The immigrant

My mother was an immigrant. I’ve been proud of that and proud of her long before I was mature enough to really understand what that meant. In many ways, I still don’t, because I was lucky enough to be born in this great country. Lucky is the wrong word, isn’t it. It wasn’t luck that made me an American. It was mum – who chose America, who chose to leave her family and roots for America. Who fought to be an American.

I’ve been thinking much more about this in recent years due to the ignorant, hateful, racist narrative spewed by Trump and his supporters. I’ve begun to pointedly inject “my mother was an immigrant” in some conversations about how great America may or may not currently be. No one has yet come right out and said that her kind of immigration – the white, European kind of immigration – isn’t the problem. But I’m pretty good at reading faces.

A few days after my 9^th birthday, on our nation’s 200^th birthday July 4, 1976, my mother raised her right hand and was anointed as a legal citizen of the United States of America. What’s most remarkable about that to me, other than her wonderful flare for showmanship, was that she didn’t have to earn it. She didn’t have to choose vulnerability and work at it. You see; by marrying my American father she was already granted all the rights and benefits of American citizenship. She’d had them for 12 years, owned a home in America, and was raising two sons here. But she chose to achieve citizenship on her own.

I wish I could ask her today when she decided this. I remember the studying for the test, the naming of past presidents, the details of American history that her American born husband and sons couldn’t recall, but she was mastering. I just had to Google what other details were involved – the English-speaking test and the Civics test. Looking back, I better remember suggesting she study the Red Sox starting lineup.

Two of my cousins would later go on to struggle with our legal immigration process as they too chose America. I recall my mother working tirelessly to help them with expiring work visas and scheduling return trips back and forth across the Atlantic to follow the rules.

She and they had advantages over those other would-be immigrants so vilified by the MAGA crazies – skin color, prior mastery of the English language. But the hope and promise of a better life is the same. I can assure you my mother’s hope today would be that we unify around the idea of fixing legal immigration, and thereby limiting illegal immigration, and ultimately celebrating immigration. It’s the bedrock of our nation. And it’s sad and pathetic that we have lost sight of that.

Mum chose America in sweeping ways I will never fully appreciate, but I knew even back in 1976 that she was making a declaration of her independence as a woman. She had all the citizenship benefits already as the partner of an American man. But she wanted them all over again as an American woman. She wanted to win them on her own. And she wanted her two male children to understand that.

She’d be so proud today to see a woman – the daughter of immigrants – at the precipice of becoming the President of the United States. I so hope we see it happen next week. For my wife, for my daughters, for my son, for those lucky enough to be born here and those who so badly want to live here. For mum.