[Music] good morning I'm Judy arriman I'm the vice president and Provost of the Rockville campus of Montgomery College and I am delighted to have so many students and community members and faculty and staff here for today's um Talk by Steph Roberts here at the Rockville campus we really enjoying having members of the Roberts family here um just a couple of years ago we Had Mr Robert's wife uh the television journalist and author K Roberts here just at this very Place talking about at the time her latest book ladies of Liberty we're very fortunate in to
have a member of our community to help us observe United Nations Day the United Nations has been in existence for 65 years and it's particularly appropriate to talk about it today because Montgomery College has students from over 170 countries we are a United Nations here in terms of where we come from there's so much to learn about the work of the United Nations and its specialized agencies and I know that in addition to this event there'll be other discussions about the United Nations and its role in our world throughout the day Montgomery College Embraces people
from all over the world and if we ourselves are not IM immigrants we don't have to go very far back in our our family History to locate family members who came to the United States from somewhere else all of my grandparents shared their stories about their experiences and coming to the United States and I'm so very pleased that my children got to hear from not all of them but from some of them some of the stories and made that connection with why their grandparents came here so I'm particularly looking forward to hearing about Mr Robert's
new book and sharing The conversation after words about the Immigrant experience here in Montgomery County when asked in a Forbes online interview if writers can change the world Mr Roberts responded in part with these words writers are storytellers some of us like me write about living people we're called journalists others like my wife Ki write about dead people they're called historians many make up their characters most do not not Um make up all of them but they're called novelists in the end we all try to do the same thing observe and reflect what it means
to be human if we accomplish that goal we help our audience understand their communities their families and above all themselves yes we can change the world we just do it very slowly one word one book one reader at a time that is a wonderful perspective and it's Just a small dose of what you're going to be hearing in just a few minutes in closing I want to express my appreciation to our College faculty and staff who are active members of the peace and Justice Community these dedicated individuals along with the Montgomery County committee for ethnic
Affairs are responsible for bringing the exceptional writer and speaker to our campus today the piece of Justice Community presents a variety of Activities that encourage dialogue and about understanding tolerance and acceptance of conflicting perspectives and C Customs Eleanor Roosevelt said it isn't enough to talk about peace was one must believe in it and it isn't enough to believe in it one must work at it so I commend our faculty and staff who working with their Dean Dean Carolyn Terry who has administrative of oversight for this group on these Projects we are becoming a centerpiece for
efforts to promote and provide numerous opportunities to work for peace and Justice throughout the world and I want to extend a warm welcome to you and to our guests thank [Applause] you thank you Dr arrian for your remarks good morning everyone good morning everyone good morning my name is inas Al hanafi um I'm a Member in peace and Justice studies and also chair of the Arab American Heritage Month committee at Montgomery College and the Montgomery County committee for ethnic Affairs um I would like to thank you all for being here today College administrators uh faculty
staff students and community at large we appreciate that you're interested in such you know and joining us in such important day uh United in the nation day and um with a special guest speaker Montgomery County Resident Mr Steve Roberts Mr Steve Roberts will talk today about the immigration experiences Through The Eyes of 13 families that he had interviewed for his latest book from every end of this Earth we have you know um copies at the end if you would like to um uh to have you know uh a signed book will be be the end
at the end of the of the presentation so it's my pleasure to introduce our guest speaker Steve Roberts has been a journalist for more than 45 years covering some of the major events of his time from the anti-war movements and student revolts of the 60s and 70s to President Reagan historic trip to Moscow in 1988 and 11 presidential election campaigns after graduating from Harvard with great honor in 1964 he joined the New York Times as research assistant to James uh Scotty risten then the bers Washington bureau Chief his 25 years career with the times included
