It felt like a miracle to actually come to US from under the Iron Curtain in the end of 70’s! My kids were born Free and with endless opportunities and believe me, we never let them forget! And it’s true, people who live here for generations don’t appreciate America as much as we do because they forgot...and they do behave like spoiled children. Hard working Immigrants are the hope of this country!
A touching story of two sisters coping in America, which must be a faar different place than their native Iraq. I wish the writer knew more about their family. There is alwys tension between the old and the new in immigrant families, but none of that was touched upon here. As for the author's claim that the sisters sufferred increased hostility from strangers begining in 2016, I believe that was the time of Trump's election, all I can say is, really? Homeless veterans never snarled at women in hijabs before November, 2016? Oddly enough, homeless veterans have never been known to be particularly gracious or polite. In fact, their reputation is quite the opposite. But whatever.
My husband just spent a week in StVincent hospital in ERie and our experience was awesome! The staff, who are warm, friendly and bright, including many immigrants (possibly refugees?) were outstanding. Driving around Erie you can see it has had better days, but there are also signs of renovation and re-building. The region is beautiful and very good farm land, attracting a diverse range of Amish, Mennonites, and PHD grads dedicated to organic farming. Very diverse!
Love being in a country with the Al-Khafaji family. I also love those tolerant of them; and I hold out hope for those that are intolerant of them so that they can change too.
That's the genius of America. Change and betterment is what this country has been about since before July 4th 1776. You can't have change without the pessimists and haters though. There will always be the persistent haters like the intolerant modern progressives. I hold out hope for them rather than hatred. It's just tough to see them relentlessly bang their heads against the wall, and I wish they would stop already.
There is a lamentably gushy, Panglossian tone to this essay. The whole thing reads like someone exclaiming: "Look at these nice Muslims I found!" - which accidentally makes them sound like a rarity. Even the phrase "whip smart" is a backhander of a compliment because it amounts to saying "inanimate object smart". (Would anyone feel flattered to be told that they are "brick smart"?)
Such own goals blight not merely the article's style, but its content too. There are curious admissions, in which the author doesn't seem to grasp the implications of what he is saying. At one point he describes what follows when Mariam fails a college admissions test:
"I appealed to the dean of admissions, and they changed the way they review refugee kids’ standardized test scores, and she got in."
Translation: I moved the goalposts so that a failure could be turned into a success, without even having to re-take the test. Would this revelation make Mariam's own patients feel more - or less - confident about how qualified she is to treat their illnesses? After all, when Mariam "got in" to a class with a limited number of places, she would almost certainly have displaced a NON-refugee student who performed better than her. How is this grade-grubbing approach meant to make Americans feel better about the refugees in their workforce? (And, given that this was the very week in which the country's highest court ruled affirmative action in universities unconstitutional, the timing of this university lecturer's admission is awful.)
It gets better. In a peroration executed with a kind of flourish, the author tells us how the family will soon commemorate their long road to becoming US citizens:
"On July Fourth, the Al-Khafajis will celebrate their arrival in this country ... they’ll do what they always do on the Fourth. They’ll pile into the family’s Honda Odyssey and drive up to Buffalo ... There’s a Yemeni restaurant there that they like."
Translation: on the one day of the year when everyone around them is celebrating being American, these Arab refugees will plunge right back into Arab culture.
I have to commend anyone who uses the term "Panglossian tone"! I too found the essay superficial. I briefly helped an Afghani woman settling into our city, but I could tell you far more about her life in Afghanistan than the obvious they had to run for their lives. Americans think everyone is like them, they just speak a cute language and cling to quaint, outdated customs. It does not occur to most Americans that people from other cultures actually have different values and assumptions. Diversity is a double edged sword. In my community, we are welcoming both Muslims and Hindus ... because they love each other so much!
I’m glad that they’re here in America. Our country is not perfect, but the opportunities it gives to people is what I love most. To me, we’ll always be the shining light of the world. Welcome and happy 4th.
