Old-Timey Camps and Wagon Trains

It’s often interesting to take a step back and look at recent events through the lens of history. And, boy, is this ever true today in the US when it comes to the illegal immigration issue. A couple of examples come to mind. 

Take the reaction of some conservatives when confronted with the harsh conditions in which the US government is holding young migrant children along the southern border. I’ve seen some of these supposedly good Christians on social media trying to blame the immigrant parents for putting their children at risk by making a dangerous trek through Mexico to find a better life in America. We shouldn’t feel bad about children sleeping on concrete floors, they would say, because it was their parents’ choice to put them in harm’s way! What kind of parent would subject their child to an arduous and dangerous journey like that? 

And then we have the wagon train. 

By that, I mean the groups of American settlers crossing the continent by ox-drawn wagons in the 1840-50s to start a new life in Oregon or California. For the sake of safety during this 2000-mile trip, these emigrates formed groups that today might be called “caravans”. Sometimes they paid “wagon masters” to lead them across the plains. Maybe we’d call them “coyotes” or “people smugglers” today. 

The first major trek of this kind was the Great Migration of 1843, in which a thousand-odd emigrants traveled the Oregon Trail, a legendary route that all American schoolchildren learn about. Years ago, on a family road trip to Yellowstone National Park, I insisted on making a detour to South Pass, the relatively low swag in the rugged Rockies that gave Oregon-bound emigrants easy passage over the mountains. 

Another storied mountain pass in American lore is Donner, along the California Trail in the Sierra Nevada. That is where a party of emigrants, taking to the trail too late in the season, were stranded in an early snowstorm and -- as everyone in America, maybe even Donald Trump, surely remembers -- had to resort to cannibalism to survive. 

Okay, that was an extreme form of hardship, but it’s fair to say that the typical trip for these families looking for a better life wasn’t a walk in the park. It’s estimated that one out of ten died along the way. They were trudging across desolate stretches of land, passing through hostile territory, always on the lookout for Indians who didn’t take kindly to Europeans invading their land. And the environment itself could be unforgiving. I’ve heard that, as sensational as Indian attacks on the open, treeless plains could be, more emigrants died from lightning strikes than from arrow strikes. 

When I was growing up in the US, these wagon trains still held a special place in the popular imagination. There was a hit TV show about them when I was a child. In my youth, a highlight in my hometown of Ellijay, Georgia, was the yearly “Wagon Train” festival, where dozens of people, often in cowboy getups, rode horses and wagons across Fort Mountain from the town of Chatsworth. I believe they’ve long since stopped doing that, but it was a feature of our lives for many years. 

In short, white European settlers putting their children through the ordeal of a five-month journey in dangerous circumstances in order to reach a new and better home is celebrated – even cherished -- in American pop culture. It no doubt warms the hearts of those conservatives who get nostalgic over John Wayne Westerns. Meanwhile, mestizo Central Americans doing the same today are to be condemned, demonized. Could it be there is a double standard at play here? 

The other example I had in mind was “concentration camps”. This is how some Democrats have been referring to the detention centers along the southern border where migrants -- children as well as adults -- are being incarcerated, often in deplorable conditions. Conservatives have taken umbrage at any suggestion that these overcrowded facilities can be compared with the notorious concentration camps of Nazi Germany. Others have argued that using the term “concentration camp” outside the context of the Third Reich somehow insults the memory of Holocaust victims. 

A side note to this issue is the little history lesson that some folks have provided, namely that the term “concentration camp” was in fact coined some decades before the Nazis, during the Boer War in South Africa, an ugly enough episode of history where different tribes of white Europeans fought each other over the empty Veld. This factoid was even mentioned in the BBC-HBO miniseries “Years and Years”, about a Trump-like figure rising to power in a post-Brexit dystopian Britain of the near future. I highly recommend it. 

The term “concentration camp” may be modern, but the concept is not, and my own historical connection to it is the fact that my hometown in Georgia was the site of a real, actual concentration camp, Fort Hetzel. This was in 1838, when the state of Georgia, with the help of the US Army, was undertaking a gigantic land grab, a campaign of ethnic cleansing. 

Up until then, Ellijay, located in a shallow valley surrounded the Southern Appalachian Mountains, was part of the Cherokee Nation, which had been doing its best to assimilate to the invading Europeans by, for example, adopting Christianity and a US-style of government. Not that it did them much good. 

