BONUS: New Americans w/Ray Suarez

Ken Harbaugh:

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Ray Suarez:

This time around because we have put the politics of immigration into the hopper, it has politicized the lives of these people who are just trying to get over, just trying to do their thing, just trying to finish their educations, and make careers, and do all the things that immigrants, like millions of other Americans, unremarkably do.

Ken Harbaugh:

I'm Ken Harbaugh, and this is Burn the Boats, a podcast about big decisions.

My guest today is Ray Suarez, a longtime broadcaster and journalist who you've probably heard on PBS or NPR. And his new book, We Are Home, Ray sits down with several recent immigrants to the United States, and through their stories, paints a picture of what these new Americans have faced.

Ray, welcome to the show.

Ray Suarez:

Great to be with you.

Ken Harbaugh:

I cannot imagine a more important moment for a book like this to arrive. I'm talking of course, about the political context we find ourselves in.

And though I'm sure that first and foremost you just wanted to tell the stories of these new Americans, how important was politics in driving you to do it now?

Ray Suarez:

Politics got more and more important as the project went on. This is a very delayed book. The reporting was delayed by the pandemic. Nobody wanted to see me in person. Nobody wanted me to visit their store or wander their shopping streets for a long time.

And my publisher was very understanding. He said that the first person reporting is an important part of the project.

So, as the pandemic delayed the delivery of the book, the politics of immigration got more and more fraught all during that time, which makes it look like I'm smarter than I am with the delivery coming now, in the midst of the presidential election and in the midst of a really ugly American family fight about the future of immigration.

But some of it was just circumstantial, some of it's just kismet. But yes, I agree, the timing's pretty good.

Ken Harbaugh:

You refer to this as a family fight, but it seems like the perennial family feud we have every generation. I mean, the other issues seem to come and go. Take your pick, abortion, guns, CRT. We always seem to go back to immigration as something to fight about.

Why is it so fundamental? Is it an identity issue? I mean, for the far right, it's an existential issue, at least the way they frame it. Why is immigration the perennial bogeyman of American politics?

Ray Suarez:

Well, it's not really perennial because if you think about times when the economy was going great, guns and things were pretty good, we don't fight about it that much.

During the ‘90s, this was not the kind of hot identity based issue that it is today. Part of it was, felt like there were jobs for everybody who wanted one, and there was no zero sum argument.

But it has to do with our anxieties about other things that end up visiting themselves on this particular issue.

And also, I think very importantly, it comes as you suggest at a time when America's future identity is being questioned in a new way.

When we are saying to ourselves and to others that once the United States has only a plurality rather than a majority of white people who are descended from European immigrants, we will stop being America in quite the same way.

Those fellows carrying torches around statues of Robert E. Lee are not having some sort of faculty break room, very abstract conversation about the future of the United States.

They see a non-white future. They're frightened of it, they're worried about it, they're concerned about it, and this is how it comes out.

Ken Harbaugh:

And for them, let's just be clear, it's not about jobs. It's not really an economic question. It's about identity and the fear of a changing America. And I guess that's what I meant by the perennial nature of it.

Certainly, the anxiety goes away during certain periods. But you go back to the 18th century, every generation seems to have its moral panic at some point over immigration. And it's only nominally about economics. It's about fear of change more than anything.

Ray Suarez:

Yeah. I mean, if you look back at the papers in New York, and Boston, and Baltimore, and Philadelphia in the late 19th century, the concerns had to do a lot with how the arrival of all these people in a very short period of time is going to change the character of the country. The real answer was not very much at all.

But also, you have to remember that the idea of race, the idea of origin, the idea of identity has been something that's been shifting throughout American history.

So, we had something called the Dillingham Commission that in 1914 delivered this door stopper size report on the racial makeup of the United States, and they counted all kinds of different Europeans as members of different races.

It was late 19th century racial pseudoscience dressed up as policy, and as law, and as a real debate. Back when we didn't consider Italians and Dutchman to be part of the same race, there was racial anxiety built into this question.

