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On February 5, 2009, General Colin Powell delivered an address at the Colin Powell Center for Policy Studies at the City University of New York. This is a condensed version of that speech.
I can't think of a better place to talk about the integration of immigrant populations into America than in this city and at the City University of New York. The city of New York is celebrated around the world as the place where people from all over the world first come to America. You know about the Statue of Liberty and about Ellis Island. We have a museum on Ellis Island that commemorates those arrivals. Our streets and neighborhoods bear the indelible marks of immigrants' cultures, their languages, their food, their ideas. Nowadays, there are many gateways into the U.S., but New York remains marked in a special way by its immigrant residents and by the neighborhoods and families they came to build over these many years. And it is important to note that people didn't just come here to find jobs or to go to school. They came to be Americans, because that meant to come from anywhere in the world and take your place alongside other people from anywhere in the world, and for all to somehow belong to something new, something wonderful. Never forgetting your roots, never forgetting where you came from or where your family came from, but now you're all one—a strong one in our great diversity. The city has thrived on its immigrant residents and there is a wise recognition in the policies of this city of how vital immigrants are to New York City and New York State.
In this most cosmopolitan of cities, City College has also played an extraordinary role in the lives of countless immigrants. Few experiences bind people to the life of their society more than the process of getting an education. Working-class people ensure middle-class lives for their children by sending them to school, getting them an education, and always looking for the next generation to do better than the current generation. My parents were not terribly well educated. My mother had graduated from high school and my father had not when they came here from Jamaica. And occasionally, when there were family disputes, we'd hear them arguing, and when she wanted to get even with my father, my mother, in that typical Jamaican West Indian fashion, would suck her teeth as only a Jamaican can: “Cha, him who never graduated from high school!” She would always hold that over him. But between the two of them and all of my aunts and uncles, they understood that for the next generation to do better than they did, education was the key. We cousins and kids had nothing to say about it. It was an expectation that we would all go to school. Not only would we finish school, we would go to college and we would finish college. We were never asked about this. There was no discussion in the home. It was a given. And if you didn't meet the expectation of these simple folks who worked in the garment industry, you were shaming the family. There was no greater curse that could be put upon you than for one of your relatives, especially your mom, dad, or one of the aunts to say, “What! You have shamed the family.” Hit me, beat me, do anything you want, but don't give me that “shame the family” bit, which is what they would do every single time, because they had dreams, they had expectations for you, and they insisted that you meet those expectations. It was that immigrant desire to do well, to work hard and become part of this new country and make sure that their children appreciated what they were getting.
Immigrants become new Americans every day on campuses, in classrooms, in the company of other students struggling with their own transformations. Immigrant kids have for decades come to City College, both because it was free and because it is still relatively cheap, and also because it explicitly set itself up to welcome people from all over the world into the life of this city and this country. In these classrooms, people from around the world are thrown together. They sometimes struggle with English and sometimes, if not always, struggle to make ends meet. Their ideas and lives jostle against one another in these corridors. And in that experience, they learn about the central importance of diversity to American life and to the American tradition.
Not withstanding this positive experience, this great immigration experience of ours—we are an immigrant country—people sometimes forget this. There are too many of our fellow citizens and leaders who want to focus on a discussion about protecting America from the dangers that our immigrants pose. They worry about American culture being overwhelmed by an influx of people who don't speak “our” language or who worship in a different way or dress in an unfamiliar way. Others, particularly after 9/11, grew concerned that by too widely opening our doors to others we let in those who wished to harm us. These views threaten to break the central connection that has always existed between America's vibrancy and her immigrant residents. Others argue that cheap labor from undocumented immigrants takes jobs away from American workers, drive wages down, and saps resources from our social services.
There are serious problems with these perspectives. To begin with, they often simply distort the reality of the situation. We've all heard high-profile success stories, immigrants who become prominent members of our society, but there is more routine truth that's often lost in that conversation. As baby boomers get older and leave the American workforce, this country will increasingly need new labor, and our needs will be most pressing not just in the high-skilled jobs that are currently in favor in immigration policies, but in semi-skilled and in skilled blue collar jobs. Moreover, there is substantial agreement that no matter what people might say, immigrants typically contribute more to our social services than they take from them. They pay Social Security taxes and income taxes and often never draw any benefits from the Social Security system. They make judicious use of health-care facilities, not withstanding the other points of view you hear, and they typically rely on family networks, connections and family structure to deal with their social service needs. Study after study from across the political spectrum confirms that our economy utterly depends on the contributions of immigrants, documented and otherwise. Advocates in both conservative and liberal think tanks argue for measures that will broaden and stabilize the supply of workers that come to the U.S. from abroad. Cities like New York have made special provisions to protect immigrants seeking social services in order to prevent inquiries into their status precisely because they play so vital a role in the prosperity of this city. We have to protect this valued group of people.
Now, obviously, there are reasonable concerns about the security of our borders and there is nothing wrong with efforts to reduce or eliminate the flow of new, undocumented aliens into our country. Reasonable proposals to make our borders less porous have to be part of any balanced immigration reform because it is not unreasonable to secure our borders. But this must be part of a comprehensive immigration reform effort. We cannot approach immigration policy reform as simply a matter of border security. For one thing, border management alone, without supporting policies, is not likely to work. If the political and economic incentives surrounding immigration remain unchanged, if nothing changes in our current policies, immigrants will continue to overwhelm whatever enforcement efforts we try to put in place. Resolving our immigration problems will require that we strengthen our borders, but also that we devise policies to promote economic development in neighboring countries.