It's the same story in Canada, where many home grown Canadians are on board with cancelling Canada Day (today) and the newer immigrants are all partying and waving Canadian flags.
It obviously wasn't AA! This quintessentially white, middle class white guy history instructor saw a disrespect for meritocracy by Gannon admissions office -- her English literacy was good enough, and did something about it.
I enjoyed this article but I do have to take exception to a long standing bug a boo of mine. The author references a leftist named Rory who points out the "sins and ills" of America. Xenophobia, discrimination, economic disparities, loss of community. These are HUMAN traits and ills not American. ALL human societies since man has walked the earth suffer from these sins and ills. You can not eradicate them you can only try to minimize them through laws and custom. Do we have racial discrimination in this country? Yes. But much less than I have witnessed in Asia, Africa and western Europe where I actually encountered signs in restaurants in rural parts of France back in the nineties stating "no Africans allowed."
People who claim that the USA today id a cesspool of racism have no idea of what it's like around the world or understanding of historical realities. Great civilizations like the Greeks, Persians, Romans, Mayan, etc...accepted slavery, infanticide, ritualistic sacrifices.
If you want to analyze and criticize this country please do. But do it honestly and based upon human imperfections and histories. Not on some utopian fairytale.
I strongly believe that wealth is at the heart of the traditional American generosity. Not wealth concentrated in certain families, but the wealth of our high standard of living and resulting expectation that there was enough for everyone in America. That is not true of many places around the world. My family lived in a poor country still reeling from WWII during the 1950s, and things were far different there. Each community was jealous of its neighbors, afraid they would get what ever precious resources might be available. It was a real problem. In my mind, it was the result of the assumption that there was NOT enough to go around, and anything they got would be at your expense.
Thank you for this post................humans are complicated animals and far from perfect...........those that forget that are doing themselves and others a disservice.
Dear Mark...I agree with what you have said...on July 4th, I appreciate an article that just says "Yay America"...I'll spend time being critical tomorrow...g.
It just goes to show you that if Americans illegally invade a foreign state and occupy for no reason, that a few lucky people can then come to the US and become part of our great nation. Let's not dwell on the fact that no American soldiers should have EVER been in Iraq in the first place. Obviously, the villain in this story is the unnamed Trump supporter...
I am so glad to be a citizen of a country that shamelessly lies to its own people, and the rest of the world, needlessly invades sovereign states but has the courtesy to let some of them come here and experience our generosity and largesse; all because we took the time to destroy their ancient capital, destabilize their nation and pave the way for a band of fanatics!
Go Liberals! Go America!
I wonder if college professors in the Roman Empire wrote this way about their conquered peoples...?
Your memory is poor. Iraq's neighbors were terrified of Saddam's sons, one of whom was an out and out psychopath. He had blungeoned to death an aid to his father in front of the wife of the President of Egypt. That is the stuff wars are made from. And about those rumors of weapons of mass destruction ... I personallly believe those rumors were started by Saddam himself to keep his neighbors in line, particularly Iran, Iraq's traditional enemy, but BBC News carries an article on the subject you might be interested in. In my opinion, the underllying cause of the war was Saddam's age and the fear his adult sons inspired, both inside and outside the country. They were spoiled, they were psychotic, and they had never learned to hide it.
While I agree with you about the Iraq War, your comment seems unnecessarily negative.
The point of the article is that America is a land of opportunity for immigrants. That our classical liberal foundation makes us uniquely able to move forward and fix what we realize is broken.
It is currently the Leftists who have decided that a) classical liberalism is BAD and EVIL, and b) that America is irredeemable and needs to be destroyed and rebuilt as a Leftist utopia.
Hardly. It should sound like what it says: America is an empire in decline not unlike the Roman Empire. We have tried to conquer foreign lands under false pretenses and then, rather that do anything meaningful to own to our faults, we instead laud ourselves for being so noble as to allow some of the conquered to live among us. I disdain noblesse oblige, especially in its American form.