assignment as bureau chief in Los Angeles and Athens and as Congressional and White House correspondent he was a senior writer at United States or us news for seven years es specializing in National politics and foreign policy Roberts and his wife TV journalist K Roberts write a nationally syndicated newspaper column that was named one of the 10 most popular columns in America bar Media Matters in February Of 2000 Steve and cookie published from this day forward an account of their marriage as well as other marriages in American history The New York Times called the book inspiring
and instructive and it spent 7 weeks on the times besteller list Roberts also writes a biom monthly column Hometown for Batista magazine and as a lifelong Bas baseball fan he reviews Sports books for the Washington Post his childhood Memoir my father's houses was Published in the spring of 2005 and was featured at the national Book Festival in Washington his latest uh book from every end of this Earth uh was published in October 2009 as a broadcaster Roberts appears regularly as a political analyst on the ABC radio network and is a substitute host in NPR's Diane
R show as a teacher he lecture widely he lectures widely on American politics and the role of the news media since 1997 he has been Z Shapiro professor of media and public affairs at George Washington University where he has taught for the last 19 years his many honors include the derson award for covering Congress The Wilbur award for reporting on religion and politics Z Bender priz as one of the George Washington's top undergraduate teachers and four honorary doctorates Steven kooki have two children Lee a real estate investor in North Carolina Rebecca a journalist in Washington
and six grandchildren in his spare time Roberts is an avid guard Garder and tennis player and coaches a third base for his twin grandson Little League team we are so grateful to have Mr Roberts taking the time to be with us today and also we are Beyond grateful to have him working and advocating for a better open-minded and educated Community thank you Mr Roberts and please welcome our guest speaker Professor Columnist bestelling author Steven Roberts thank you so well I'm really um I'm so glad to be here thank you and us and the other faculty
and and and the officials in Montgomery County College because for two reasons first of all I'm a neighbor I've lived in Montgomery County now for 30 years uh and um uh I uh this is part of my community the school and uh all of you who go here this is uh this is home to me but in addition to that um uh Having a lifelong interest in Immigration as a subject um I'm particularly thrilled to be here uh at a school that uh uh that focuses so much uh on uh newcomers to America I look
around and I can just see in your faces dozens of countries dozens of ethnicities dozens of stories and as Dr akman said I'm a Storyteller that's what I do and uh um uh I've chose chosen to write about immigration uh throughout my entire life Um as you mentioned you grew up with immigrant grandparents so did I uh I grew up in a town in New Jersey called bon it's a small industrial town right across the river from Manhattan um and um I lived in the house as many of you do I lived in the house
with an immigrant grandparent who was born in what is now bellarus town called grudo in Belarus my grandpa Harry and three blocks away lived uh Abe and Miriam Ro rogo originally rogovsky who grew up in Poland and they lived three blocks away so I thought everybody grew up that way I never had a babysitter I wasn't related to I never met a grandmother who didn't have an accent uh but in my community um people came from a few places they came from Italy Ireland Poland Russia perhaps a few from Greece and Ukraine um and I
look around at you and I know that you come from 170 different Countries there's a enormously fascinating change in the patterns of immigration to America and it's reflected in my hometown all those stores on Broadway that were owned by Jewish Merchants from Russia and Poland are now owned by Indian families the roller skating rank that uh we went to as a kid is now um a Coptic Christian Church of refugees from Egypt uh there's now Arabic writing on Storefronts in my hometown believe me there was no Arabic writing on the storefronts of my hometown when
I was growing up so one of the reasons I'm so pleased to be here is because you reflect the stories I'm telling in this book because one of the things I wanted to do was reflect the changes in Immigration as well as the things that don't change um and one of the things perhaps that uh happened to me that maybe is to Some extent true for you too uh as you leave your immigrant communities and go to a school like Montgomery and then on to other places perhaps um this is another form of immigration because
you are moving to a new environment you have to adjust yet again when I grew up in this town in New Jersey I used to kid about this but that um the town was about 80% Catholic uh all these ethnic groups from Italy and Ireland and about 19% Jewish which Is what we were I thought Protestants were a tiny minority group I thought there was some weird sect imagine my surprise when I got to Harvard I found all these buildings you know that had names like Elliot and Weld and Winthrop all these old New England
