Don’t Compare Us to Nazis

 
It was the worst disaster of its kind ever. It was accompanied by horrific photographs of the aftermath. Photographs in newspapers were still a bit of a novelty in 1912.

The loss of life affected even our language. More than a century later, we still occasionally talk of rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, inhibited only by excessive familiarity: the phrase has become trite because we all know it.

The tragedy is iconic in another sense. It has become an archetype of class division: lifeboat passengers who complained about having to submit to the instructions of a crew member who looked Asian, navigators of those lifeboats who were offered bribes to ignore the cries of those still in the icy water, immigrants who were caged by iron bars in steerage until upper class passengers could be safely sent off.

A recurring theme remains the disgust of the wealthy British about those iron gates confining lower class passengers. The indignation was said to have come, not because the access to lifeboats was blocked, but because access had to be blocked. Simple morality ought to have been enough to hold back third class passengers until their betters were evacuated.

Of course, we now wonder at such values. People of means considered the lives of the lower classes to be of little value. Their reactions went from bemusement, as they discovered that those lower class people did not agree, to outrage as those same lower class people could not be relied upon to obey simple rules of class order as rising waters engulfed them and their children. Amazing.

The existence of shipboard rules, the obedience of staff to those rules, may have imposed a degree of order in a chaotic situation. Forcing everyone into line, enforcing limits on the number allowed into lifeboats, may have made possible the rescue of additional survivors.

Today, we do not find it hard to defend those lower class passengers. Even if rules are a necessary part of orderly life, humans are under no moral obligation to respect rules that they had no part in creating, rules that put their lives at risk.

Unless, of course, those rules apply to immigrants.

I confess to a degree of bias concerning immigration. Part of it is personal. My grandmother fled Ukraine. It was called “the Ukraine” back then. She ran away from what would have been a forced marriage. She was promised to a man with whom she did not want to spend her life. She tried to lose herself in the millions of immigrants entering New York. My imagination tells me she entered through Ellis Island. She must have been processed within sight of the Statue of Liberty.

According to “Merit Rules” proposed by the Trump administration  she would have been turned away. The ideal immigrant, the one who would be pushed to the head of the line, would be this:

…a 26- to 31-year-old with a US-based doctorate or professional degree, who speaks nearly perfect English and who has a salary offer that’s three times as high as the median income where they are.

My grandmother had no marketable skills. She did not speak English at all. Not to put too fine a point on it, she did not have a US-based doctorate or professional degree.

As I understand it, she would be sent back today, even if she applied for asylum. Rules are tightening, even for cases of life-threatening domestic violence. How would mere forced marriage be considered?

So, I could be accused of having a grandson’s personal bias.

There is also a question of human value.

I have a grudging respect for some arguments in favor of limited immigration. I don’t agree with them. They are not fact based. But they are not beyond understanding.

Immigrants are not only workers, they are consumers. Many become employers. They create more jobs than they take.

They are not lawbreakers. Crime rates are remarkably low for legal immigrants who are severely vetted, and for illegal immigrants who do not want to attract legal attention. The exception is illegal entry itself, and associated crimes of false documentation that make illegal residency possible.

When President Trump’s prospective head of the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration; Ronald Mortensen; recently presented the case against illegal immigration, he refered to “the myth of the law abiding illegal alien”. Here is his contrary view:

However, when pushed, even the strongest supporters of illegal aliens are forced to acknowledge that the vast majority of illegal aliens commit multiple felonies. In fact, the Social Security Administration and New York Times report that approximately 75 percent of illegal aliens have fraudulently obtained Social Security numbers which is a felony.

Ronald Mortensen, March 29, 2017

Social Security numbers.

So the criminal activity that scares us is that undocumented workers may illegally pay social security taxes.

Conservatives in Congress regularly argue that we must reduce Social Security and Medicare benefits to keep them from running out of money. We could as easily argue that we need to increase immigration to keep conservatives from cutting Social Security and Medicare benefits. Immigrants, even those here illegally, contribute more than they take.

Still, while I disagree with anti-immigration arguments, while the facts themselves disagree with those arguments, I can respect the fear of those who imagine our country as a leaking boat, unable to rescue any more people. What I do not respect is the values of those who denigrate those struggling to stay alive in the icy waters: who critique the morality of those trying to get to the ship, breaking the rules that require them and their children to stay where they are and drown.

Corey Lewandowski’s trombone sound at the story of a disabled girl taken from her mother:

I read about today a ten year old girl with Down Syndrome who was taken from her mother and put in a cage. I read…

Wah, wah!

Did you say ‘wah wah’ to a ten year old with down syndrome…?

It does fairly represent many of the comments we read and see from our conservative brothers and sisters.

When we get right down to the bare truth, the truth with the bark off, we are talking about something a bit deeper than immigration.

When the survivors of the Titanic were rescued by ships headed for the United States, sympathetic crowds welcomed them. Most of them.

Among the survivors were four Chinese passengers. As they disembarked, the friendly crowd grew angry, then furious. The four found themselves targeted. They ran for their lives. They were tracked down and immediately deported.

My grandmother, with her lack of English, and her lack of marketable skills, would not have been a primary target of my President. She would have been a sort of collateral deportee. In fact, if conservatives could put aside those proposed rules, she would have been one of those who who have fit exactly the desired profile. That was made explicit at a CPAC convention a few years ago, as a speaker lamented that so many people from third world countries were allowed in.

Why aren’t we letting people in from Europe? I have many friends, many, many friends–and nobody wants to talk this, nobody wants to say it–but I have many friends from Europe. They want to come in. People I know. Tremendous people. Hard-working people.

Donald Trump at CPAC, March 15, 2013

Tremendous, hardworking. Most of all, from Europe.

Some of the stories of the Titanic do not hold up. There is some evidence that passengers from steerage were not blocked in to allow first class passengers to escape. Porters were simply waiting for instructions amid the confusion. One wealthy woman is said to have been heard “complaining about third class women and children being put in ‘first class lifeboats,'” but there are no accounts of that being a widespread contemporaneous attitude. In fact, there are some accounts of first class passengers, men, pushing children and mothers that had emerged from below decks into lifeboats, giving up their lives for theirs.

They may have had better values then many people today.

The human tendency of exaggeration to advance a point seems to have been at play.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions argues against one criticism, comparing the wrenching of children from mothers, of putting those children into cage-like cells, to actions of the Nazis during World War II. The comparison should fall for obvious reasons. There are no gas chambers run by today’s immigration authorities. Neither those children nor their parents are to be exterminated. Interestingly, he does not focus on that. He is interested in what he seems to see as the most significant difference:

Well, it’s a real exaggeration, of course. In Nazi Germany they were keeping the Jews from leaving the country.

Jeff Sessions, June 18, 2018

Well…

It does seem odd that he would not be more prepared for a predictable comparison. Was he surprised the policy would even be questioned? It is as if he believes the attack on children would have such widespread support it would not need a more coherent defense.

Still, he is right. The comparison is an exaggeration, although the bar he sets for American exceptionalism may strike some as a bit low.

In his own flawed way, Jeff Sessions succeeds in making a valid point: We are not as bad as the Nazis.

That fact kind of makes you proud to be an American, doesn’t it?

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