The article is paean to the wrong impulse. My wife is a would-be-immigrant from China. And for all their faults, at least the Chinese won't throng to America after the United States wrongfully storms their nation in an ill conceived tele-drama that won ratings and did little else. Americans seem so incredibly squeamish about wanting to look at what we do abroad. Can you imagine what we would do if foreign tanks destroyed large swathes of Kansas City or Denver? But we are more than willing to contribute to this mayhem and then applaud ourselves when a lucky few come to our shores and tell us they like the smell of our bullshit.
Your comments do not sound like what you think they say.
It sounds as if you believe that not only is America in decline (a point I absolutely agree with, btw), but that America "was NEVER great." You sound exactly like a Leftist bitching about what a horrible country this is.
At least you have to decency to admit that immigrants shouldn't come to such a horrible country; unlike Leftists, who encourage illegal immigration out of one side of their mouths, while decrying America as a racist hellhole out of the other.
Choosing to focus on Iraqi immigrants wasn't really the best gambit for this author, but this essay attempts to make a point about American opportunity, not about American foreign policy.
Fair point. But I think the characterization of if/when America was ever a "great" nation is not productive. I make comments referring to the times in which I live. I also don't mythologize. I think it isn't necessary. I am a southerner at heart and have no problem admitting two important realities:
1. The South was wrong in the Civil War and deserved to lose.
2. Yankees are horrible people who took great pleasure in not only destroying the South but in rubbing salt in the wounds of southerners for generations.
Both are true.
1. America is the greatest nation on earth.
2. The greatest nation on earth is plagued by some damned ugly problems.
You are letting your southern sympathies geet the better of you. The Yankees never wanted to go to war. They dragged their feet at the beginning. The South fought valiantly. But that resulted in a lot of Yankee deaths and dismemberments. So, you can hardly blame the north for coming down hard on the enemy that had killed and maimed so many of its sons.
Oh, please do get a life. I helped a newly arrived Iraqi Kurdish family back in the 1990s and they BEGGED every American they knew to tell President Bush to invade Iraq. Because they knew what a monster Saddam was and how he tortured people and dumped poison gas on thousands of Kurds and that anything was preferable to him staying in power. You make it sound like it was heaven in Baghdad (their 'ancient capital'?) before we invaded. Believe me, it was not.
Well I guess I stand corrected! When some random stranger begs you to ask your president to invade their homeland then you do what good Americans do and you do it! I'll remember that the next time I am overseas! I might just beg someone in a foreign land to come to Washington to forcibly remove Joe Biden!
Please beg everyone and anyone to remove Joe Biden. He’s been a vampiric, useless but arrogant parasite long enough. This country can’t get rid of him for over 45 years!!! Can you name at least 1 excellent accomplishment he is responsible for? His record shows so much shameless, terrible or even unnecessary lies...and flipping from one end of the spectrum to another just to hold on to freebies!
First generation immigrants appreciate America--they have seen just how bleak the world can be, and that provides the necessary perspective to recognize how lucky they are to be here. Unfortunately, it's the native Americans, the ones who have never known anything else, who have never lived in a warzone or under real oppression, who convince themselves America not being perfect means it must be some kind of racist dystopian nightmare. It's a nation of spoiled children who confuse not getting everything they want with being abused.
I agree. On your last point, the nation creates or at least reinforces that confusion. Sowing seeds of fear, uncertainty and doubt, treating people as victims or problems to be solved, and blaming the other side of the aisle for all ills are transparent attempts to keep America divided and remain in power.
Spot on. As someone who has traveled extensively for 30 years; Europe, Asia, Central America, Africa the ills and imperfections of America pale in comparison to the rest of the world.
Jeff...you had me with tears, beautiful story with beautiful people. thanks.
It felt like a miracle to actually come to US from under the Iron Curtain in the end of 70’s! My kids were born Free and with endless opportunities and believe me, we never let them forget! And it’s true, people who live here for generations don’t appreciate America as much as we do because they forgot...and they do behave like spoiled children. Hard working Immigrants are the hope of this country!