By 1838, whites had already been settling on Cherokee land in Georgia, even more so after gold was discovered there, sparking America’s first Gold Rush. Pressure had been building for the Cherokee to give up their homeland in exchange for a reservation in faraway Oklahoma. One faction of Cherokee leaders did eventually agree to this, but against the will of most of their people, who had to be removed from their farms under threat of force. Those rounded up in the mountains surrounding Ellijay where brought to Fort Hetzel, to be gathered there, or “concentrated” if you will, until time for their forced migration west. 

As far as I know, there is no historical plaque in Ellijay commemorating this event. Nothing marks the site of the stockade where over a thousand Cherokee men, women and children, forced off their land, forced to abandon their fields and livestock, were imprisoned in a confined space for months. 

Growing up in Ellijay, my only real source of information about this tragic event was "The Annals of Upper Georgia: Centered in Gilmer County" a chronicle written by a local amateur historian (and husband of my second-grade teacher) George Gordon Ward. Here’s a passage from that book about the roundup of local Cherokee: 

“Touching incidents were common during removal. An unnamed Indian mother, her violent protestations evidently having been unheeded, was driven into camp at East Ellijay, then Fort Hetzel. Her frenzied condition continued but the white soldiers could not understand her. 

“Then they called an interpreter, who translated the startling fact that when she was seized and forced from her home, some of her small children, in a panic of fear, had fled to nearby thickets and were probably still there.” 

Desperate children separated from parents being held against their will in a concentration camp. Sound familiar? 

According to Ward’s account, the soldiers returned to the woman’s home with her to locate the children. The family was reunited – in the concentration camp. No word on whether they all survived the forced march to Oklahoma. 

It goes without saying that the Removal is a particularly dark stain on American history, which isn’t that pristine to begin with. As events of the last week have shown, things haven’t necessarily gotten better.

Immigration Word Games

A couple of weeks ago I saw a Facebook comment by someone (presumably a Trump supporter) sharing his thoughts on what he wants changed in US immigration policy. He listed four things: The Wall, an end to “chain migration”, an end to the “visa lottery”, and mandatory E-verify. (Notably, no mention of DACA or Dreamers). These four measures, he asserted, would greatly help in “solving the immigration problem”. 

Shortly after posting his comment, he edited it by adding “illegal” to the last part so it read “solving the illegal immigration problem”. In doing so he revealed something: 

1. He must have realized that it’s not politically correct to see legal immigration as a “problem”. American is a nation of immigrants, of course, with the exception of Native Americans. Even most conservatives will take pains to stress they’re not against people coming to the country, as long as they do it legally. 


2. So it’s clear he added the word “illegal” in order to appear that he has no issue with legal immigration itself. He just wants the illegal immigration to stop (or so he would have you believe).


3. But this is false. Two of the items on his wish list, “chain migration” (or to use the proper, and less sloganeering, term "Family-based Immigration") and “visa lottery” (again, officially the "Diversity Visa Program") are currently legal ways of coming to the country. They have nothing to do with illegal immigration. As a side note, Family-based Immigration is probably the reason Amalija and Viktor Knavs (Melania Trump's parents) now call the US home, rather than Slovenia. Just saying. 

The only problem solved by ending those two policies would the “problem” of TOO MUCH legal immigration. Or rather, too much immigration from some countries. 

Obviously, the commenter is a immigration restrictionist, unhappy with the thought of more foreigners coming to America, legally or otherwise. Moreover, he's possibly even a racist, mainly unhappy about dark-skinned foreigners coming to America, since it's hard to imagine what else would engender such strong feelings against legal new arrivals. With that small, last-minute edit, he showed his true colors.  

He was being honest at first, but then decided maybe that was too honest.

The PR Presidency

A few days after Donald Trump’s inauguration, Sean Spicer was asked why his boss had not signed as many executive orders on Day One as he had promised to do during the campaign.

Spicer's answer: “If we put 'em all out on one day, they get lost in the ether, I think.”

In other words, what is more important than taking executive action is making a show out of taking executive action. If Donald Trump signs, say, ten documents on the same day and does one photo op about it, that is less useful for PR purposes than spreading out the signings over ten days, each with its own photo op.

Not very efficient in terms of getting things done, but at least that way you get the maximum amount of attention out of it.

