Immigrant’s Song

Out of the vapors of the past I come to sing you a song of the poor and huddled masses who have gathered at your gates. I am the inscrutable Chink, one of 20,000 of my kind who for a dollar a day built your grand railway of the golden spike. I am the drunken Mick, the mobbed-up Dago, the ignorant Polack who sweat and died to forge the iron and erect your palaces of steel. I am the Shylock Kike whose sweatshop toil made the clothes on your back and financial acumen you blame for relieving you of your meager earnings. I am the Hun, the Kraut, the suspected spy who changed my name to protect me from a vengeful Klan when first our countries warred. I am the devious Jap, the Nip, whose family, reviled as turncoats, dwelt in your internment camps while on European battlefields I died for you. I am the Wetback who braved deserts and predators of the human kind to pick your crops, roof your houses, and tend your lawns, do the jobs your sons won’t do. I am the Raghead, denied entry into your land because of the evil of a few who, like me, pray to Allah. Call me what you will, but Lady Liberty, raise your torch to me. I am America. I am you. Author’s Note: I find racial and ethnic pejoratives reprehensible, but their use here helps illustrate how, from one generation of immigrants to the next, we have welcomed their labors, but not themselves as human beings.