A touching story of two sisters coping in America, which must be a faar different place than their native Iraq. I wish the writer knew more about their family. There is alwys tension between the old and the new in immigrant families, but none of that was touched upon here. As for the author's claim that the sisters sufferred increased hostility from strangers begining in 2016, I believe that was the time of Trump's election, all I can say is, really? Homeless veterans never snarled at women in hijabs before November, 2016? Oddly enough, homeless veterans have never been known to be particularly gracious or polite. In fact, their reputation is quite the opposite. But whatever.
here ya go.. great song and great pictures..coming to America.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ttDUGM-1mU. safe to open
My husband just spent a week in StVincent hospital in ERie and our experience was awesome! The staff, who are warm, friendly and bright, including many immigrants (possibly refugees?) were outstanding. Driving around Erie you can see it has had better days, but there are also signs of renovation and re-building. The region is beautiful and very good farm land, attracting a diverse range of Amish, Mennonites, and PHD grads dedicated to organic farming. Very diverse!
Love being in a country with the Al-Khafaji family. I also love those tolerant of them; and I hold out hope for those that are intolerant of them so that they can change too.
That's the genius of America. Change and betterment is what this country has been about since before July 4th 1776. You can't have change without the pessimists and haters though. There will always be the persistent haters like the intolerant modern progressives. I hold out hope for them rather than hatred. It's just tough to see them relentlessly bang their heads against the wall, and I wish they would stop already.
There is a lamentably gushy, Panglossian tone to this essay. The whole thing reads like someone exclaiming: "Look at these nice Muslims I found!" - which accidentally makes them sound like a rarity. Even the phrase "whip smart" is a backhander of a compliment because it amounts to saying "inanimate object smart". (Would anyone feel flattered to be told that they are "brick smart"?)
Such own goals blight not merely the article's style, but its content too. There are curious admissions, in which the author doesn't seem to grasp the implications of what he is saying. At one point he describes what follows when Mariam fails a college admissions test:
"I appealed to the dean of admissions, and they changed the way they review refugee kids’ standardized test scores, and she got in."
Translation: I moved the goalposts so that a failure could be turned into a success, without even having to re-take the test. Would this revelation make Mariam's own patients feel more - or less - confident about how qualified she is to treat their illnesses? After all, when Mariam "got in" to a class with a limited number of places, she would almost certainly have displaced a NON-refugee student who performed better than her. How is this grade-grubbing approach meant to make Americans feel better about the refugees in their workforce? (And, given that this was the very week in which the country's highest court ruled affirmative action in universities unconstitutional, the timing of this university lecturer's admission is awful.)
It gets better. In a peroration executed with a kind of flourish, the author tells us how the family will soon commemorate their long road to becoming US citizens:
"On July Fourth, the Al-Khafajis will celebrate their arrival in this country ... they’ll do what they always do on the Fourth. They’ll pile into the family’s Honda Odyssey and drive up to Buffalo ... There’s a Yemeni restaurant there that they like."
Translation: on the one day of the year when everyone around them is celebrating being American, these Arab refugees will plunge right back into Arab culture.
So much for integration.
I have to commend anyone who uses the term "Panglossian tone"! I too found the essay superficial. I briefly helped an Afghani woman settling into our city, but I could tell you far more about her life in Afghanistan than the obvious they had to run for their lives. Americans think everyone is like them, they just speak a cute language and cling to quaint, outdated customs. It does not occur to most Americans that people from other cultures actually have different values and assumptions. Diversity is a double edged sword. In my community, we are welcoming both Muslims and Hindus ... because they love each other so much!
would you feel better if they bar be qued some carrot dogs
Thank you...g.
I’m glad that they’re here in America. Our country is not perfect, but the opportunities it gives to people is what I love most. To me, we’ll always be the shining light of the world. Welcome and happy 4th.
It's the same story in Canada, where many home grown Canadians are on board with cancelling Canada Day (today) and the newer immigrants are all partying and waving Canadian flags.
"... and they changed the way they review refugee kids’ standardized test scores" So a little affirmative action DID help.
Based on them being refugees with English as a second language, not the colour of their skin or their heritage. Big difference.