The same thing is happening now with Trump’s revised travel ban. When the first one was stopped by a judge in Washington State, Trump darkly warned that any delay in implementing the ban would endanger Americans, since there was an "imminent" threat from the seven countries covered by the ban.

Now, the executive order for the new, improved travel ban order is apparently ready for signing, meaning that by the stroke of a pen, Trump can take action immediately against what he claims are dangerous people trying to enter the US.

The order was supposed to be signed on Wednesday, the day after Trump’s speech to Congress. But it was delayed reportedly because the White House didn’t want it to overshadow all the (relatively) positive coverage Trump has been getting from his surprisingly calm, adult-sounding speech on Tuesday night.

An unnamed official reportedly told CNN, "We want the (executive order) to have its own 'moment.'"

It seems that the threat to American is not nearly so “imminent” that the executive action designed to stop it can’t be put off a day or two, you know, to leverage the PR benefit to the hilt. For Trump, it seems appearances is what's really important. But, then again, that should come as no surprise to anyone. Trump, when it comes down to it, is all image and no substance. 

Related to this, I have a question that I have not seen covered by the media. The Trump travel ban is to be imposed only temporarily (just 90 days), not permanently. This is in order to give Trump time to find out “what’s going on” with immigration from dangerous countries.

My question: is the government actually doing anything to “find out what’s going on”?

I suspect the answer is "no". I think Donald Trump -- and his supporters -- simply liked the idea of a ban, whether it's actually needed or not. For appearance's sake, you might say. And that's all that really matters, isn't it?  

The Gospel According to Hannity

Yesterday, I was listening to a Sean Hannity show from last week in which a caller from Jacksonville, Florida, posed a question for all the people who are criticizing Trump’s travel ban and his “America First” philosophy.

“Do they feed their neighbor’s children before they feed their own?" the caller asked. "Or do they pay their neighbor’s bills before paying their own? And if they do not, does that make them racist for not doing so?”

Hannity loved the question. He agreed that many critics of the travel ban are hypocrites and then -- after going off on a passionate tangent about how Ashton Kutcher married a much older woman -- offered his caller a relevant lesson from the Bible.  

“It’s utter hypocrisy. You take care of your family first. You take care of your own life," Hannity agreed. 

"For example, I’ll give you a Biblical example," he went on. "You know, how do you notice the faults of your brother when you’ve got your own problems? And the answer was, well, take out, get rid of your own problems or whatever it is in your eye and this way you’ll be clearer to see other people and help them better.”

In other words, before helping others, help yourself. 

Kind of like the precaution on airliners that, in case of an emergency, you should put your own oxygen mask on before helping others.

Hannity's personal interpretation of that Bible lesson pricked my ears. The lesson he was referring to is, of course, from Matthew, chapter 7:

“And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?

“Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?

“Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.”

I remember this passage very well from my days in Sunday School at Liberty Baptist Church in North Georgia. However, the lesson we learned back then was different from the one Hannity apparently came away with, which I would sum up as: “Be generous and charitable only after you have fulfilled your own needs”.

As I was taught, the lesson is instead: “You shouldn’t judge others for their small faults until you recognize, and correct, your own larger faults”. It’s all about not judging others.

In fact, that message is encapsulated in the very first verse of the chapter, for Christ’s sake: “Judge not, that ye be not judged”.

Or maybe I’m wrong. Maybe in the Age of Trump even lessons from the Bible are not what they used to be. Alternative Bible lessons, perhaps?

The Russia Migrant Shuffle

On January 17, a young man, part of the unprecedented wave of migrants trying to make their way to a better life in Europe, died en route to Finland.

In the past year that has seen nearly 6,000 people die struggling to reach the shores of Greece or Italy – the most heart-rendering of which was the small Syrian boy washed up on a beach in Turkey – the death of this Finland-bound man is sadly just a drop in a tragically large bucket, one that will surely continue to grow.

His death was also in some ways surprising, and very different from those of hapless refugees overcrowding flimsy rubber rafts in the Mediterranean. This man, whose name has not been made public as far as I know, froze to death in unforgiving Arctic conditions – after sitting in his car for five days.

An often overlooked chapter in the recent saga of refugees trekking to the West is the obscure Arctic route through Russia. Not the most obvious approach to reaching the West, I would say, it is a bit like taking a long detour through Europe’s back yard in order to crawl through the kitchen window.

