Serving Proudly As The Voice Of Valley County Since 1913

Immigrant Contributions, Mutual Respect

Mr. Vaupel has once again chosen to attack a general group of people in the U.S. Since he did not name any specific individuals in his opinion column (Incrementally Incremental, May 6, 2015), he probably figured that he did not need to be accountable for his words.

Mr. Vaupel opened his column with a dreamy first-person narrative, a Native American Indian story-telling the early encounter between the whites and Indians. Like some bad novels, the narrator dies so that the story could shift to a different voice. The occupation of this land by the whites becomes analogous to the immigration tide of the early 20th century. As immigrants from third-world and Muslim countries “infiltrate this country today, untethered,” Mr. Vaupel tries to make his fiction serious by offering political information such as Chinese railroad workers pushing whites from the West, and immigrants making jobs and college educations unavailable to the white population.

I wonder why some Chinese workers built underground communit if they could have easily pushed the whites out? My siblings and I, and many other foreign students, did take up classroom spots in college. According to a 2011 data provided by the Migration Policy Institute, one in six college-educated adults in the U.S. was born abroad. The college experience enriched our lives, just as we hoped to contribute to an exciting world.

To divert readers’ attention from his confusion on the difference between occupation of a land and immigration, Mr. Vaupel tries to entertain with humor about York, William Clark’s black slave. Mr. Vaupel does this by modeling after the embarrassing statement of former CBS sports commentator, Jimmy ‘the Greek’ Snyder, that blacks were bred to be big, better athletes. That promptly got Snyder fired in 1988.

Cleverly tying the story ending right back to the beginning, he regains the sentimental longing and says, “Sometimes I feel like an American Indian. Get it?”

Now that’s just foolish. Unless he was an Indian, or moves to a different country, Mr. Vaupel might never get the insecure feeling that comes with NOT being a member of the dominant majority. To me, having abeen a U.S. citizen for merely half of my life, being a minority means that I never take for granted the same worth, the same respect and safety net that others assume. Not even for something as simple as walking down a street.

In two separate occasions, while doing errands around downtown Glasgow, I have been catcalled at by young men driving by. I was glad that my children were too young to notice. Do I think all American Caucasian males are jerks? No. I do feel sorry for those young men because they simply didn’t know any better.

Mr. Vaupel appears to think that he is superior to people who immigrate to this country. I believe that we all contribute to this country in different ways. Some of us have to work harder than others to be appreciated.

If Mr. Vaupel has problems with immigrants he is familiar with, call them out as individuals. Challenge them to be better residents in this country. So far, from the small corner of Northeast Montana, Mr. Vaupel has run a tirade on immigrants without having to apologize to anyone. He is entitled to his opinion, but he makes a fool of himself. And he is entitled to that, too.

 

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