It obviously wasn't AA! This quintessentially white, middle class white guy history instructor saw a disrespect for meritocracy by Gannon admissions office -- her English literacy was good enough, and did something about it.
I enjoyed this article but I do have to take exception to a long standing bug a boo of mine. The author references a leftist named Rory who points out the "sins and ills" of America. Xenophobia, discrimination, economic disparities, loss of community. These are HUMAN traits and ills not American. ALL human societies since man has walked the earth suffer from these sins and ills. You can not eradicate them you can only try to minimize them through laws and custom. Do we have racial discrimination in this country? Yes. But much less than I have witnessed in Asia, Africa and western Europe where I actually encountered signs in restaurants in rural parts of France back in the nineties stating "no Africans allowed."
People who claim that the USA today id a cesspool of racism have no idea of what it's like around the world or understanding of historical realities. Great civilizations like the Greeks, Persians, Romans, Mayan, etc...accepted slavery, infanticide, ritualistic sacrifices.
If you want to analyze and criticize this country please do. But do it honestly and based upon human imperfections and histories. Not on some utopian fairytale.
Mark...the way to Hit It. thanks.
I strongly believe that wealth is at the heart of the traditional American generosity. Not wealth concentrated in certain families, but the wealth of our high standard of living and resulting expectation that there was enough for everyone in America. That is not true of many places around the world. My family lived in a poor country still reeling from WWII during the 1950s, and things were far different there. Each community was jealous of its neighbors, afraid they would get what ever precious resources might be available. It was a real problem. In my mind, it was the result of the assumption that there was NOT enough to go around, and anything they got would be at your expense.
Thank you for this post................humans are complicated animals and far from perfect...........those that forget that are doing themselves and others a disservice.
Dear Mark...I agree with what you have said...on July 4th, I appreciate an article that just says "Yay America"...I'll spend time being critical tomorrow...g.
Fair enough GKS3. Yay America!! and Happy 4th to you!
What a great essay!
It just goes to show you that if Americans illegally invade a foreign state and occupy for no reason, that a few lucky people can then come to the US and become part of our great nation. Let's not dwell on the fact that no American soldiers should have EVER been in Iraq in the first place. Obviously, the villain in this story is the unnamed Trump supporter...
I am so glad to be a citizen of a country that shamelessly lies to its own people, and the rest of the world, needlessly invades sovereign states but has the courtesy to let some of them come here and experience our generosity and largesse; all because we took the time to destroy their ancient capital, destabilize their nation and pave the way for a band of fanatics!
Go Liberals! Go America!
I wonder if college professors in the Roman Empire wrote this way about their conquered peoples...?
Your memory is poor. Iraq's neighbors were terrified of Saddam's sons, one of whom was an out and out psychopath. He had blungeoned to death an aid to his father in front of the wife of the President of Egypt. That is the stuff wars are made from. And about those rumors of weapons of mass destruction ... I personallly believe those rumors were started by Saddam himself to keep his neighbors in line, particularly Iran, Iraq's traditional enemy, but BBC News carries an article on the subject you might be interested in. In my opinion, the underllying cause of the war was Saddam's age and the fear his adult sons inspired, both inside and outside the country. They were spoiled, they were psychotic, and they had never learned to hide it.
While I agree with you about the Iraq War, your comment seems unnecessarily negative.
The point of the article is that America is a land of opportunity for immigrants. That our classical liberal foundation makes us uniquely able to move forward and fix what we realize is broken.
It is currently the Leftists who have decided that a) classical liberalism is BAD and EVIL, and b) that America is irredeemable and needs to be destroyed and rebuilt as a Leftist utopia.
Sounds like you are siding with the Leftists.
Hardly. It should sound like what it says: America is an empire in decline not unlike the Roman Empire. We have tried to conquer foreign lands under false pretenses and then, rather that do anything meaningful to own to our faults, we instead laud ourselves for being so noble as to allow some of the conquered to live among us. I disdain noblesse oblige, especially in its American form.