But now, that basically 9 out of the 10 sending countries, the origin countries of non-US born Americans are sending almost all non-white immigrants to the United States, that anxiety is peaking. That's something that's very different.

People started pouring in here in the closing days of the 18th century during an abortive uprising against British rule in Ireland. And the refugees from United Ireland who came in 1795 and 1797, largely Protestant, all English speaking, didn't really threaten the character or the self-concept of Americans.

But by 2020 with people pouring in from India, and China, and Southeast Asia, and from West Africa, question is a little different from what it was when those Irish immigrants started to come in the waning days of the 18th century.

Ken Harbaugh:

Does our late romanticization of that 19th century wave of immigration give you hope? And let me explain what I mean.

I mean, the experience for those immigrants was in many cases harrowing. They faced extreme prejudice, they were classified along racial lines. As you described, Italians and people from the Netherlands were put in completely different categories.

But the way we think about it now, it's a positive reimagining. And I'm wondering if you think a hundred years from now, we'll look back on the story of today's immigrants with that same sense of optimism, granted with some revisionist glasses on.

But does it give you hope that we’ll emerge from this period with the more optimistic American story driving the narrative?

Ray Suarez:

Well, there certainly is a through line here. We sort of beat you up at the front door and then we end up eating all your food. Then that's really something that's happened over and over and over again.

And instead of saying, “Gee, maybe we don't have to do that anymore, maybe we can do this a different way.” And then proceeding from that new idea, we keep doing versions of the same thing.

We lament the fact that immigrants aren't learning English, they are. We lament that immigrants come from places that don't have long experience of democracy so maybe they won't get the hang of competitive politics and voting and the civic good. They do.

We figure that they will never be like us. And by the time their grandchildren come along, they are exactly like us. They are us.

So, we have certain habits of mind in this country where we repeat the same old bad ideas and no amount it would seem, of experience actually counsels us to shy away from the habit.

Ken Harbaugh:

Can you talk more about the, they're not like us attitude?

Because I know what you're saying, but part of me looks at the critics now, on the far right of immigration writ large, the people who propelled the Muslim ban. And I'm very skeptical that this whole argument that we should be like them, that immigrants should assimilate to that worldview is a good thing.

I mean, if anything, I would argue the less like us immigrants are, the stronger we become as a country because of the inherent strength in diversity. I would just love you to dive deeper on this they're not like us idea.

Ray Suarez:

Yeah. It's one of the more frustrating aspects of the story, really, in spite of the copious evidence that in fact they are just like us in many, many ways and become more like us with each passing year. We keep giving ourselves the privilege of pretending that assimilation doesn't happen.

Talk to any immigrant who's been in the United States for a while, and they will tell you that when they go to their home place, (which is now much more possible than it was in the late 19th century) they walk the streets of their hometown, they come in through the major international airport of their home country, and they don't feel like they're home anymore. In fact, they don't feel like they're a part of that place anymore.

It's heartbreaking, it's evocative. And it is similar in every case, whether we're talking about Latin America, or West Africa, or East Asia, South Asia. People say, “When I go home, I'm really not a part of that place anymore.”

And it's not just because the familiar loved people who they remember from growing up coming in many cases to adulthood are not there anymore. It's not because the friends that they played on the streets with are not present anymore.

It's something more than that because the United States has in the meanwhile become their home in all of the meaningful senses of the word.

Anti-immigrant people have a very, very consistent flex, which is they revert to that idea that people just don't change. And what they mean is they don't change enough for me. They don't change sufficiently for me to regard them on the street as someone who I think of as a brother and a sister.

One of the most important exceptions to that idea is that we tend to make unique the people we do know who aren't part of that story.

So, you say, “Oh, Jose, who I work with, Maria, who I work with, oh, they're great, and their kids go to Sunday school with my kids. And they brought some interesting dishes to the PTA international night, and they are like me.”

“Anan and his wife, Miriam. Oh, yeah. Miriam, yeah, I get to know them at school. They're a little different. I have never met anybody like them before, but their son is in scouts with my son, and he is getting his merit badges. And they're just like me.”