The most popular destination on this pathway seems to be Kirkenes, Norway, where well over 4,000 migrants have passed through the nearby Storskog crossing, the only official border post on Norway’s frontier with Russia. Kirkenes, a town of some 3,000 people, is situated on a windswept inlet of the Arctic Ocean. That tells you something about how far north these desperate migrants had to travel to reach a tiny sliver of “The West” in Norwegian Lapland. It is indeed the extreme edge of Europe, with an extreme environment to match.

This back-door approach to Europe has gotten the attention of the international media mostly because of the unexpected mode of transportation the migrants employ to reach the promised land. Due to a quirk in Russian law, travelers crossing the Russian border are forbidden from doing so on foot. And apparently, Norway sees the bringing of immigrants without proper visas across the border by car as human trafficking and forbids it.

This situation has forced refugees from Syria and other trouble spots to instead complete the last few meters of their long journey on bicycles.

On the Russian side of the border, in the nickel-smelting town of Nikel, asylum seekers are reportedly paying upwards of $185 for the one-time use of the bicycles, mostly children’s bikes because those are cheaper. (It’s unclear whether that price also includes the 225-kilometer (140-mile) taxi ride from Murmansk to the border.)

After the migrants pedal across the frontier, they promptly abandon the bikes at the Norwegian customs station, where piles of discarded bicycles have to be cleared away every few days and destroyed.

Compared to dangerous sea crossings in the Mediterranean, the land route through Russia is no doubt much safer, even if you have to go so far north that you almost run out of land.

But, you might ask, why is it necessary to go that far north in the first place?

Why was it that, when migrants began taking the Russian detour in earnest in late summer, they completely bypassed Finland and its eight border crossings with Russia? Why did they instead home in on Norway’s one little crossing?

Why indeed? There was some speculation in the Norwegian media that the funneling of refugees to Storskog, and conspicuously not to Finland, was a provocation by Russia against NATO member Norway. Who knows?

You might think it was a matter of logistics, since the migrants are probably going north by train to Murmansk, and when viewed from Murmansk Norway does seem closer.

But the northernmost crossing on the Finnish border, Raja-Jooseppi, is only some 30 kilometers (12 miles) further from Murmansk by car (and 140 kilometers (90 miles) closer to the heart of Europe). So what is the attraction of ending up in Kirkenes and not Ivalo (the nearest town to Raja-Jooseppi)? Wouldn’t it be more convenient to enter Europe closer to civilization?

The people smugglers who have facilitated this Arctic exodus are, of course, surely not looking at it this way. They most likely have economic interests in Murmansk and Nikel that are best served by moving people along the Storskog route. That could be the reason, or maybe it's just that the road to Storskog is better.

Or maybe, as the Russian embassy in Oslo suggested in November, it is Norway’s reputation for its “liberal asylum policy, attractive living conditions and social benefits” that draws refugees fleeing Russia to choose Norway. Desire for such a happy environment would, of course, explain why asylum seekers would choose not to stay in Russia itself. But it doesn’t quite explain why they (or rather, their smugglers) see Norway as their only option, rather than Finland. Why aren’t they crossing into Finland?

Only except, now they are. This year some 650 asylum seekers have already entered Finland at Raja-Jooseppi and at another, equally remote, Lapland border crossing near Salla.

However, these migrants are making their way into Finland on four wheels, rather than two. The Finnish Border Guard, citing safety concerns, has decided that migrants on bicycles will not be allowed to enter Finland. This is probably a boom for enterprising folks on the other side of the border with shoddy cars to sell. Migrants, making the last leg of their journey to what they hope is a better future, are now arriving in second-hand Ladas.

Cars, more practical and dignified than children’s bicycles, also offer more protection from the elements. But only up to a point. Not in -30-degree (-22 F) temperatures, as the death ten days ago amply shows.

According to media reports, the man stayed in his car for five days despite the extreme cold (not hours, but days), as he waited in a queue of some fifty cars at the Priozersky checkpoint near the Russian village of Alakurtti. I can’t imagine sitting in a parked car at those temperatures for more than a couple of hours, let alone five days. Witnesses said he refused to leave the car for fear of losing his place in line, apparently so desperate was his desire to reach Finland.

