When I was forty years old, I left my native land to begin a new life with my new wife in the New World. Although I was escaping neither poverty nor persecution, I realized that I was now an immigrant. I could look at life and immigration from both sides now.
Life is full of delicious and delightful ironies, providentially provided for our edification. One such irony in my own life is that I spent my youth raging and railing against immigrants and my later years becoming an immigrant myself. In consequence, in the words of the song by Joni Mitchell, I can look at life from both sides now.
As an angry young man, back in my native England, I had joined a white supremacist organization which demanded the “compulsory repatriation of all non-whites to their lands of ethnic origin.” For more than ten years, from my mid-teens to my mid-twenties, I ranted and raved against immigration, serving two prison sentences for “publishing material likely to incite racial hatred,” a “hate crime” under Britain’s Race Relations Act. Then, many years later, as a forty-year-old, I left my native land to begin a new life with my new wife in the New World. For me at least, life could really be said to have begun at forty, or at least to have begun again.
After a few years of living in the USA as a resident alien, I formalized my loyalty to my new home by becoming a US citizen. There are several things that I remember about the swearing in ceremony; some good, some bad, and some downright ridiculous. I cringed as the TV screen showed a smiling President Obama welcoming me as a newly fledged citizen and I cringed even more when we were made to watch videos to the accompaniment of America the Beautiful and Proud to be an American. It struck me as being little more than dumbed-down junk-culture jingoism which had the effect of cheapening and undermining the dignitas and gravitas of the occasion. I imagined immigrants to the UK being made to watch videos of the Last Night of the Proms with flag-waving Brits singing Rule Britannia! and They’ll Always be an England, a scenario that struck me as being almost Pythonesque. The effect aesthetically, at least to this particular fledgling immigrant, was akin to being offered a TV dinner when one was expecting a fine dining experience.
The first of the videos, the one playing to the soundtrack of America the Beautiful, showed picturesque scenes of the beauty of the United States, from sea to shining sea, from Niagara Falls to the Grand Canyon, but it was the other video, the one playing to the tune of the country song, Proud to be an American, which took me by surprise, causing an involuntary lump in the throat and tears to well up in my eyes. This unexpected emotional response was certainly not caused by the lyrics of the song, the pride of which repelled me, but by the images on the screen which showed old black and white film footage of immigrants who had come to this country from all parts of the world to make a new life, many of them escaping poverty or persecution. Although I was escaping neither poverty nor persecution, I realized that I was now one of these people. I, too, was an immigrant. The thought struck me as an epiphany, as a bolt from the blue, as something which changed the way that I saw myself. I had never imagined myself as an immigrant, and the realization that I was one came as something of a shock, especially as I had come to adulthood defining myself as someone who was not an immigrant. I was not “one of them” who could never be “one of us.” If I was now “one of them” what did it make me? Whose team was I now on? Whose side? It was this seismic shift in my self-perception which had caused the tears to well in my eyes so that I almost wept. And yet they were not tears of angst or anguish but of cathartic liberation. I was being given a new vision of things. An epiphany. I could see things from both perspectives. I could see through the eyes of the one who fears immigration, often for good reasons, and also from the perspective of the immigrant.
I could look at life from both sides now. I could see England from the inside, as I had always done, but I could also see her from the outside. I could see her not only in the way that she sees herself but in the way that others see her. In the same manner, I could still see the United States as I had once seen her, from the outside looking in, but I can now see her more as she sees herself, from the inside. And yet I still cannot see America as a native-born American sees her. I can only see her through the eyes of an immigrant. My wife is a native American, born in California, and my children are native Americans, born in Michigan and South Carolina. We see things differently. We even speak differently, using different words, though I find myself slipping into “American English” more often as time goes on. My wife quips that, after eighteen years of marriage, she’s still learning English as a second language!
It’s good to be able to see things from both sides now. I like being an immigrant and I’m very grateful to the United States for giving me such a wonderful new life.