“But the people I don't know are the ones who are not assimilating. This vast un assimilable brown lump who I don't see as individuals. Those are the people who, when I see them in public, I think, huh, they're never going to be like me.”

And it's a tragic part of our habits or the habits of a portion of our country that they simply cannot look at those people and see the struggles of their own great-great-great grandparents or great-grandparents, people that they might have known growing up.

I grew up in an immigrant neighborhood and people rhapsodize about those from the old country. Why? Because they knew them and they loved them. And they knew their ins and outs, and they knew how they retained some of the customs and ideas from the old country. And they think that's just fine.

But when it comes to people from India, or when it comes to people from China, or it comes to people from Senegal, or Venezuela, we suddenly make an exception and say, “Oh, those people, they are never going to get the hang of this.”

And no less a scholar than Samuel Huntington, in his time, one of the most respected American historians, got it totally wrong in his book at the turn of the century, which basically predicted that tens of millions of Latinos were going to change the character of the country by never really becoming American. Even Samuel Huntington, who should have known better, didn't know better.

Ken Harbaugh:

The attitude that you are describing of ordinary Americans making exceptions for the immigrants that they're close to, that are in their lives, but having this prejudicial attitude towards everyone else because of that distance.

It's evocative of this quote by Renee Brown, it's heart to hate up close. I think it describes that to a T. That attitude I think would be-

Ray Suarez:

But here's the thing that's frustrating about that. Instead of saying, my understanding of the life of Jose who I know makes me suspect that maybe these tens of millions of people who I don't know are more like Jose, we exceptionalize Jose and we still retain that idea about the millions of Joses that we don't know. And that's what drives me around the bend about this. Sorry to cut you off.

Ken Harbaugh:

No, it's fine, I think it informs the question I was about to ask, which is that in normal political times, those personal connections would have been controlling, that would have eventually changed the character of the communities in which these people are settling. It would've made culture more rich and society more diverse.

But because of the political moment we're in, where you have a political channeling of that angst and hatred, the exceptionalization of the immigrants you know is not controlling, it doesn't actually change the country for the better.

It doesn't even change the individual's relationships for the better, because you have a demagogue who is feeding off of that larger, deeper well of hate.

Ray Suarez:

Shame on the politicians who are using this peculiar post pandemic moment in American life to stir up social discord instead of encouraging social peace, really shame on them.

Because the stats are clear. Immigrants commit crimes both violent and nonviolent at lower rates than native born Americans. Educationally, they're doing extremely well, and assimilation is going on a pace.

So, instead of getting in on the side of the guys marching in Charlottesville and saying, “Yeah, hey, yeah, they're right,” and playing around with the fire of the great replacement theory, be brave enough to say, “I'm not sure that what you're doing is right. I'm not sure that what you're saying is right.” They are afraid to do that and shame on them.

Ken Harbaugh:

In your book, you react to the former president, president at the time, Trump, telling members of the squad to, what was the quote, “Go back where they came from.” Even though I believe three of them were born and raised in the United States.

And even if you're not born and raised in the United States, you can be every bit as loyal of a citizen as those whose ancestry goes back generations.

What did you hear when the former president said that?

Ray Suarez:

It was a pretty discouraging thing to hear any American president say, because it's deeply un-American.

And to tell that to Ayanna Pressley whose ancestors were property working their whole lives away for no wages when Donald Trump's ancestors were still in Scotland and Germany is a particular kick in the teeth.

An American president, certainly one who promises to unite the country, should never say about four members of the United States House of Representatives, that they should go back to where they came from.

They are by definition American citizens, and they're chosen by the citizens in the districts where they live to represent them in Congress. So, what could be more un-American than suggesting they have dual or clashing loyalties, they aren't fully, as they oath of office says, devoted to upholding the constitution of the United States.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, her ancestors were made citizens by an act of Congress in which no Puerto Rican was present, consulted, asked about it, simply voted in after the invasion of Puerto Rico by the United States in 1898 in 1917 by an act of Congress.

Congress just votes with no Puerto Rican voting to make the people of the islands, citizens of the United States.

