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Soviet Bloc émigrés pose special problems

This Web only Speakout has not been edited.

Jerry Chase

Published April 13, 2008 at noon

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Probably the most iconic of American values is inscribed at the base of the Statue of Liberty: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore, send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” Yet, there have been times in American history when the appearance of this lofty sentiment has failed to match reality, as when Jewish doctors and lawyers fleeing Nazi persecution were denied American visas on the basis that they were “likely to become a public charge.” This ongoing policy, plus the doomed voyage of the S.S. St Louis, prompted Julius Streicher to remark, “You see, the Americans don’t want them either, and so aren’t we Germans better men after all?” It is hard to say whether or not immigration is a more contentious issue today than at any other time in our history. Certainly politicians have made politcial capital of the issue, and one doesn’t need a PhD in economics to see that so-called “Free Trade” agreements such as NAFTA have made economic leper colonies of countries like Mexico, for example. Slick politicians have obfuscated this reality by blaming the immigrants for immigration, thus appealing to the most base of human instincts, that of territorial imperative.

By appealing to instinct rather than reason, the stage is set for a type of political dialogue that can only be described as impoverished. The real bottom line, which is rarely mentioned in the mainstream media, is about profit and cost-cutting, and one of those costs is the price of someone’s labor.

Associated with issues of immigration are issues of assimilation. Tom Hayden has published a thoughtful article entitled “Who Are You Calling an Immigrant?,” which can be found online. The essence of that article, as it pertains to immigration from Mexico, is that “we didn’t cross the borders, the borders crossed us,” a claim that has a legitimate basis in reality. In this instance, assimilation does not necessarily mean anglicization, but rather a return to one’s roots within the American society.

As a political issue in this election season, the term “immigration” - at least as it pertains to Mexico - has become code for a racist term that does not need amplification on these pages. Indeed, the roots of this racism go deep, as when the New York Times declared in 1860, “The Mexicans, ignorant and degraded as they are, founded on free trade and the right of colonization so that, after a few years of pupilage, the Mexican state would be incorporated into the Union under the same conditions as the original colonies.”

By surreptitiously introducing racism, the debate becomes a forum on xenophobia, and the more profound issues of labor and capital are effectively excluded from the discussion. And, it is precisely this mood of xenophobia that serves to impoverish other features of the discussion as well (the term comes from the Greek xenos, meaning “foreign” or “stranger.").

Thus, a legitimately expressed concern, for example, about the political culture from which an émigré came may lose its significance if it finds itself conflated with this ad hominem demeanor. After all, people emigrate from different countries for different reasons, and not all countries have identical political traditions. The term “immigration” then becomes a subset of other considerations.

I mention the political culture because Hermine Braunsteiner, “The Stomping Mare” of the Majdanek camp in Nazi Poland, had been regarded by her neighbors in Queens as “the nicest woman you would want to meet,” and said “her gruesome past was impossible for them to believe.” That she had once seized children and infants by the hair and threw them on trucks heading to the gas chamber was inconceivable to them.

To the extent that one’s nationality is part of one’s personality, it is legitimate to ask to what degree these two elements cohere. Had some psychoanalyst in Queens given T.W. Adorno’s F-scale test (F standing for fascist) to Hermine Braunsteiner, would her Nazi past have been indicated? The cultural context in which the test is given - actually a form of profiling - may be a variable. The Beast of Majdanek becomes the Queen of Queens when she is surrounded with the accoutrements of civil society.

However, as Dostoevsky’s Raskolnikov discovered, the most tormenting punishment comes not from the state, but from one’s own consciousness. In simplest terms, “you can run but you can’t hide.” No doubt Braunsteiner’s nastiness would have become evident to a consistent observer (although it wasn’t evident to her husband) over time.

Nevertheless, to profile is not to prejudge. Observing behavior and coming to tentative conclusions is the opposite of coming to conclusions before observing behavior. T. W. Adorno’s F-scale test, while criticized for some methodical flaws, is still useful as a tool for determining certain types of personalities.

It was with a very imperfect and informal, i.e., cerebral, application of this test that I came to several tentative conclusions regarding certain émigrés from former Soviet Bloc countries.