Protestant names it was so strange for me these names were so short and um you could actually pronounce them easily and um they ended in consonants not vowels um uh my I was Totally immune to the fact my family my name is Roberts right it's sort of this Old English name it's actually a Welsh name uh the Welsh are wonderful people but they ain't my people uh my dad changed the name when I was two my real family name was rovski um and uh in many ways I sort of wish I had the old name
back because like you I'm proud of who I am I'm proud of my Heritage I uh you know that is entirely possible as you Represent to be loyal and patriotic Americans and not forget where you came from not forget where you came from that's the way I feel about my own background and um so uh I'd really rather have this old long polish name than this sort of homogenized American name but I'm kind of stuck with it um but um after having gone off uh to Harvard I went to work for the New York Times
and wherever I went as a reporter I always wrote about immigration always Was interested in ethnicity um uh in New York when I was a young reporter um uh I convinced the New York Times to let me do a series of stories about the ethnic neighborhoods of New York and I you know went to Arthur Avenue which is the old Italian neighborhood in the Bronx um uh I went to Bedford dyerson and and Fort green the African-American neighborhoods of Brooklyn and um uh then I went to California as a correspondent and um all the other
correspondents were writing About the actresses in Hollywood I was writing about the Armenians in Glendale I found it much more much more interesting there's an Armenian in the line um and um and then I had the experience of going abroad and as a correspondent in for the New York Times based in Athens and Greece and I had the experience of being able to write about immigration from the point of view of a country that was sending people to America not just receiving people and I Had the experience one day of being in rural Greece uh
and talking to a couple very much like perhaps your grandparents who are back home um and this couple all of their three children had come to America and and uh they had tried desperately to keep their kids in in Greece but then none of them would stay they all wanted to come to to America um one of the interesting things about this house in rural Greece was it Was this little Stone House in this little village and it looked like a showroom from Sears and robu because all their kids were so guilty about coming to
America that they sent them every Appliance you could imagine so this woman in this kitchen in Greece you know had six you know six food processors um sent by her children and um um she told me the story through a translator because I didn't speak Greek very well but I had a translator and she told me The story about the previous summer where her three children were all home for the summer back in the village in Royal Greece and um one of her sons Came Upon her in this very well-appointed kitchen uh crying and he
said to her mama why are you crying we're all here for the summer your grandchildren here it's wonderful and she said I'm crying because I'm thinking of the day you're Going to leave and it taught me something about the Immigrant experience every immigrant every one of you every one of your parents or grandparents of Kingdom America you leave something behind even if you fled Terror or seeking political Freedom as my grandparents did there's still something you leave behind you leave behind the graves of Your ancestors none of you can go visit your ancestors graves in
Montgomery County because they're back home the food doesn't ever quite taste the same we got a lot of good restaurants in Montgomery County they don't quite the same taste the same as the food back in Pakistan or the food back in Hong Kong or the food back in Sierra Leon or the food in Jamaica the air doesn't ever smell quite The same as it does back home so it's part of the Immigrant an experience that you all know you all know what I'm talking about I recently had a um experience of talking to an elementary
school in Montgomery County which very much like this one uh has over hundred uh countries represented but these were smaller children and when I asked them about the Immigrant experience I asked them what they missed about being an immigrant you know what the first thing They all said grandparents first thing they all said um that that's what they missed um so I understand that uh as as positive and as um rewarding as the Immigrant experience it is there is that pain of Separation um I talked to a woman from Afghanistan now she was thrilled to
be in America she had fled the Russians who had occupied her country she had taken her three-year-old daughter and fled the uh the occupation and got to America she Was thrilled to be in America but when I said to her when I talked to her about the Immigrant experience she said read a poem written by a a Mystic who wrote in the 13th century named roomie some of you might know his poetry he wrote in farsy um the language of Iran and of Afghanistan language largely of the educated classes in those countries and this poem
is called the song of the Reed and she said read this poem and and and and and what this poem says is that when you pluck a reed from the bed in the marshes and blow through it this Reed makes a particularly mournful and lonely sound and that sound roomie writes is the pain of Separation that the Reed feels from having been plucked from its bed and that Maria aiz said to me is the pain I feel from leaving Afghanistan so the pain of separation is part of the Immigrant experience and every immigrant in the