So again, while Frederick Trump and his mother's ancestors were back in Scotland, the McLeods, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's ancestors were already American citizens.

It's quite apart from the technicalities of it. It's just an ugly thing to say and doesn't really show the kind of leadership. Yes, they disagree with you, they don't like you, you don't like them.

You don't have to pretend that you like them, you don't have to pretend that you side with them politically. You don't even have to pretend to have anything but distaste for them. But going there, saying that they should go back where they come from.

Ilhan Omar, who is a naturalized citizen, came to this country as a refugee and is every bit as much an American citizen as you are or I am. And that should just be off limits. It should be off limits for an American leader.

But as we've learned over the years, it's like there's virtually nothing that is off limits for this particular elected leader.

Ken Harbaugh:

Is President Trump the first president — I'm fairly confident he's the first president in my lifetime, to have as an explicit part of his platform, his messaging promise to not unite Americans when he says things like, “Nikki Haley supporters are not welcome in my coalition.” When he says that his second term will be a vengeance tour.

I think that's a departure from political norms we haven't talked enough about. Even when it's pro forma, every other president in my memory has at least gestured towards the idea of uniting Americans of all backgrounds, all creeds, all races. Not the former president

Ray Suarez:

Or the so-called Muslim ban, which he has in this latest campaign promised to reinstate once he becomes president.

They went to the Supreme Court and sort of fiddled around with the parameters of it and added North Korea to the list of banned countries. So, you can't say it's a Muslim ban since there are no Muslims in North Korea, but really it was what it was.

Even those presidents who were deep in their hearts and not particularly morals, or not particularly men who were familiar and showed a familiarity with longstanding values of civic norms, never said publicly and try to make into policy the things that the previous president has said and done repeatedly.

It is a departure. It continues to be a departure during this campaign. And if the man becomes president again, if he fulfills his promises, it will be a significant departure once again in the public civic behavior of an American leader.

We are one of those countries in the world that has our head of state and our head of government be the same person.

In a lot of peer democracies, they're two different people because one of those people is meant to be a sort of belonging to all factions, and all sides, and all parts of the national character and be above politics. And one of those people begets their office through the very grubby competitive business of politics.

A lot of countries have prime ministers who are that person, a politician who reaches their stature through climbing the greasy pole. And the president is sort of above politics and beyond politics.

We have the head of state and the head of government who's the same person. So, that person is supposed to embody lit in literal flesh, the country. Which I will always believe is one of the reasons why without even a really good solid explanation for it, it made so many people a little crazy when Barack Obama became president.

They couldn't really explain what it was that made them so uncomfortable about the idea of him walking around the Oval Office and having two little black girls playing on the lawn and all of that.

But the idea that this was the enfleshed physical representation to the rest of the world of the United States knocked some people off balance. And I think Trump is in many ways a reaction to Obama.

And I think we still have a lot of work to do in reconciling these parts of our national self in a way that makes us able to move forward in a sort of coherent and relevant way.

Ken Harbaugh:

When you say that Trump is a reaction, is that another way of saying what many have said, which is that he's not a cause of these anxieties and hatreds, he's just a symptom of something much deeper and older in American society?

Ray Suarez:

Well, he was willing to put those deeper feelings into harness and have them power his campaign to a degree around racial identity, around national identity, around his accusations that people can't even tell what countries they're from and they speak languages that no one's ever heard of.

They're odd things to say, period, given our history. But they're particularly odd things for someone who wants to be president of the United States to say.

Now, it's up to the voters whether they're comfortable with that, but he is willing in ways that are novel to put those anxieties into use, allow them to power his campaign forward.

These are not moments where the audience gets quiet and solemn when they hear him say these things, they cheer lustily. We have to keep that in mind too, because that's part of our national reality in 2024.

Ken Harbaugh:

Right. And it's not just the policies of the first Trump administration, potentially a second Trump administration that are creating this friction and this anxiety.

