefore, they cared little for drunkards, country bumpkins and Catholic boors, who streamed in from Sicily, Ireland, and Poland. And they cared little for the great migration of millions of African American hillbillies out of the South, starting in the 1900s, whose conduct repulsed the Yankee blacks and whites alike. Well, something of the sort. The situation was endlessly more nuanced and varied across individuals, decades, and localities.

  “And speaking of disagreeable cultures,” Galecki suddenly added, “I was in China last year and saw a man who had just died at the site of a motorbike crash. People stood around the dead man, grinning, pointing, and taking pictures—later to be posted on social media, no doubt.” He shook his head angrily. “I don’t want those people moving in here. The typical mainland Chinese is concerned about the people in his social circle—and no one and nothing else. And aren’t Indians listed in global surveys as the most racists and least tolerant of religions not of their own?” What were they doing—letting those groups in?