history of the world has felt it every single one on some level or another the other thing that every immigrant family shares on one level or another was expressed to me by a woman from Vietnam is there anybody here from Vietnam well this was a woman who um uh actually her daughter was a student of mine at George Washington University and Uh she told me the story of um uh of trying to escape many many times from uh Vietnam after the fall of uh the government and the and the uh Triumph of the Communist Regime
and it finally took them about six or seven tries and they managed to get a boat that was powered enough to get them away from the coastal Waters of Vietnam but then the engine conked out and they were floating free in the in the sea no water left no food left he had She had two small uh children and she said to me the last thing I could think of to keep my boys alive was to cut my wrist and feed my children my blood and in describing this story she saidwe are the sacrifice generation
we are the generation that never is quite home at home in the new country but can't go back to the old country either and for many of your parents and grandparents they are the sacrificed Generation why did they come here why did they float on the sea metaphorically or realistically most of them didn't quite face the challenge of cutting their wrists and feeding their children their blood but in one form or another every one of your parents or grandparents made sacrifices to come here why it can be summed up actually in one word and that
word is Children they did it for you they did it for you and your children and that is universal in the Immigrant experience that's un ival you go back hundreds of years you talk to people why they came to this country and the story is the same I did it to make a better life for my children but interestingly there are things that are different as I was writing this book there are also things that are different about the Contemporary immigrant experience that you are experiencing that was different from what my grandparents shared one and
I can look around this room and see it reflected in your faces one is what I call the feminization of immigration historically most most immigrants were men not all there were always you know Irish Maids who came from Ireland there were always seamers you go one of the most famous incidents in American history Happened just a hundred years ago the Triangle shirt waste fire in New York where about 150 uh immigrant uh young immigrant women were killed in a in a fire and they were from Italy and and and Russia and there were there were
women working young women who had immigrated and were working in New York City but by and large most of the immigrants were men for two reasons first of all the jobs that were open to Immigrants required muscle they were the Italians who Min slate in Pennsylvania they were the Irish who dug canals in New York there were the Chinese who built the railroads in the west those were the jobs that immigrants who didn't have education weren't fluent in English could get and these were jobs by and large for men and for muscle and for broad
but the other thing was cultural women from many of these countries came from traditional cultures Which didn't see women as independent figures didn't think that women could be on their own they always had to be protected by a man a father a brother a cousin an uncle but the notion of a woman coming by herself was much more difficult from a cultural perspective a couple of generations ago that has changed drastically both of those conditions have change if you think about the Culture today if anything uh women are uh the The Immigrant experience is liberating
for women often they come because it does separate them from more traditional cultures I talked to a woman in my book from the Philippines who said if I was back in the Philippines everybody I dated everybody I considered as a possible mate my family would have to approve of it and if I was seen anywhere with a with a with a man everybody would Gossip and everybody would talk and every body would know my business she said here I can pick my own friends decide who I I I want to be with she said the
Philippines are so small and America is so big and she came to America as a young teacher and married a white guy white Catholic from Syracuse um wouldn't have married him back in the Philippines I can tell you that um so the cultural norms have Changed in fact today the majority of immigrants to America are women not men it's a very interesting change from the history but what makes that also possible is the shift in our our economy in America because a lot of the jobs in a service economy as opposed to a manufacturing economy
that are open to immigrants women are as as well suited or even better suited for a lot of the jobs my mom who just died a few weeks Ago at 91 here in Montgomery County over the last few years have been in and out of Suburban Hospital Montgomery count down County and then and uh on Old Georgetown Road in the southern part of the county some of you know the hospital when my mom was in Suburban Hospital in Montgomery County every single person who took care of my mom over these last few years everyone was