Other details about the case are murky, at least to me. It’s not clear why the man, along with his fellow travelers, was forced to wait so long. Was there really a five-day backlog at the Salla crossing? The Priozersky checkpoint sits some 60 kilometers from the border itself, so it’s not clear if it’s a border checkpoint, or a Russian military one. The Russian side of the border is often occupied by a wide military zone, so access beyond Priozersky might be heavily restricted.

Also, the man was Indian, presumably not someone escaping the Syrian civil war or some other hot conflict. That doesn’t mean he couldn’t have been seeking asylum in the West; it just makes it harder to think he had legitimate reasons for doing so. Whatever his reasons were, he sadly paid the ultimate price for his bid for a better life.

An even more obvious question is, why go to Lapland at all? The Syrians, Afghans, etc., making their way north to Storskog, and now to Raja-Jooseppi and Salla, have surely transited through St. Petersburg on their way. That’s a scant 200 kilometers (125 miles) from the southern Finnish border post at Vaalimaa, on the highway to Helsinki.

To me, traveling all the way to Lapland in order to reach Europe is bizarre. If it’s possible to cross the border and ask for asylum at Salla, why not just as well at the much more convenient Vaalimaa crossing. I have seen no explanation for this in the media. Again, maybe it depends on which is the more lucrative route for the smugglers. One Syrian family reportedly paid $22,000 to take the Arctic route to Storskog. (A one-way train ticket from St. Petersburg to Murmansk, by comparison, goes for something like $45.) 

A different question is why not stay in Russia, just as far from the turmoil of the Middle East as Finland or Norway, and theoretically, just as safe. In fact, some of the asylum seekers reaching Norway are said to have lived for months or even years in Russia, which begs the question: what is wrong with Russia that so many refugees can’t, or choose not to, seek refuge there? 

Once making it to Russia, which after all is part of Europe, why the pressure to continue onward? 

Or maybe the answer to that is obvious. In any case, the issue of refugees from Russia is causing increased friction between Russia and its neighbors. Norway has attempted to deport migrants with valid Russian visas back across the border, and Russia has refused to accept them and has now closed its border at Storskog. 

Some local Norwegians, protesting the deportations on the grounds the refugees would not be safe in Russia, have helped three asylum seekers take sanctuary in a nearby church and have themselves been arrested. It is becoming messy, to say the least.  

One slightly whimsical footnote to this undeniably serious, even tragic, turn of events is the question of what to do with all the Ladas. Just as discarded bicycles have piled up at Storskog, the Salla border post is now overflowing with discarded automobiles, thanks to Finland’s no-bicycle policy. There is now some debate about what to do with these cars, many of which are decrepit.

Many of them are vintage Russian Ladas, which has piqued the interest of Finnish collectors of the legendary Soviet creations – yes, it’s an uncommon breed of hobbyist, to be sure, but they do exist. They are understandably excited by the prospects of so many old Ladas, a treasure trove of original spare parts, now being deposited on this side of the border.

Call it a truly unexpected, and minor, consequence of harsh geopolitics in lands that once seemed impossibly far away from the quiet and secluded wilds of Lapland.

Road sign in Ivalo pointing the way to Murmansk, 
via the Raja-Jooseppi crossing.

The Unthinkable

Anders Behring Breivik’s homicidal rampage in Norway a week ago has saddened many people here and has surely led to a lot of soul-searching as Finns come to grips with the very notion that something so awful could happen to a fellow Nordic country. 

The attack at Utøya also seemed to weigh heavily on the mind of my daughter, who is the same age as many of Breivik’s young victims.  The question that seems to be foremost on her mind is:  “Could it happen here in Finland?”

My gut response is to say, no, of course not.  It’s unthinkable that such a heinous act on that scale could ever happen here.  But, since I would have said the same of Norway a week ago, I guess we’re all being forced now to rethink the unthinkable. 

Not that Finland hasn’t already had its share of senseless gun violence.  We have the depressing distinction of having suffered through two tragic school shootings within the past four years – more than any other European country outside of Germany.  And the streets of Helsinki have seen at least one car bombing (that I can recall), but that was simply a settling of scores between criminals, as if that somehow makes it less worrisome. 

