A tough test of citizenship

LOWER EAST SIDE, NEW YORK CITY: This area dominated largely by immigrants for two centuries is a good place to think about America's growing immigration debate. This month dominated by two welcoming but challenging presidents, Washington and Lincoln, is a good time to do so.

The Lower East Side once was home to African-Americans freed from slavery, and then Irish, German, Italian, and Eastern European immigrants escaping from other forms of oppression. Now it has remnants of all those groups plus Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, Dominicans, Chinese, and other Asians.

A century ago a higher percentage of Americans had been born abroad than is now the case. Then as now, immigrants suffered at first so their children could have better lives. Then as now, work was hard and long for those who wanted to save some money. Then as now, homes were crowded, with immigrants sometimes making a one-family apartment suffice for three.

But two differences stand out. One is that, in the past, leading institutions strove mightily to Americanize students. Walk to 45 Rivington Street here and see the five-story, red brick school where Harry Golden (originally Hershel Goldhirsch) enrolled in 1908. He later wrote a bestseller, Only in America, in which he didn't complain or blame the United States for the hard life immigrants had. Instead, he wrote, "the only thing that overcomes hard luck is hard work."

Other graduates of the all-boys P.S. 20 were acclaimed actors Paul Muni (Muni Weisenfreund) and Edward G. Robinson (Emmanuel Goldenberg). George Gershwin (Jacob Gershowitz) showed the success of the school's attempt to inculcate a love for American culture when he composed between 1923 and 1935 Rhapsody in Blue, An American in Paris, and Porgy and Bess.

Just down the street at 61-63 Rivington stands the three-story, red brick building that was a New York Public Library branch funded by Andrew Carnegie and built with an open-air reading room on the roof. The patriotic books it stocked opened many minds; if it was typical of other libraries of the era, biographies of Washington and Lincoln were the most frequently checked-out works, and immigrants reading about the presidents would see how they treated newcomers to America.

For example, President Washington took his oath of office a couple of miles from here in 1789 and then wrote to one synagogue, "May the children of the stock of Abraham who dwell in this land continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants, while everyone shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid." The way to merit good will was to work hard to gain your own vine and fig tree and not to covet those of neighbors.

Abraham Lincoln opposed the "Know-Nothings" who made up part of the nascent Republican Party, and he applauded the contributions immigrants made. His 1864 Thanksgiving Proclamation gave thanks to "Almighty God" who "has largely augmented our free population by emancipation and by immigration." But he also expected new arrivals to be a blessing to America; for example, he praised German-Americans (then a leading immigrant group) because they were "true and patriotic."

That should be our test regarding immigrants. Those who come to America to tear it down or live off of others should not be welcomed. Those who are "true and patriotic" should be. This means that we must toughen our tests for citizenship and not allow dual citizenship. It particularly means that our schools and libraries should do their part to communicate patriotism rather than politically correct anti-Americanism, and that all children should learn to speak English so that we do not end up with a bifurcated culture.

I mentioned that there are two differences from the semi-good old days and here's the second: Then almost all immigrants came by boat through fixed entry points, and now we have porous borders with immigrants coming by land illegally. Now we are also stuck with a coalition of liberals who think immigrants can be their political salvation and corporate conservatives who see their economic usefulness.

I don't know the right number of immigrants to let in. I do know that those who are allowed in should be here legally, so that they have protection against those who would prey on them rather than pray with them. And I know that we cannot dodge this issue.