a foreign born woman of color every single one they were from Trinidad they were from Cameroon they were from Jamaica they were from Sierra Leon they were from the Philippines they were from Malaysia every single person who took care of my mom was a foreign born woman of color if you took those women out of any Hospital in Montgomery County it would collapse overnight it collapse overnight so that's an indication of how the patterns have changed two or three generations ago the jobs were for minor today they're for nurses they're for Healthcare AIDS they're for
medical technicians that's where the jobs are being created and these jobs often not always but often are done as well or better by women in fact um my mom's caretakers her private caretakers outside the hospital were all from Jamaica we called them team Jamaica and my mother-in-law who's 94 who also lives in Montgomery County uh is cared for by team Philippines um so uh this is a very interesting Change in the patterns the feminization of immigration second thing that's changed and I bet every one of you know what I'm talking about is um the change
in Communications now my grandfather a rovski when he left bistu Poland and came to America in 1914 he was out of touch with his sister who lived back in Russia for 50 years think about that for 50 years he didn't Even know she was alive for most of this time but she was behind the Iron Curtain she was um there was no way that he could communicate with her he only found out right at the end of his life a relative got out of Russia moved to Israel and wrote to my grandfather and said by
the way your sister cha is still alive in Moscow and he went back to see her just before they both died now how many of you talk to Relatives back home by Skype I'm surprised it's not even more um the communications have changed the whole nature on one level of the Immigrant experience because you can stay far more connected to your relatives back home I have a student from Brazil who told me this story uh her brother was marrying a woman from Brazil who was undocumented and um so the uh her family couldn't get visas
to come to The wedding here in America so my student Mariana took a digital camera and a laptop and in her bridesmaid's dress went to the wedding took all of these digital photos of the wedding put them up on the web and the bride's family who couldn't come to America for the wedding the bride's family in their little village in rural Brazil watched the wedding in real time on the slideshow think of that think of the Difference between that and my grandfather who for 50 years didn't even know if his sister was alive so I
have another uh man in this book from Sierra Le own Eddie Kamar Eddie Kamar Stanley Eddie's mother lives in a small village in rur sier Leon his mom lives in this small village and and the phone connection isn't always that good um and she's old and she doesn't quite know doesn't always know that it's Eddie Calling so you know what Eddie does he sings A lullab the lullaby his mom sang to him when he was a small child and when she hears the song when she hears the lby she knows it's her son in Philadelphia
calling back to Sierra Leon so those kinds of communications are very different from what was true uh historically and the other thing that's very different is Commerce yeah my hometown there might Have been an Italian family that imported olive oil from from Italy but by and large when people came to America their business focus was on America it was not back home today and this is particularly true and I see a number of students who whose Origins are from India or from China or Hong Kong or Taiwan today there's an enormous amount of economic business
being done every day between America and India between America and China between America and and the Philippines and it's immigrants have an enormous advantage in being part of that business life they know the language they know the business Customs they might have a cousin back home in Hong Kong who can help them get started and so so you have this whole change in the economic uh structure of the Immigrant experience I have a a guy in this book named uh Tom Chan uh his family was originally from China they fled the Communists in the 40s
when the Communists took over went to Hong Kong one of the things that was so interesting was that Tom came to America as a college student just like you he went to a school very much like Montgomery College in in U Oakland California it's called Meritt College and like uh your school it specializes in being a welcoming place for immigrants so he went through Meritt College then got an accounting degree at A California State University and was um had a small accounting business in Chinatown in San Francisco and then China started opening to the west
and started uh there were a lot of people in China who wanted to do business with the west and it turns out that almost all of the fireworks in the world are made in one small village in rural China I knew I didn't know so a friend of a friend of a friend wanted to do business in America and Sell fireworks in China finally got in touch with Tom Chan today Tom Chan spends two weeks a month back in China doing business he's one of the biggest importers of fireworks in America now this was one
