Bonanza

Yesterday, I happened to watch an episode on YouTube from the old TV series, Bonanza--a Western most of you will remember, even if it aired before your time. The story was of anti-immigration sentiment, the suspicion of "foreigners" coming to our shores, even those who had become citizens. It was a tale of immigrant hopes and dreams in conflict with intolerance and rejection. 

The episode aired some 50 years ago.

It seems that little has changed. 

So, here are some facts I read in a PBS article regarding a study of immigrant communities across 200 metropolitan areas:

Research has shown virtually no support for the enduring assumption that increases in immigration are associated with increases in crime. 

Large cities with substantial immigrant populations have lower crime rates, on average, than those with minimal immigrant populations.

As immigration increased in metropolitan cities, serious crimes--murder, robbery, burglary, larceny--decreased. 

On the other hand, we have Trump's SOFU speech, wherein he claimed that immigration is having an impact on public safety and needs to be stopped. 

Clearly, someone has failed to take the plain facts into account. Or are facts and statistics, once again, 'fake news'.  

What is clear from this old episode of Bonanza is that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Here, again, we have people who look different, who speak differently, who dress differently, demonized and rejected. Here, again, we have existing problems transferred conveniently to people who are the least of the problem.

The Cartwrights, of course, stand up for what is true to the American dream--for the truth that we all came from elsewhere, for the value of freedom and tolerance, for the common good and for the universal accessibility to the good--standing against the shame of bigotry, of undeserved and unwarranted suspicion.

Or, as Hoss says to the broken-hearted immigrant and his family, ridiculed and oppressed by the unkind crowd: "These people are ignorant, they are cowards, and they don't know what they're talking about."