Golarz: Immigrants are a big piece of what makes America great

Ray Golarz

Guest columnist

His name was Joseph. He was just 14 when he left his home in the village of Zagorz, located in a part of Poland known as Galicia. Though he could write Polish and Russian and speak Polish, Russian and Yiddish, he knew only a hand full of words in English. When he left his home, he had with him only one change of clothing and a book of hymns given to him by his father. Like immigrants who came from countries all over the world, he was looking to escape poverty, oppression, and the ever-present threat of war.

Once here, Joseph would meet Mary, also an immigrant. They would marry and eventually have five children. While he labored in the steel mills, he and his family lived in company housing. These accommodations were limited to one room with a single light hanging from the ceiling. In 1919, Joseph marched in the national steel strike where he was fired upon by his own local police. While he was not injured, immigrant friends in American uniforms just returning from fighting in the trenches of France were killed. He assisted in their burials.

In 1930, his second son, John, was awarded a trophy in honor of his academic achievement. Joseph was pleased. In 1932, as a consequence of the Great Depression, he would be laid off and lose the house that his friends had helped him build. He could have avoided foreclosure by insisting that his upstairs renters meet their obligation, but he refused. “They are friends and poor, too.” In 1935, his youngest son, Andrew, suffering from diet deficiencies, needed special medical attention. The community General Relief Agency gave him $13. The medical assistance saved the boy’s life.

In 1942, Andrew, the son who needed critical medical care, enlisted in the United States Army. On June 6, 1944, he and his comrades, mostly the sons of immigrants, participated in the first day assault on Omaha Beach in Normandy. Andrew survived. At war’s end he became a policeman and rose to the rank of captain in the same police department whose members had, in 1919, fired upon and killed fleeing immigrant steelworkers and WWI veterans.

Andrew’s godson, author of this article, would secure post graduate degrees from Indiana University and eventually be appointed to the position of executive director of the General Referral Agency, the same agency that had given the life-saving assistance to his godfather Andrew in 1935.

Another of Joseph’s grandsons would become the administrator responsible for employee labor relations in that same plant where police and hired men shot and killed so many immigrant workers in the 1919 carnage.

Joseph did not live long enough to see another of his sons program computers, moving them to new levels of steel making in American plants, nor live long enough to see one of his great granddaughters perform at Lincoln Center, nor see another become a renowned writer. He did not live to see one of his great-grandsons play in the Rose Bowl, nor another go to Africa to teach mathematics to children of the poor, nor another receive the Bronze Star for performing surgery under fire as an American doctor in Iraq, nor another rise to senior vice-president of a prestigious American firm.

Immigrants and their descendants have forever been a significant part of the cement that binds this great nation together. Joseph’s story is only one of the millions of stories that tell this truth. They have earned their citizenship. We need not fear the immigrant for they are us. They come as the “tired and the poor,” but quickly enrich us all.

Without them this great democracy would surely crumble.

Raymond Golarz has authored or co-authored 12 books. He has keynoted criminal justice or education conferences throughout the United States and Canada. His website is RayGolarz.com. He resides in Bloomington.