The Chain That Pulls Our Migrants

 Lots of people have been talking about chain migration lately, but not too many people - even the most ardent sign-waving Republicans or the wisest-looking TV commentators - have been saying just what it is.

The President wants to stop it. Lots of Democrats in Congress generally oppose the idea of stopping it, but don’t really talk about it much. It is much too complicated, lots of them say. The commentators on television say it would just bore their audience but would love to do a show on it some day, if they could only figure out a way of getting ratings.

So, unless John Oliver jumps in and explains it all to us, I feel that it is up to me to explain Chain Migration and look at some possibilities of what ending it might have done in the past and what it might do now.

But, first, let’s make it entertaining. I’ll give you a little quiz.

Chain Migration is:

A - The wholesale import of chains into our country, from the small ones used to hang plants to the really big ones that hold the anchors on ships.It is killing our own American chain industry.

B - The quasi-legal importing of gold and silver chains from nations that would otherwise be banned from dealing with the United States and getting our hard currency, simply by shipping their reserves of gold and silver - doubtless collected by terrorists and North Korean agents - through Swiss chain makers, then selling them at a discount for Valentine’s Day through some jeweler at your local mall.

C - Allowing legally settled immigrants who live in the United States to sponsor someone from their village in the old country to come here and immigrate, allowing them to someday sponsor another immigrant, until much of their old village population is now living in the United States.

The answer, of course, is C.

Now, let’s suppose we end the practice. It is, as the President said, really bad.

Well, let’s go to Fiddler on the Roof. Ah, Anatevka, that wonderful, fictional village which stood for hundreds of little Jewish villages that dotted the Pale of Settlement - the only place in Imperial Russia where Jews were allowed to live a century or so ago. Who said so? The Czar.

Now, that Pale was a pretty big place. It covered parts of the Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, Moldavia and Poland. Some Jews lived in cities like Warsaw and Odessa, but most were just in rural villages where they were farmers and shopkeepers. They could scrape out a living and dream of someday having a better life and observe their religion, at least until a Pogrom broke out.

For those not familiar, a pogrom is a kind of a riot, where the local citizens rise up and beat up or kill their Jewish neighbors, burn their businesses and vandalize their homes,  and then go on to live happy lives free of the debts they may owe those Jews, move into their now-vacant homes or simply do business free of competition.

All with the blessing of the Czar, who knew that his people needed an enemy to be angry at, lest they become angry at him.

Exaggeration? Well, there were about 200 pogroms in the Russian empire between 1881 and 1884, many in Kiev, Warsaw and Odessa. The very first pogrom was earlier, in Odessa in 1821, where 14 Jews were killed by people who thought they were somehow responsible for the execution of Greek Orthodox patriarch Gregory V.

Now the Jews who tried to get out of the Pale and get to the United States or England or Holland or Argentina or anywhere else generally needed a sponsor, and that sponsor usually was a family member who had previously moved to one of those countries.

And, if and when they managed to emigrate, and settle in Brooklyn or Cleveland or Atlanta, they might - if things worked out right - sponsor a brother or a cousin or a lucky neighbor who might emigrate to those cities, too.

Presto, chain migration.

The same thing, without the pogroms, happened when famine ravished Ireland, when hard times swept through Italy and when Germans (and yes, Jews and Germans do not mean the same thing) tried to escape the chaos of their nation after World War I. It was the same path that people from other nations walked as well, the path that makes Minnesota the unofficial Norwegian capital of the United States and makes Riverhead, N.Y, hold a Polish Fair every year.

Now, if we end chain migration - that evil, evil practice - we might hope that the problems of the hopeless people in the world today might be solved when all of the tens of thousands of villages and cities across the United States rise up as one and each agree to find and sponsor some poor family in a nation where they - and we - do  not have a common language, where they and we have no political or economic connection, and where we and they have never shared a single room or a single meal, or ever seen each other.

Now, if their village is small or if their schools are poor or if they have no hope of ever improving their life, they might somehow make it to the United States. But the chances of those poor families and those poor children making it would be a whole lot better if they had neighbors in their new home who spoke their language, shared the same religion or who might even be related to them.

On the other hand, I am not in Congress and I am certainly not the President. I am sure they have a much better idea to deal with the problems of the poor of the world. You know, the folks in the poem on the base of the Statue of Liberty.

I know they talk about it a lot on certain national holidays. Maybe, sometime, they will take the time to explain how to do it. Or, maybe, John Oliver will notice.