Two years ago I offered thoughts on this momentous day in my life and the life of my mother as the US Naval Ship General Stuart Heintzelman arrived in New York City with some 800 WW II refugees from Eastern Europe. For my mother it marked the conclusion of an ordeal in survival begun with escape from Estonia in October 1944 as Soviet troops were closing in on Estonia. ( https://www.fanande.net?p=602 ) For me, about to be six, it was the arrival in a new world to be explored.

In that post of July 2018, I reflected on the state of the Trump administration’s thinking about immigration. Two years later, Covid-19 has given the administration opportunity to harden its position even more. It is deeply, deeply saddening to one who was a beneficiary of America’s generosity.

In rereading that post, I am reminded of the ideals that were espoused about the US immigrant community at the time and the welcoming tradition then said to have made new, prosperous lives possible. Of course, we learned long since that the welcome did not apply to everyone, and the values the welcome was said to have represented did not even apply to all who lived in this nation.

I would learn the limits of those values as I grew up and began to “see the world” as an NROTC midshipman in college during a summer spent on a US warship, the destroyer USS Beatty, DD 756. The eye-opener, as I believe I have noted here earlier, was the ship’s port call in Gulfport, Mississippi, in the summer of 1963. There, having lived in New York City since our arrival, I saw for the first time Jim Crow at work.

Today, I will admit to being disheartened in seeing how much remains to be done in that realm. I am also disheartened by the administration’s approach to migrants.

And, finally, I am disheartened by the way New York’s symbol of welcome has become a prop in an insurance company’s inane commercials, commercials that have the Statue of Liberty in the background but that have nothing to do with “liberty,” the company’s name. What immigrant who sailed past the statue can’t weep at the trivialization of the scene?

I should be (as I always am in other moments) happy about the opportunities that my mother and I had since June 25, 1950. We were blessed indeed. But today, sadness at the steady “passing” of those ideals we then both imagined embraced us and we in turn embraced feels overwhelming.

Next post on a better day.

Readers and friends, stay well.

andy