The September 6, 2006 issue of the Winter Park Manifest headlined the Grand County immigration roundtable ("Ideas on immigration aired"), a wide ranging discussion about the impact of the county’s immigrant population on employment recruiting, housing, schools and health care. At that roundtable, one representative from an Eastern European state declared, “we.don’t wait for someone to support us. We all came with a green card, not as refugees (emphasis supplied). We came for a better living, to make money and pay taxes.”

The image that comes to mind then, is not “your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” but prospectors headed West in search for gold. It is fair to say that this purpose will be reflected in the personalities of those that choose this path.

Many nation states in Eastern Europe are racially and ethnically homogeneous. It is reasonable to wonder if people growing up in all white cultures, having alternately been under Nazi and Soviet occupations for generations, are tainted with racist and fascist attitudes. It is prejudical to assume they are.

It is reasonable to wonder if, given the secular purpose for emigrating, that their usefulness to the Soviet state apparatus was obviated when the Soviet Union collapsed. And, again, it would be prejudicial to assume that this is the case.

However, these external factors assume a new dimension if one encounters a personality that is either anti-social to some degree or otherwise excessively authoritarian. It is then that one takes a harder look at the cultural background from which the person came. Does this guy embrace the Bolshevik mentality? Was he active in the Soviet state apparatus? Is that why he left a few years after the Soviet Union collapsed? Is she a Hermine Braunsteiner clone? Are they racist? How are they affected by living under authoritiarian regimes for so long? Could they be considered “aliens of questionable quality?”

It is doubtful that anyone from these states will become a terrorist threat. But there are instances when they do not necessarily make for good neighbors.

Jerry Chase is a resident of Fraser.

Comments

  • April 13, 2008

    11:30 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    kathyM writes:

    You forgot to mention that the Irish immigrants were looked at with suspicion because people feared they'd get political power and turn over the US to the Pope--a sentiment that lasted until the Irish Catholic JFK was elected.

  • April 14, 2008

    10:06 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    T1anda writes:

    Sneaky letter J.Chase....did La Raza pay you to write it??

  • April 16, 2008

    1:02 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    p_myers661 writes:

    Chase,

    Sneaky would not be appropriate. Your letter introduces an attitude that anyone who opposes ILLEGAL immigration is a sneaky racist who hides behind the law and tries to oppress others. This is reinforced by attacking Eastern European immigrants who followed the rules, obeyed the law and plan on becoming contributing members of society. The "prospectors" description is very good. Your attack on them as "maybe secret nazis or oppressors, if given the opportunity", is well disguised. Most of the people who follow the rules to become legal immigrants face little or no difficulty with their neighbors. Those same people will join with neighbors to oppose the wave of illegal immigration and no one, especially not you or Tom Hayden, can change that. The politicians might be able to whitewash the illegality with legislation. It will come home to haunt them and cost them their jobs as Representatives and Senators both nationally and locally. Keep trying though. Some people won't see through it the first time.

  • April 18, 2008

    1:14 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    JohnHalucha writes:

    Jerry Chase refers to, “Hermine Braunsteiner, “The Stomping Mare” of the Majdanek camp in Nazi Poland”.
    What in the name of everything holy is this fabricated term “Nazi Poland”? Is Mr. Chase inventing this term? If so, the logical conclusion is that he believes this entity is equivalent to “Nazi Germany”.
    If Mr. Chase meant “Nazi-occupied Poland,” he should have said so. Even more clear in the context of his column would be “German-occupied Poland”.
    Later, he writes, “To the extent that one’s nationality is part of one’s personality … Hermine Braunsteiner, would her Nazi past have been indicated?”
    Notwithstanding that Braunsteiner sounds like a German name, by carefully steering clear of mentioning what her nationality actually was Mr. Chase leaves the reader with the logical conclusion that he is saying she was Polish, and he once again means “Nazi Polish” past since he never says otherwise.
    It is outrageous that a country that lost some 6 million of its people to the German Nazis and their Russian Soviet (early) allies would thus be assigned blame. Poland was a victim, not a perpetrator. Mr. Chase’s writing, whether deliberate or grotesquely sloppy, is inexcusable.
    I urge the Rocky Mountain News to correct this calumny immediately. Even inserting “-occupied” between “Nazi” and “Poland” would do, if it is made clear later that Hermine Braunsteiner’s nationality was German rather than Polish.
    This is disgracefully inaccurate and unfair journalism. Every minute that it remains posted as is, the credibility of Mr. Chase and the Rocky Mountain News is sullied.
    John Halucha
    Sault Ste. Marie, Canada

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