generation his parents fled China in Terror fled the Communists and never look back their son is back in China two weeks a year doing business in fact he's had to relearn the dialect uh that they speak in Hunan Province Because he only spoke Mander and they speak a different dialect and and his son this very American son named Herbert old Chinese name works with him in this business and Herbert is learning Chinese to be able to go back and do business with his grandparents Old Country so there's a very interesting change there's a family in
this book from India um uh they Liv the the uh AIS bannery lives in a town outside of Cleveland he owns two Plastics factories one in Medina Ohio and one in um Madras in India uh and he goes back and forth he these businesses he he he does business in both places and he says you know my address is Ohio but he what's his real home it's probably the first class Lounge in Frankfurt airport as he flies around the world doing business that's his real home probably spends more of the time there than in Ohio
but this is also a Reflection of the changing patterns of immigration particularly true with Asia but it's true in many other countries as well where the economic opportunities for immigrants in in World Trade have changed but you know in the end this book that I've done is about stories it's just a book of stories about these families let me tell you a couple of these stories is this book is actually dedicated to my students at George Washington University and one of the reasons it's dedicated to them is that I teach a course in feature writing
taught it last night and I encourage my students to write about their own families and their own family histories because as I tell my students your grandmother never says no comment uh actually that turns out to be not entirely true but it is largely true and I encourage students to go tap This wonderful Rich vein of of of of dramatic stories and as I've taught this course over the years one of The Inspirations for this book was the fact that I was getting so many terrific stories but there were different they were from different countries
they weren't from Italy and Ireland and Poland they were from Vietnam they were from Ukraine they were from Dominican Republic they were from U different countries and it reminded me that the Great journey my grandparents made almost a hundred years ago is alive and well it was alive and well in my classroom it's alive and well in this room right now so you represent both a continuity of the Immigrant experience and yet a significant change as well and so I wanted to reflect this change in the book so I have written several other books about
my own children and my own family and having ruthlessly exploited My family for material for many years I decided I was now time to exploit my students so um several of the stories in this book are actually about my students and their families and here's one of them Stern family were from Ukraine they were a Jewish Family at a time when it was very um difficult for Jewish families uh the Discrimination had gotten worse not better Nick Stern's mother was the doctor but he couldn't go to medical school wanted to go to Medical school was
borred because he was Jewish the only profession he could follow was engineering it was less political and they allowed Jews to go into engineering Sarah Stern um uh also went into engineering so these two young people meet in their first job Nick and Sarah both young Jews in kov in the Ukraine an old dusty a remote industrial town in the Ukraine and I said to them where did the Notion of immigration come from because if you talk to your parents and grandparents about their own experience one thing I bet will come up again and again
and again where did they ask this question of them where did they first get the idea to come where did it come from where did because immigration starts with an act of imagination it starts with an idea so I said to the Sterns where did your idea come from and she said well we Had a friend a family friend who had immigrated to Israel and she would write to my mom and she would describe life in Israel and she said to uh my mom at one point you know here in Israel we eat oranges the
way you eat potatoes back in Russia and the orange became the symbol of Hope the symbol of a different life then she said I used to watch these movies done by these Italian directors now um the um uh they wouldn't allow any American movies in Russ but they would Allow these movies done by these Communists in Italy so she said I never listen to the plot I never listen to the dialogue I looked at the apartments I wanted to see the bathrooms I wanted to see the kitchens in the movies and um uh so gradually
they developed this idea of coming to America and um but it was very difficult they had to smuggle out information to an organization called hyas the Hebrew immigration Aid Society in um in Vienna So that they could um hios would file an application with the Russian government requesting um an exit Visa uh it was a fiction because there didn't have to be a family member in Brooklyn saying can you know can the can the Sterns join us but they had to file the application anyway so they couldn't get the information out very easily so Nick