The article is paean to the wrong impulse. My wife is a would-be-immigrant from China. And for all their faults, at least the Chinese won't throng to America after the United States wrongfully storms their nation in an ill conceived tele-drama that won ratings and did little else. Americans seem so incredibly squeamish about wanting to look at what we do abroad. Can you imagine what we would do if foreign tanks destroyed large swathes of Kansas City or Denver? But we are more than willing to contribute to this mayhem and then applaud ourselves when a lucky few come to our shores and tell us they like the smell of our bullshit.
Your comments do not sound like what you think they say.
It sounds as if you believe that not only is America in decline (a point I absolutely agree with, btw), but that America "was NEVER great." You sound exactly like a Leftist bitching about what a horrible country this is.
At least you have to decency to admit that immigrants shouldn't come to such a horrible country; unlike Leftists, who encourage illegal immigration out of one side of their mouths, while decrying America as a racist hellhole out of the other.
Choosing to focus on Iraqi immigrants wasn't really the best gambit for this author, but this essay attempts to make a point about American opportunity, not about American foreign policy.
Fair point. But I think the characterization of if/when America was ever a "great" nation is not productive. I make comments referring to the times in which I live. I also don't mythologize. I think it isn't necessary. I am a southerner at heart and have no problem admitting two important realities:
1. The South was wrong in the Civil War and deserved to lose.
2. Yankees are horrible people who took great pleasure in not only destroying the South but in rubbing salt in the wounds of southerners for generations.
Both are true.
1. America is the greatest nation on earth.
2. The greatest nation on earth is plagued by some damned ugly problems.
You are letting your southern sympathies geet the better of you. The Yankees never wanted to go to war. They dragged their feet at the beginning. The South fought valiantly. But that resulted in a lot of Yankee deaths and dismemberments. So, you can hardly blame the north for coming down hard on the enemy that had killed and maimed so many of its sons.
He sure is letting his southern sympathies shine today.
Oh, please do get a life. I helped a newly arrived Iraqi Kurdish family back in the 1990s and they BEGGED every American they knew to tell President Bush to invade Iraq. Because they knew what a monster Saddam was and how he tortured people and dumped poison gas on thousands of Kurds and that anything was preferable to him staying in power. You make it sound like it was heaven in Baghdad (their 'ancient capital'?) before we invaded. Believe me, it was not.
Well I guess I stand corrected! When some random stranger begs you to ask your president to invade their homeland then you do what good Americans do and you do it! I'll remember that the next time I am overseas! I might just beg someone in a foreign land to come to Washington to forcibly remove Joe Biden!
Up yours!
Please beg everyone and anyone to remove Joe Biden. He’s been a vampiric, useless but arrogant parasite long enough. This country can’t get rid of him for over 45 years!!! Can you name at least 1 excellent accomplishment he is responsible for? His record shows so much shameless, terrible or even unnecessary lies...and flipping from one end of the spectrum to another just to hold on to freebies!
Two misleading/false and obnoxious comments that did not improve the conversation.
Point them out and I will correct them.
Thanks for reminding me that despite all the disputes I'm aware of every day I'm lucky and should share my good fortune.
First generation immigrants appreciate America--they have seen just how bleak the world can be, and that provides the necessary perspective to recognize how lucky they are to be here. Unfortunately, it's the native Americans, the ones who have never known anything else, who have never lived in a warzone or under real oppression, who convince themselves America not being perfect means it must be some kind of racist dystopian nightmare. It's a nation of spoiled children who confuse not getting everything they want with being abused.
You won't find a more libertarian, freedom-loving immigrant group than former residents of the Soviet Union.
Richard...saying a lot. thanks
I agree. On your last point, the nation creates or at least reinforces that confusion. Sowing seeds of fear, uncertainty and doubt, treating people as victims or problems to be solved, and blaming the other side of the aisle for all ills are transparent attempts to keep America divided and remain in power.
Spot on. As someone who has traveled extensively for 30 years; Europe, Asia, Central America, Africa the ills and imperfections of America pale in comparison to the rest of the world.