If anything, it's the rhetoric that is even more damaging when he says that immigrants are poisoning the blood of our country. I mean, that is almost a direct lift from Mike Hanf. And you see how the crowds react to that kind of thing.

And that to me is as alarming as any policy that lawyers around him might contemplate.

Ray Suarez:

But it's also, seat of the pants market research. When he says that stuff and gets a tremendous hand, it doesn't discourage him from saying it at the next rally. Quite the opposite. It encourages him to pull that stuff out and say it again because he figures it's working.

That's how politicians adjust in the moment. And in that way, even though Donald Trump is not a career politician, he is a career marketer and he understands that much about those crowds reactions.

Ken Harbaugh:

In the blurb for the book, you wrote that, “We are a nation of immigrants never more than now. In recent decades, the numbers have skyrocketed thanks to people coming from many continents. Just like their predecessors, they face countless obstacles including political hatred. And yet just like their predecessors, they work hard, they persist, they become us.”

I am drawn to that characterization of political hatred. I haven't heard the anti-immigrant animus described exactly that way. What do you mean by political hatred as opposed to just the everyday prejudices immigrants feel when they're trying to apply for jobs or get a mortgage or things like that?

Ray Suarez:

Well, their very lives, as we've been discussing, get put into service as the coal that we throw into the steam engine of American politics.

The issue of immigration, how much to have, who comes in, under what rules, what will be the metrics that guide us as a country in making choices. These have always moved ahead with bipartisan consensus.

Not always 100% sign-on on both sides of the aisle in every case, but large parts of both parties, coalitions in Congress, have come across the aisle during immigration tune-ups, let's say.

Periodically, we rewrite the laws, we rewrite the rule book, we change the machinery, we tinker with the machinery, and it largely gets bipartisan buy-in.

This time around, because we have put the politics of immigration into the hopper as fair game for motivating large numbers of Americans one way or the other, it has politicized the lives of these people who are just trying to get over, just trying to do their thing, just trying to finish their educations and make careers, and buy houses, and start businesses and do all the things that immigrants, like millions of other Americans, unremarkably do.

They don't expect to take a victory lap. They don't expect applause. They don't expect even to be noticed. As a matter of fact, the distinct sense I get from them is they would prefer not to be noticed.

But now, being placed at the hot center of our politics is an uncomfortable place for them to be.

As some of the people who I profiled were very upfront about, particularly Samir, who came to the country from Mombasa, Kenya, but there they are and they play the hand that they're dealt by the history of the times they live in and they move ahead.

Ken Harbaugh:

I hate to ask you to pick favorites, but what was the conversation that left your jaw agape, was there any that really surprised you in the interviews you did for this book?

Ray Suarez:

As I explained in his chapter, when I got the notion to call Congressman Shri Thanedar's office to see if he would do an interview, I knew there was a new immigrant congressman from the Detroit area. That wasn't it.

It was watching him on the floor of the House the night of Joe Biden's first State of the Union address when he was a new member of Congress in the chamber for just a few weeks.

Here's this guy, born to a poor family in southern coastal India, comes to the United States, really against the odds in a lot of ways, makes multiple careers here, rides the American success story and the American tragedy of business collapse up and down, up and down.

And finally in his 60s, now very secure as a millionaire many times over, decides to enter public life. And here he is grinning watching Joe Biden work the floor in Joe Biden's old fashioned Washington power way.

And it's like, I just got thrown out of a plane at 35,000 feet and I ended up on my feet, standing here next to the president of the United States. How great is that?

So, I called his office, and I explained my motivation for wanting to talk to him. And it was just a delightful way to spend well over an hour and hear his story and he tells it well. And his was an exciting and eye opening interview.

So, I mean, I have a lot of them that I came away with just shaking my head in wonder, but his was one of the cooler ones.

Ken Harbaugh:

Almost every one of those profiles forces me to think about the people who would hate those new Americans. I read those profiles and I think that's how you do it. I mean, that is the American success story.

But for their race and where they're from, they would be celebrated or should be by all quarters of American society.

And yet the anti-immigrant right, looks at their story and well, you tell me, they see a threat, they see a change that they can't countenance. How can they look at that new congressman and say, that's not great?