It’s not as if the prejudice towards immigrants that fueled Breivik’s hatred is unknown here.  The stunning rise of the Perussuomalaiset (True Finns) party in the last election attests to the anti-immigrant sentiment that appears to be growing in at least certain parts of Finnish society.  In fact, a prominent member of Perussuomalaiset, Jussi Halla-aho, a firebrand blogger and now a parliament member, was even quoted in the 1500-page “manifesto” that Breivik sent out just before beginning his killing spree. 

The manifesto, from the fraction of it that I briefly scanned, is an impressive document.  And not in a good way.  Obviously, the product of an obsessive mind, the manifesto lays out, in excruciating detail, precise instructions on how to carry out the kind of atrocity that Breivik inflicted on his countrymen. 

It also, as you would imagine, tries to explain his twisted world-view, which in a nutshell appears to be:  native Europeans should rise up, violently if necessary, to expel all non-European immigrants, especially Muslims, in order to re-establish a continent of ethnically pure European Christians. 

I can’t imagine anyone in Finland – anyone with any grounding in reality that is – sharing Breivik’s grand vision of a return to the Christendom of the Middle Ages.  But some of his attitudes and sense of grievance towards his Muslim neighbors are not, I would say, especially remarkable.  While many people here, maybe even most, aren’t noticeably bothered by the recent, though by European standards relatively small, influx of foreigners to Finland, it would be naïve to think others don’t view the changing demographics with emotions ranging from annoyance to anxiety to fear to outright hostility.  And, of course, there can be legitimate societal concerns about some aspects of immigration, which can be debated peacefully. 

But when those legitimate concerns veer off into hatred, then we should all be concerned.  Despite Perussuomalaiset's strong showing in spring, I still hope the more hateful strains of xenophobia are not making major inroads in Finland.  But how do we know?  Under the surface, how can we be sure that some Finns don’t secretly harbor the beginnings of blind hatred?  I haven’t heard anything approaching such feelings expressed by any Finns I know.  On the other hand, it’s not a topic that has often come up in the past. 

What I told my daughter was that there are, of course, some people who are not comfortable with immigration and the changes it brings to Finnish society, the very kind of changes that Breivik rails against.  But, I hasten to add that most people, even those with the strongest anti-immigration views, are surely acting only through the political process.  It is only the thankfully rare individual who lets their extreme hatred take them to the point of murdering innocent people in cold-blood. 

And I believe that, though it doesn’t mean those individuals may not be out there, plotting in some isolated barn in the peaceful Finnish countryside.  As Breivik demonstrated with such horrible efficiency, it only takes one person to darken the lives of dozens of families and bring sorrow to an entire nation. 

I also tell my daughter that, especially after Utøya, I’m sure the police in Finland are being especially vigilant.  I’m sure that more than ever before they’re on the lookout for anyone disaffected and demented enough to hatch a similar plan.  At least, I hope they are.  I hope we all are.  

There has been a lot of talk in the media and in government in the past week about the potential threat that right-wing extremists might pose here and the changes needed to counter it.  After Utøya, I hope we will all be less complacent toward extremism and that supporters of the True Finns reflect on the dangerous path their anti-immigrant platform can lead them down.  They should.

So, when my daughter wondered if it could happen here, I responded with the same answer that I used to give when the kids would ask – at the beginning of our summer trips to America – whether our plane might fall from the sky.  I say, “Yes, it could.  But I don’t think it will.”  Otherwise, how else could you carry on?  

Roots I

I tend to take some exception to the notion of American exceptionalism.  Or at least the way it’s sometimes used to rally folks around a certain jingoistic view of the US.  The belief that America is exceptional – uniquely different from any other country in the world – is an article of faith among the majority of my countrymen.  It’s a staple of many politicians’ talking points and not something to be hidden under a bushel if you aspire to higher office.  For example, because Barack Obama doesn’t talk about the concept as much as some of his conservative critics think he should, they have questioned whether the President believes sufficiently in the exceptionalism of the country he leads. 

Germans immigrants arriving in America, 1874.

Many Americans interpret “exceptionalism” to mean the US is better than any other country in the world.  Whether this is true for every single facet of life in the US is a topic for another day.  (Hint: it ain’t necessarily so.)  But I do feel one part of the American story clearly set the US apart from most other countries, especially those in Europe:  the United States is a nation of immigrants, some fresher off the boat than others, but newcomers all the same.  (Not counting, of course, the some two-and-a-half-million Native Americans who trace their origins back to the continent’s very first human inhabitants, nomads who crossed over from Asia thousands of years ago seeking new lands.) 

