The thing that makes a nation of immigrants successful is getting high quality immigrants. I recall a quotation without an author – “The coward never started, the weak died on the way, only the strong survived.” When I hunted an author, I found only a recent book – so I’ll stay with author unknown. In a very real, but incomplete way, it describes immigration to America.
My mother-in-law came to the US from Germany – and went to Germany in WWII as a Soviet physician (specifically a psychiatrist). She came in fairly broke – but with paperwork attesting to her education and experience. Von Braun came in with some questionable associations with the Nazis, but he was one of the world’s top rocket men (admittedly, the Soviets got the best guys on rocket fuel). The idea at the time was to pick very well qualified immigrants. Einstein was a German-born Jew of Ashkenazi heritage. Enrico Fermi, born in Rome, a naturalized American citizen. I still have a screwdriver that belonged to Stanislaus, and a statue from his wife – Polish peasants, they brought skills in welding, machining and sewing with them through Ellis Island. The US gave extra points for coming from the right hand side of the bell curve.
And immigration changed our ethnicity – by 1820, the majority of immigrants from Britain were Irish. With the potato famine, America became more Irish – then by the end of the 19th Century, increasing numbers from the region we know as Germany. The concept of the melting pot. Those early Irish immigrants came with strong backs and a work ethic. They may not have been the most intellectually gifted – but their work ethic placed them on the right hand side of the bell curve.
There’s an irony in looking at the side of the bell curve on which the immigrant starts – the standard bell curve is always shown with the lower numbers (below average) on the left and the higher numbers on the right. When we had limited numbers of immigrants, we gave preference to immigrants from the far right side of the bell curve.
I don’t like the Right/Left descriptors of political stances, largely because I see little difference between Hitler’s management and Stalin’s. Yet when I look at immigration policies that will improve or harm the makeup of our country, the extreme right of the bell curve – be it intelligence, education, professional qualifications, health – was the spot that got the prospective immigrant points for entry.
It was in the southwest where I encountered an immigrant who had crossed the river during the Villa days, about 75 years before I met him. He was there for his great-granddaughter’s graduation with an associate of applied sciences in Civil Tech. I had coached her through Statics and Dynamics, and she insisted that I was the reason she graduated. This little old man – barely five feet, and in his nineties explained to me how wonderful the United States is: “Here, my granddaughter is a college graduate. That would never have happened if I had stayed in Mexico.” We don’t think often enough of how the opportunities for success are so much greater in the US than most other countries.
Trego's Mountain Ear 