My latest op ed

Are illegal immigrants the new Jews?

a column by

Harley L. Sachs

Once you get over the weasel words used in the descriptions, you will see disturbing similarities between the situation of Jews in Nazi Germany and illegal immigrants (a.k.a. undocumented workers) in the United States today. It was a revelation to learn, from a public broadcasting program, that there are now 250 internment camps (concentration camps? Resettlement camps?) for illegal immigrants pending their deportation. These camps are operated not by the government but by private contractors just as many of our prisons are operated today by corporations.

Not all of the illegals interned in the camps were originally smuggled across the border from Mexico by “coyotes,” nor are they all Mexicans. Some are from Haiti, Cuba, Honduras, and other countries. Some came into the country on visitors visas and did not leave when the visas expired. Some have been in this country for years. Others were brought in as small children or infants and know no language but English. Yet they all fall into a single category and are subject to deportation.

The definition of who is a Jew has also been complicated. When I was growing up and had to fill in an occasional form, the category “nationality” might include Jewish. So were Jews a nation, as defined by the Soviet Union, a religion, or, as defined by Martin Luther, as a race? Even among Jews there is perpetual disagreement of who is “Jewish” enough to count.

In Catholic Spain during the 500 year Inquisition Jews had three options: convert to Christianity, be deported, or pretend to be Christian and risk death for Judaising. In Nazi Germany Jews were first encouraged to emigrate, but later were deprived of all civil rights, sent to relocation camps, then to death camps in the program to make the world Judenrein,  cleansed of Jews.

In this country there is now a program to make the USA cleansed of illegal immigrants. Internment camps and deportation are the program. At least we have not resorted to death damps, at least not yet.

 Our own history is similarly tainted. The New World was to be colonized in a program of Christian imperialism. In the early days of this country, some of the native peoples. a.k.a. Indians, were hunted as savages and exterminated. The survivors were deported from their ancestral lands and moved to “reservations.” Their children were forbidden to practice their traditional religion, speak their own language, or eat their ethnic foods. They were to be “saved,” converted to Christianity. Until the 1950’s the Native Americans were not even .U.S. citizens.

There is a parallel in the treatment of Jews in Europe. I once met a Holocaust survivor from Hungary. When he was born, Jews could not be citizens, but before his sisters were born, the law was changed. His sisters were officially Hungarian. As a stateless citizen, he was able to leave Hungary and go to Sweden. His sisters could not get exit visas and were trapped in Hungary under German occupation. While his father pleaded with Swedish authorities for visas for his sisters, they hid in various places to avoid a transport to the death camps. Only at the last moment, when already on the train of death, did the Red Cross get them off and on the way to freedom in Scandinavia.

Unlike the Jews the illegals here do not want to leave, they want to stay. If stopped for a minor traffic infraction, if a search of immigration records shows they are “undocumented” they are whisked off to an internment camp pending deportation.

On the base of the Statue of Liberty is the famous poem by the Jewish poet Emma Lazarus, “Give us your tired, your poor, your hungry masses yearning to be free.” Before the gates of immigration were closed in the 1920’s almost anyone of good health could come to this golden shore, except, of course, if you were Chinese.

Emma Lazarus’s poetry not withstanding, the United States has a history of racism and intolerance, whether it be against blacks, Indians, Irish, Jews, or currently illegal immigrants of any race or religion. Maybe it’s time to have a new litmus test for who can stay: if you’ve worked here for two years and have no criminal record we need your talent and your labor. Welcome to America.