was a clever guy so he would write all of the key information the family needed to get out on little pieces of White paper and he would have Sarah his wife sew them into the elastic of his boxer shorts and every time a Jewish Family left Russia to go to Vienna they would hand him a pair of his boxer shorts and say bring this to the hayas office in Vienna tell them to look in the elastic and that'll be all the information they need to apply for an ex it took them 20 tries as Nick
says there are a lot of guys walking around Vienna in my Underwear but um eventually they got out eventually they got their visas and they get on a train and they leave Russia and they heading for Vienna and the train stops for water and fuel kids are thirsty so Nick jumps off the train and buys the first two bottles of Coca-Cola warm Coca-Cola he had ever had in his life brings him back to the train I said Nick what did it taste Like he said Steve it tasted like Freedom tasted like freedom and I bet
every one of you have a story in your own family that what was the symbol of the new life the first thing that symbolized freedom for them it was the Coca-Cola they got to New York the next day it was the worst day of Nick's life because if any of you anybody here from the former Soviet Union well in the the way Plumbing works in the former Soviet Union the water doesn't stay in the toilet bowls it just drains all out that's just the way their toilets work so Nick gets the stern family is put
up in this um uh Ramada in outside of Kennedy Airport in uh in in America and of course he flushes the toilet the water comes back up in the bowl right that's how American toilets work he thinks oh my god I've broken the toilet they're going to send me back to Russia he spends the entire night madly trying to flush the toilet to get rid of the water they head for St Louis the next day where they settled and um Nick U uh found out that the only state in America that would accept his engineering
degree from Russia was Kentucky so he studies for the engineering test in Kentucky and he goes to take the test and he's an oldw World guy he's like your parents and grandparents so he dress it's formal He goes to a university right he puts on a three-piece suit nice new suit to take his test and of course he runs into people like you in shorts and flip-flops so who's the heck it's the guy in the three-piece suit so he says I took off two of the pieces I left my pants on and I took the
test and came in first in the state today I interviewed Nick Stern in his Penthouse apartment overlooking Central Park West uh he's been extremely successful In the engineering field and has figured out he builds power plants around the country um they also um when his wife Sarah was growing up she lived in a an apartment building where 28 people shared one toilet 28 people shared one toilet today as Nick points out the closet in their condo in Florida is bigger than the apartment Sarah grew up at in Russia but money is not the only test
of success in America your parents and grandparents will tell you that money is it's part of the American experience but it's not the only measure and maybe not the most most important measure either one of the things to remember is that we've always had an ambivalent view in America about immigration we have days like this we celebrate the Immigrant experience we have United Nations day and we read about our and we we get te eyed when we Think about our own immigrant forbears and then we have spasms of xenophobia we have spasms of resentment it's
happening right now the attitude toward the mosque in near Ground Zero in New York the laws that were passed in Arizona um against Hispanic uh uh immigrants we're totally ambivalent on this subject and you I went back and looked at it in American history and you know what there's nothing new about This the interesting thing is in 1750s there was a tremendous tide against new immigrants to America you know who they were resenting the Germans 7 1990 we passed a series of laws called the Alien and Sedition Acts aimed at what at deporting the French
in 1840 there was a party called the no nothing party in America who won 20% of the popular vote in the presidential election on one platform Get rid of the Irish Catholics by the 20th century the northern Europeans the Germans the Irish they were fine because they were Northern Europeans the next wave of of antipathy was toward the southern Europeans the Italians the Eastern Europeans like my people in in um uh in the 1880s we passed the Chinese Exclusion Act which made it almost impossible for Chinese immigrants to become citizens in the 1920s this country
Italians were considered non-white in many places and Two Italians Sako and vinetti were hanged in part for their political views and in part for their ethnicity because they were considered um threatening aliens in the 1940s in one of the most shameful episodes of American History we intered over a 100,000 loyal Japanese American citizens on the west coast so when you hear the Anti-immigrant feeling in Arizona today and you hear it about the mosque in New York be reassured in a way there's nothing new about this because if you read history the language is almost exactly
