And if I’m honest with myself, I must admit that I’m not entirely immune to such nativist sentiments. When I see Mexican flags waved at proimmigration demonstrations, I sometimes feel a flush of patriotic resentment. When I’m forced to use a translator to communicate with the guy fixing my car, I feel a certain frustration.
Once, as the immigration debate began to heat up in the Capitol, a group of activists visited my office, asking that I sponsor a private relief bill that would legalize the status of thirty Mexican nationals who had been deported, leaving behind spouses or children with legal resident status. One of my staffers, Danny Sepulveda, a young man of Chilean descent, took the meeting, and explained to the group that although I was sympathetic to their plight and was one of the chief sponsors of the Senate immigration bill, I didn’t feel comfortable, as a matter of principle, sponsoring legislation that would select thirty people out of the millions in similar situations for a special dispensation. Some in the group became agitated; they suggested that I didn’t care about immigrant families and immigrant children, that I cared more about borders than about justice. One activist accused Danny of having forgotten where he came from — of not really being Latino.
When I heard what had happened, I was both angry and frustrated. I wanted to call the group and explain that American citizenship is a privilege and not a right; that without meaningful borders and respect for the law, the very things that brought them to America, the opportunities and protections afforded those who live in this country, would surely erode; and that anyway, I didn’t put up with people abusing my staff — especially one who was championing their cause.
It was Danny who talked me out of the call, sensibly suggesting that it might be counterproductive. Several weeks later, on a Saturday morning, I attended a naturalization workshop at St. Pius Church in Pilsen, sponsored by Congressman Luis Gutierrez, the Service Employees International Union, and several of the immigrants’ rights groups that had visited my office. About a thousand people had lined up outside the church, including young families, elderly couples, and women with strollers; inside, people sat silently in wooden pews, clutching the small American flags that the organizers had passed out, waiting to be called by one of the volunteers who would help them manage the start of what would be a years-long process to become citizens.
As I wandered down the aisle, some people smiled and waved; others nodded tentatively as I offered my hand and introduced myself. I met a Mexican woman who spoke no English but whose son was in Iraq; I recognized a young Colombian man who worked as a valet at a local restaurant and learned that he was studying accounting at the local community college. At one point a young girl, seven or eight, came up to me, her parents standing behind her, and asked me for an autograph; she was studying government in school, she said, and would show it to her class.
I asked her what her name was. She said her name was Cristina and that she was in the third grade. I told her parents they should be proud of her. And as I watched Cristina translate my words into Spanish for them, I was reminded that America has nothing to fear from these newcomers, that they have come here for the same reason that families came here 150 years ago — all those who fled Europe’s famines and wars and unyielding hierarchies, all those who may not have had the right legal documents or connections or unique skills to offer but who carried with them a hope for a better life.
We have a right and duty to protect our borders. We can insist to those already here that with citizenship come obligations — to a common language, common loyalties, a common purpose, a common destiny. But ultimately the danger to our way of life is not that we will be overrun by those who do not look like us or do not yet speak our language. The danger will come if we fail to recognize the humanity of Cristina and her family — if we withhold from them the rights and opportunities that we take for granted, and tolerate the hypocrisy of a servant class in our midst; or more broadly, if we stand idly by as America continues to become increasingly unequal, an inequality that tracks racial lines and therefore feeds racial strife and which, as the country becomes more black and brown, neither our democracy nor our economy can long withstand.
That’s not the future I want for Cristina, I said to myself as I watched her and her family wave good-bye. That’s not the future I want for my daughters. Their America will be more dizzying in its diversity, its culture more polyglot. My daughters will learn Spanish and be the better for it. Cristina will learn about Rosa Parks and understand that the life of a black seamstress speaks to her own. The issues my girls and Cristina confront may lack the stark moral clarity of a segregated bus, but in one form or another their generation will surely be tested — just as Mrs. Parks was tested and the Freedom Riders were tested, just as we are all tested — by those voices that would divide us and have us turn on each other.
And when they are tested in that way, I hope Cristina and my daughters will have all read about the history of this country and will recognize they have been given something precious.
America is big enough to accommodate all their dreams.
Chapter Eight
The World Beyond Our Borders
I NDONESIA IS A nation of islands — more than seventeen thousand in all, spread along the equator between the Indian and Pacific Oceans, between Australia and the South China Sea. Most Indonesians are of Malay stock and live on the larger islands of Java, Sumatra, Kalimantan, Sulawesi, and Bali. On the far eastern islands like Ambon and the Indonesian portion of New Guinea the people are, in varying degrees, of Melanesian ancestry. Indonesia’s climate is tropical, and its rain forests were once teeming with exotic species like the orangutan and the Sumatran tiger. Today, those rain forests are rapidly dwindling, victim to logging, mining, and the cultivation of rice, tea, coffee, and palm oil. Deprived of their natural habitat, orangutans are now an endangered species; no more than a few hundred Sumatran tigers remain in the wild.
With more than 240 million people, Indonesia’s population ranks fourth in the world, behind China, India, and the United States. More than seven hundred ethnic groups reside within the country’s borders, and more than 742 languages are spoken there. Almost 90 percent of Indonesia’s population practice Islam, making it the world’s largest Muslim nation. Indonesia is OPEC’s only Asian member, although as a consequence of aging infrastructure, depleted reserves, and high domestic consumption it is now a net importer of crude oil. The national language is Bahasa Indonesia. The capital is Jakarta. The currency is the rupiah.
Most Americans can’t locate Indonesia on a map.
This fact is puzzling to Indonesians, since for the past sixty years the fate of their nation has been directly tied to U.S. foreign policy. Ruled by a succession of sultanates and often-splintering kingdoms for most of its history, the archipelago became a Dutch colony — the Dutch East Indies — in the 1600s, a status that would last for more than three centuries. But in the lead-up to World War II, the Dutch East Indies’ ample oil reserves became a prime target of Japanese expansion; having thrown its lot in with the Axis powers and facing a U.S.-imposed oil embargo, Japan needed fuel for its military and industry. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japan moved swiftly to take over the Dutch colony, an occupation that would last for the duration of the war.
With the Japanese surrender in 1945, a budding Indonesian nationalist movement declared the country’s independence. The Dutch had other ideas, and attempted to reclaim their former territory. Four bloody years of war ensued. Eventually the Dutch bowed to mounting international pressure (the U.S. government, already concerned with the spread of communism under the banner of anticolonialism, threatened the Netherlands with a cutoff of Marshall Plan funds) and recognized Indonesia’s sovereignty. The principal leader of the independence movement, a charismatic, flamboyant figure named Sukarno, became Indonesia’s first president.