The rest of us descended from much more recent nomads who came for much the same purpose – to make a new life in a new home.  It goes without saying that such bouts of restlessness have swept through all peoples around the world at one time or another.  Soon after the Ice Age, the original inhabitants of Finland migrated from an ancestral homeland, much further east in present-day Russia, to relocate in this cold corner of Europe, while their distant ethnic cousins settled in the warm, arid plains of Hungary.  I’ll leave it to the Finns to decide whether they took the right turn in that move. 

Europe has undergone many such migrations in a dizzying game of geopolitical musical chairs, with different tribes and peoples constantly changing places over the centuries as they pushed themselves or were pushed by others or otherwise just drifted onto new real estate.  Compared to the days when the likes of the Huns and the Vikings were stirring things up all over Europe, the continent has been mostly static for some time now – despite all the redrawing of maps kicked off by the fall of the Iron Curtain.  This is why most modern European nations have tended to identify themselves along ethnic lines in a way that America does not.  Except for some spots where a minority group spills across a national border, France is the land of the French, England is the home of the English, and so on. 

Such national identities can make for rigid attitudes towards newcomers.  Until about ten years ago, Germany did not grant citizenship to second- or third-generation Turkish residents who had lived all their lives in the country.  I’ve had British friends tell me that England is not an immigrant country, meaning the growing population of citizens of Pakistani or West Indian descent doesn’t really seem to fit in there. 

America is different – if you will, even exceptional – in that there is no such thing as an “ethnic American” (again, except for Native Americans).  You can’t distinguish an American from a Nigerian or Nepalese just by their physical appearance.  And no wonder.  Unlike almost any other country, the US is made up of people from every corner of the globe who, despite sometimes facing prejudice and hostility, have found a new home in America.  This includes Finns. 

Little Italy, New York City, 1903. Photo by Debivort.

On a dresser in the apartment of my wife’s almost 100-year-old aunt in Turku, in southwestern Finland, sits a gilded mantel clock, a family heirloom that belonged to her late husband.  He was born in New York City in the early 1900s, a child of one of those emigrant families that crowded into the five boroughs in a period immortalized by many a Hollywood film.  This young New Yorker’s parents, however, eventually decided to return to Finland, which shows that not all the huddled masses who came to America necessarily found it to their liking. 

Of course, many transplanted Finns did.  Some years ago in Yellowstone National Park, we were walking among some hot springs and smelly fumaroles when a couple of elderly women overheard my wife and kids speaking Finnish.  Excitedly, the pair approached us to introduce themselves as third-generation Finnish-Americans and to try out the fractured (and quite old-fashioned) Finnish they had, more or less, learned as children. 

Like these two delightful ladies, most Americans are proud of their roots and happy to claim the different nationalities or ethnic groups that make up their heritage.  I know Americans who are Greek-Irish or German-Irish or Dutch-Indonesian or Japanese-Finnish.  Such ethnic mashups aren’t at all unusual, especially in certain parts of the country like the Northeast, where the pots of New York and Boston have been melting for centuries.  By contrast, the southeastern US where I’m from has always seemed a much less diverse place, populated mostly by only two hyphened forms of Americans, Anglo and African. 

That is rapidly changing.  Alabama, South Carolina and other southern states that haven’t traditionally been home to large Hispanic populations have, over the last ten years, seen a doubling of Latino residents.  Georgia now ranks 10^th nationally in terms of the number of Hispanics living there. 

These statistics only confirm what anyone has been able to see for themselves in my small hometown in the Georgia mountains over the past 10-15 years.  Every time we have visited in recent years, we’ve noticed more and more short, dark-skinned men, often walking along the highways into town.  These newest arrivals to the county are Central Americans, mainly Guatemalan, who originally came to work in the local chicken-processing plant and apple orchards.  It’s quite different from my childhood, when practically the only Hispanics living there were professionals – including our only surgeon and veterinarian – who had fled Castro’s Cuba. 

Today, the Latino migrants to my hometown are willing to do less-desirable manual labor to make a better life for themselves.  Like my own ancestors, they are reliving that classic – and, let’s be honest, not always easy – story of folks looking for new opportunities and putting down roots in a new land.