Ray Suarez:

I expect to get incoming fire from various quarters when people review this book and I expect to be ignored by others, and that's okay. They're not going to accept my argument anyway, I guess, or it's going to make them grind their molars down to the nubs as they read the pages of the book.

Some of the people that I profile came illegally, some of them came as refugees, some of them came as legal immigrants. They came in all different ways from all different kinds of places and for different reasons.

And the one through line is that after a while, they really have come to think of themselves as Americans even in this era when a lot of Americans don't look at them and see a fellow American.

I expect that some organizations are going to call the things I've written simplistic or naive, I don't think they are. And some people are going to really hate my analysis of this particular American moment and what it has to do with religion and race.

And I'm convinced by the evidence that it does have to do with religion and race more than we're comfortable admitting. So, bring it on.

After 45 years in newsrooms, I figured I don't have that much more time to make these sort of broad arguments to readers, listeners, and viewers. So, I've finally, late in my 60s earned the right to an opinion. And here it is.

Ken Harbaugh:

What is so tragically ironic to me is that the people decrying immigration saying that these waves of new Americans threaten American ideals, they're the ones who are undermining American ideals, democracy, liberty, community.

And the lack of self-awareness is just striking to me. Or maybe there is self-awareness and they're just making the argument incredibly cynically.

Ray Suarez:

For some of them that cynicism, I have no doubt, is very much present. For some of them, the outlines of the stories I tell would earn their admiration, respect, and their endorsement. But for where those people come from, oh, wealth.

The former president himself has deplored the fact that Norwegians don't want to come here. Well, Norwegians are members of one of the richest, healthiest, best educated societies on the planet. Why would they want to come here?

He deplores the fact that people want to come here from West Africa. He mentioned Nigeria specifically in one reported conversation and lamented that once they're here, they, quote, “Don't want to go back to their huts.”

Well, the Nigerian physician who I talked to at length, who is a breast cancer specialist at the University of Chicago Medical Centers, has never lived in a hut.

She came to the United States already a trained physician and is emblematic of the immigrant group with the highest level of education of all immigrants to the United States, and that is Nigerians, which would probably surprise a lot of Americans who don't keep up with this issue closely.

Ken Harbaugh:

My campaign managers parents were an engineer and nurse from Nigeria, so I'll validate that observation.

I have a question about the cover of the book. It looks like a quilt, but I'm wondering if the evocation of like DNA was also intentional. They looked like chromosomes as well.

Ray Suarez:

We had some arguments. My agent, and the publisher, and me went back and forth over different cover designs. I liked it because it looked woven. And the threads of different experiences end up sewn together into a national whole.

Some of the lettering is apparently sewn on. Much of the thread becomes the weave of the fabric itself. So, it appealed to me. I think it pops.

And when I go into bookstores, as someone who's an occasional author and all the time book buyer, I try to analyze what works on a book cover and what doesn't. I'm hoping this one works out, but also works as you suggest, as symbol and metaphor as much as marketing.

Ken Harbaugh:

Yeah. Well, as a science nerd, it also looks like DNA. Whether it was intentional or not, I think that's a beautiful reference.

Ray Suarez:

Well, rush out to your local bookstore, folks, and see for yourself whether it works.

Ken Harbaugh:

Ray, thank you so much for joining us. The book is, We Are Home. We'll put a link in the show notes. Such a beautiful testimony about the new Americans that are reshaping our country for the better. It's been great talking to you, Ray.

Ray Suarez:

My pleasure. Thanks a lot.

Ken Harbaugh:

Thanks for listening to Burn the Boats. If you have any feedback, please email the team at [email protected]. We're always looking to improve the show.

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Burn the Boats is a production of Evergreen Podcasts. Our producer is Declan Rohrs, and Sean Rule-Hoffman is our audio engineer. Special thanks to Evergreen executive producers, Joan Andrews, Michael DeAloia, and David Moss.

I'm Ken Harbaugh, and this is Burn the Boats, a podcast about big decisions.