One thing, as an immigrant, that I can see from both sides now is immigration itself. For all its faults, this is a good country which is why so many people want to come here. Clearly everybody who wants to come here cannot be permitted to do so. Equally clearly, measures must be taken to stop illegal immigration. A nation has the right and the duty to protect its own borders. It’s not about immigration per se but about illegal immigration and the levels of immigration. A nation should welcome those immigrants that it needs for the wellbeing of the country and even a certain number of genuine refugees (as distinct from all those claiming “refugee status”) but it is not duty-bound to open the floodgates to whomever wants to come here, nor is it duty-bound to treat those who break the law in the same way as law-abiding citizens.
As an immigrant, and as a US citizen, I am duty-bound to support what is best for my adoptive country. As one who is grateful for what this country has done for me, I am duty-bound in gratitude, as an immigrant, to protect it from all that might do it harm. One thing that is clearly harmful is illegal immigration. Furthermore, and most importantly, it is as a US citizen that I owe my allegiance to the United States. As a citizen, I support measures to counter those who seek the benefits of the country without accepting the duties and responsibilities of citizenship.
I do see things from both sides now. I am no longer the angry young man I once was, though I remember him well and know how he saw things. Nor am I anti-immigrant. How can I be? I am one. And yet I am still concerned about levels of immigration, and especially about levels of illegal immigration, which are imprudent and intemperate and which harm the social cohesion of the country. I now see things from both perspectives, as an insider and as an outsider, seeing them inside out and outside in, and, from whichever angle you see it, unbridled immigration is an issue which needs to be tackled. It is indeed so obvious that even the immigrants themselves can see it. Even immigrants like me.
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Editor’s Note: The featured image is “Mayflower in Plymouth Harbor” (1882) by Willia Halsall (1841-1919), courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Thank you, Mr. Pearce
I can trace my family to some of the earliest English settlers from Massachusetts Bay, but firmly believe that this country has been enriched by waves of immigrants from all over the world. I had a friend in college whose parents had fled China after the establishment of the Communist regime there. She told a great story about being asked by someone (a stranger!) about her nationality. “I’m an American,” she said. Exactly.
We’re going through a tough time because we have a fairly large wave coming across the border, and because we do not have confidence that those who set public policy will (1) fairly address the problem of illegal immigration, (2) establish a rational immigration policy (and stick to it), or (3) promote (or at least fail to discourage) the process of assimilation. So, emotions are running high, and your reminder that the immigrant and his children can enhance the nation is a welcome corrective.
My husband and I came as legal Immigrants from England in 1964. We had to prove we would not be a burden on society,plus
other tests etc Relating to Mr Pearce was easy….he is totally correct in insisting on legal immigration for many reasons.In
England now we see the results of uncontrolled immigration…and they are not good.
There is no cultural definition in England, on our last visit there were noticeable pockets of people who had no intention of
becoming British or of obeying their laws…indeed, some verbally attacked the country which had allowed them in.
Keep writing Mr Pearce with the clarity and truthfulness shown in your article in immigration.
This was a thoughtful piece. However, it’s not clear to me what was this “seismic shift” in your perspective on immigration — and its effect seems to have been mostly rherotical. You have adopted the view that as a citizen of the US you have an obligation and interest in wanting what is best for the US, which is good as far as it goes, but your thoughts haven’t changed on what that good is supposed to be: you merely oppose, say, illegal immigration to the US as once you opposed illegal immigration to the UK. You say that immigrants benefit from coming to a safe and rich place like most of the US — and this is absolutely true. I wouldn’t call that a “seismic” change in perspective: any reasonable person, immigrant or not, could have figured that out. A change in perspective would have been that immigrants are not the only ones who benefit when they immigrate into a new country, like the US, but they also contribute to it, like you yourself think you are contributing by, say, publishing this essay. Another change in perspective — which by the circumstances of your native country and your reasons for emigrating from the UK, you could be excused for not having — is that many immigrants don’t leave their countries of origin because that’s what they would do in ideal conditions, but that they are escaping poverty, crime, war, natural disasters, etc. — that the improvement in their lives from moving from their countries is very big. A still bigger change in perspective, finally, would have been that in balancing costs and benefits of immigration the welfare of both receiving and immigrating people should count equally — after all, are you as an immigrant in the US less important in the balance of the overall welfare of the US than other people who are here like you but happened to be born here?