Ivanka Trump, the honored guest of Canadian PM Justin Trudeau, together with our UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, all attended a new Broadway play opening on Wednesday night called "Come From Away." This musical (shades of "Hamilton") is about how a small town with a big airport in Newfoundland, Gander, warmly welcomed an almost doubling of its population when 6,579 plane passengers were stranded when their planes were forced to land there on 9/11/2003 ... after the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center ... see:
CNN Story.
The too obvious message here is that these humble Canadian townsfolk were good and noble when they opened their homes to all these strangers who had "come from away" and therefore we too should be welcoming Syrian and other Middle-Eastern immigrants in this same neighborly spirit. Otherwise, to use that common Canadian slight, we are "hosers." I suppose I will be labeled hard-hearted by pointing out the important differences in this simple-minded comparison:
- These air passengers were obviously short-term guests, whereas the current immigrant influx are to be permanent ... likely requiring long-term public assistance -- money, medical, housing, food and schooling
- Most of these air passengers were from a similar culture and language as the Newfoundlanders ... not so with these new immigrants being recommended.
- It was quite unlikely that there were any terrorists, disease-ridden, or other unsavory types secreted among these airline passengers. These Syrian and other Middle-Eastern immigrant are usually portrayed as just women and children, whereas the opposite is true ... well over half are testosterone-laden young men ... as many countries in Europe are now finding out.
Conflating these two "come from away" populations to make political hay is naive, condescending and even dangerous. The irony of using an event surrounding 9/11 to argue for more Middle-Eastern immigration is obviously lost on the backers of this play. We are living in treacherous times which require mature thinking and actions. There is no reason that stringent and rational filters cannot be placed on our immigrant experience ... despite what a few fuzzy-headed federal judges might wish.
Afterward: I recently discovered the derivation of the"hoser" term. Apparently it originally referred to people who siphoned gasoline from neighbors' cars using a length of garden hose.