When I was Secretary of State, I worked on this issue with Jorge Castañeda, then the foreign secretary of Mexico. We knew that the ultimate solution to undocumented immigrants coming to the U.S. was to create economic opportunities in Mexico and Central America so people could stay home and have decent jobs and a good quality of life. That still has to be our ultimate objective. And we have to do more than strengthen our borders; we have to find economic policies that help our neighbors, that embody sensible decisions about who is allowed into this country and under what circumstances. We can neither throw open our borders entirely, nor can we shut them down completely. We must, rather, think about the rights and roles of new Americans and temporary residents in relationship to our broader interests of security, prosperity, and democracy.
We have lived through some tough days since 9/11. And we're living in tough days now with respect to the economy. In such times, the newest and least integrated members of society are often particularly vulnerable. They often have the fewest reserves to fall back on in hard economic times, and they are easy targets when people begin to look for scapegoats. As a result, in our public politics we have too often been urged toward shortsighted and politically fearful responses, often toward people who many Americans see as different from themselves.
But in about another 20 or 30 years, the minorities of America are going to become the majority—some 51 percent. And any political party or leader who thinks they can ignore this issue, ignore immigration reform, does not understand the demographics of our country any longer, and doesn't understand that this demographic is being driven to a large extent by immigration.
Fortunately, we have had good leadership at the highest levels of government on immigration issues over the past few years. Immigration reform predictably raises questions of economic growth, the prosperity of our workforce, the security of our borders, and the character of our national community. I have seen this in action, and it is hard for any elected public official to take on immigration reform without angering some supporters. It takes commitment. It takes courage. And despite the risks and the costs, I saw President George Bush push long and hard for immigration reform beginning early in his administration in 2001. I saw him work very closely on a bipartisan bill in 2006, largely written by Senators Ted Kennedy and John McCain. While the legislation did not succeed, we know that ultimately, we will have to go back to this kind of reform legislation and build on what was done in 2006.
I am pleased that President Obama does not regard immigrants as a threat to our society or to American workers. He knows that the real danger immigration poses is not that American society would be overwhelmed by new arrivals but that, in our response to immigrants, America might undercut ideals of freedom and equality, and by denying immigrants' rights and freedoms central to the our way of life, we would create a servant class, the very existence of which would undermine the American dream of moving up, of always doing better than your parents. He recognizes that America depends on active participation of immigrants, and I am confident that President Obama will work to build that recognition into our public policies and political traditions.
Some also argue that immigrants are a security threat. They assume that foreigners coming to America must remain foreign to America. That is not our history. Debate so often focuses on efforts to stem the flow of immigrants into our country or to establish conditions that immigrants must meet to become Americans that we may forget the powerful good we can do through our integration policies. An immigrant living in America can be isolated and mistreated, can live in fear of police raids and deportation. Isn't it better to bring them out so they can openly navigate the path to becoming Americans and fulfill the expectations that brought them here in the first place? In an immigrant's first embrace of this country, we often see ardent demonstrations of loyalty and patriotism—but only if we return that embrace. I have seen it thousands of times in my military career: the young men and women who come to this country as immigrants and volunteer to serve in our Armed Forces, the children of immigrants who volunteer to serve in our Armed Forces. You will find no better or more loyal soldiers than these young men and women who may already be citizens or who hope to do their service to become citizens.
Immigrants eventually become part of our social and economic fabric. But the policies with which we greet them are, in important ways, self-fulfilling. If we reach out, if we help, they will respond in kind. We can each embrace each other or we can embitter and disappoint immigrants by treating them as a security threat or as just a servant class. Or, we can truly provide for their integration in our society. We can consider their aspirations. Immigrants come to America because they expect life here to be more fulfilling, and our country has been strong in direct proportion to how we meet those expectations. And we must let immigrants know that we have expectations for them. They are expected to work hard, to learn the language, to learn our rules, to fit into our society, and as the generations that have come before them, become caring, considerate and law-abiding American citizens.
Anytime I have any doubts about this grand theory of immigration and integration, I remind myself that when I come home to New York, my greatest joy is to stop at a hot-dog vendor on the street to get a dirty-water dog with mustard and the red onion relish you can only find in New York. I just love them. After I order my hot dog, the vendor—who is always an immigrant—often recognizes me. When I try to pay, the response is always, “No. You can't pay me. I've already been paid: America has paid me. I'm here now. I'll never forget where I came from, but now I'm an American and my children are American and they're going school. Mr. General, America has paid me. Thank you.”
This experience always reminds me of the America that greeted my parents 85 years ago. I see an America that every day continues to greet people like this from all over the world. And if we're going to remain the America that we all love and respect, it has to be an America that greets everybody, whether you're a skilled intellectual or a technician of some kind or just a guy who got here with nothing and is working at a hot-dog stand so he can put his kids in school. This is what's made us great, and let's never forget it. American truly is a nation of nations.
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