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You Unwashed Immigrant, You!

At a debate in Hayward, California, last week, Dinesh D'Souza was asked a question by an obviously concerned Indian parent. "As my children get older, they start getting embarrassed of me," the parent began. "Not just because of the usual generation gap, but also because I'm Indian and they don't want to be. I'm worried about this trend. At what point do you think immigrants begin to feel American rather than Indian or Chinese or whatever?"

I'm paraphrasing the question, probably badly too. I don't know what the parent thought, but Dinesh's reply angered at least one person I spoke to later. "I went up to Dinesh afterwards," he told me, still angry. "I said to him: you're trivialising an issue that, with my three daughters who have grown up here, is very real to me."

Dinesh is a formidable intellect. In debates and speeches, and even in conversations, he offers superbly crafted arguments, telling examples, pertinent quotes. He has read extensively, thought about many issues very long and hard. All that is clear, and all that is why he is formidable. There was no reason for him to have given his almost flippant reply to the question, the reply that had incensed the man I spoke to.

"Your children have become truly American," Dinesh told the audience, "at the very moment that they start getting embarrassed of you."

In a country built on immigration, is this what every immigrant parent must look forward to? That precise instant when embarrassment gets the better of their children? In a country of immigrants, must becoming American be defined by a measure of shame? Surely not. And yet, Dinesh offered his explanation in all seriousness.

At last week's North American Konkani Sammelan, Dinesh D'Souza was presented an Outstanding Konkani Of The Year (I'll call it OKOTY for short) award. I'll leave you to your applause or your spluttering, whichever moves you. The sammelan was also where he debated 'Ethnicity and Assimilation in America: Melting Pot or Salad Bowl?' with Michael Harris, a San Francisco civil rights lawyer. That subject touches on many often contentious issues -- immigration, affirmative action (essentially what we call reservations in India), race relations, minority concerns, jobs and more. These are issues that immigrants everywhere, and the societies they join, face; that Dinesh has written about in the past to both acclaim and boos.

Unfortunately, the general feeling among the attendees was that the debate itself did not generate the fireworks it might have. Still, both speakers did discuss some of the issues, did manage to present opposing views on some of them. And Dinesh also managed to give us his take on when immigrants become American.

Immigration is a tough, prickly question. In the USA, and perhaps especially in California, you are rarely far from its fruits: bitter, sweet or nondescript. You don't have to search very hard to find enclaves of Chinese shops, or Vietnamese restaurants, or streets on which most families are Indian, or sammelans like the one I attended; as also signs of earlier entrants -- Italians, Poles, Irish. Actually, except the so-called Native Americans, pretty much everyone here is descended from immigrant stock, whether ten generations on or fresh off the gravy train. That is why, at least from where this visitor sits, the immigrant experience is at the heart of so much that shapes America. Why it has such a relevancy, a meaning, to so many people here. That is why I was hoping the debate would amount to more than it did.

But never mind the debate. Immigration is a concern closer to home as well: in India, in Bombay. In Bombay, there are metronomically regular calls to cut down on the number of people who come into the city. Typical of the distaste immigrants usually have to put up with from residents, they are damned for everything: crowds, dirt, not paying taxes, having too many babies, being poor, being appeased, taking away jobs from the sons-of-the-soil, even just wanting to make a living ("They only come here to make money! I don't approve of that at all!" said a one-time friend one time).

Similarly, people who call for an end to immigration in the USA cite as their reasons such things as the rising population, a deteriorating environment, crowded cities, fewer jobs for Americans, the fear of losing an ephemeral white European kind of culture, more. There are echoes from Bombay as well as concerns unique to here.

You may have noticed that there is also, there and here, a definite connection between what immigrants are blamed for and what minorities are blamed for. That's hardly surprising: immigrants tend to be minorities. I'll make more of that in a bit.

The truth in Bombay, part of which I alluded to in a previous column, is that none of those links -- between immigrants and society's ills -- is really true.

In particular, and tellingly, immigration amounts each year to an ever smaller fraction of the city's growth. According to one very credible study (Socio-Economic Review of Bombay, 2nd edition, 1995), it accounted for about 17% in the decade of the 1980s, less than 12% by 1991. It had sunk below the 50% mark sometime in the 1960s, a full generation ago. By the numbers alone, Bombay's troubles cannot be blamed on those who come to the city every day.

The truth is that sons-and-daughters-of-the-soil, producing floods of tiny babies-of-the-soil, are really driving Bombay's growth, really causing that flood of problems we so like to complain about. Blaming them on immigrants makes about as little sense as swatting away a mosquito that is stinging you, instead of battling the boa constrictor that is intent on swallowing you.

Except, of course, for one thing. Mosquitoes and boa constrictors are not convenient scapegoats; immigrants and minorities are. I suspect the numbers are more favourable to the "ban immigrants" cause in the USA than they are in Bombay, but I also suspect a certain broad truth holds here just as well as it does in Bombay: the tangled problems societies face are less the fault of new entrants than of those who live in them.

Over dinner in Bombay some years ago, Dinesh D'Souza told Dilip D'Souza that he thinks Bombay must erect barriers to prevent more people coming into the city, so the city can tackle its problems. In much the same way, he continued, countries like the USA must tighten their borders and policies to cut down on immigration so they can tackle their own problems.

It is "ludicrous", Dinesh said, to expect any different.

With respect to the OKOTY, I am convinced he has got entirely the wrong end of the stick. Yes, there are things wrong with America, as there are things wrong with Bombay. Yes, immigration causes and contributes to some of those things. But yes too, there is much else at work.

Because there is, making out that concerns and features of the "mainstream" -- whatever that may be -- must count above all else, that minorities and immigrants are to blame for all that's ill -- these are not just immoral or unjustified things to do. More important, they are utterly futile. They will not solve the problems that need solving.

To his credit, Dinesh D'Souza -- himself an immigrant -- does seem to recognise that immigrants bring as much to societies as societies give to them. To his discredit, he does not seem to have understood the very real problems many immigrants do face: problems of assimilation, identity, blame. The catchy answer he tossed out so easily gave me a hint of that.

The OKOTY has, I'm sure, got the wrong end of the stick. Still, it remains a good stick to beat certain people with. In the end, isn't that all that counts? To each his own scapegoat, embarrassing or otherwise.

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