the same which is is we're now perfect and we have to pull up the drawbridge and prevent the next group come coming because the next group the Germans the French the Chinese the Jews the Italians the Japanese the next group Is going to degrade our culture and change our character but what you know and what I know and what your families know is that the haters were wrong then and now wrong now because the great Genius of America is we're never finished we're never perfect we have to be revitalized every day by people like you
and your families with your energy and your inspiration and your and and the drive you bring to this country and we are Better not poor because you're here and history shows that it's not a guess it's not a supposition history couldn't be clearer that each time time we have tried to stop the next wave of immigration we've been wrong time after time after time we've been wrong about that and it's people like you and people like my grandparents who prove that and here's the story that will prove it to you again so much of the
feeling against immigrants today is Directed against Hispanics particularly along the border there's a man named Pablo Romero grew up in rural Mexico anybody here from Mexico amilies from Mexico Pablo grew up in rural Mexico dropped out of school when he was 12 there was no more school left in his village had to go to a another town couldn't afford it couldn't afford the school fees anyway his family told him he had to go to work to make he made a Dollar a day but the family needed it made a dollar a day working in a
brick Factory the work was so hard that itd come home his fingers would be bleeding every night he would say to his mom I can't eat warm tortillas tonight you got to feed me cold food because it hurts too much to hold warm tortilla every night fingers bruised and bleeding from the brick when he was about 14 his dad was a farm worker in California legal Farm Worker and said to him Pablo there's nothing for you here come to with to California at age 14 Pablo Romero lands in selenis California which is the center of
the lettuce growing industry and for the next six years he spends his life as a lettuce picker field hand farm hand he was good at it got promoted by the end he was packing the trucks he was up on the truck putting the lettuce in the boxes instead of picking it in the Fields but he was still in the fields every day then the best thing that ever happened to him he gets drafted into the American Army he had a green card because his dad was a green card holder so he gets drafted in the
American Army now he's so naive first of all he can't really even speak English very well and he gets um he gets a notice to come to Oakland California for test so he goes and takes His test then a couple weeks later he gets another notice he thinks it's for more tests he was so naive that he parked his his his truck at the bus stop in Selenas and took the bus into Oakland thinking he'd be back the next day he walks into a room like this one I don't see an American flag here but
a room like this one American flags in the front there are all these people with their hands in the air he has no idea what's going on he comes at because he Can't speak English he comes out of the the the room and he finds a s a sergeant named Martinez a guy with a Spanish name on his lapel so he says in Spanish what the hell just happened in there and the guy says you are in the Army he didn't even know he had been sworn in but it's the best thing ever happened to
him he goes to Germany he learn he reads every book in the post Library gets his high school equivalency degree As many of you have struggle to get your geds and he comes home and as he's leaving uh Germany his Commanding Officer says to him Romero I'm going to come find you in Selena's California and if you're still working in the fields I'm going to kick your butt because you can do something more than that and if you're lucky you've had teachers like that in high school you've had an uncle or an aunt who said
I'm G to kick your butt get your get yourself To Montgomery College get your high school degree make something at yourself take advantage of these opportunities so he comes home and he meets a um uh a guy who works in the Social Security office who he's he um employment office he's he qualifies for unemployment benefits because he's out of the army and this guy says you know there's a college very much like this one a college called Hart net it's a community college in Selena California and they said to him the this Guy said go
up to haret we have a program up there for young chos young Hispanics who have dropped out of school but are smart and you know that don't have a traditional background and go see my friend Martinez so he goes up there Martinez takes him in the program so much like so many of you he works all day in the lettuce you don't work in the lettuce Fields but you work you know at other places and he works all day and he goes to school at Night and he's so thirsty for knowledge that he they have
to kick him out of the library every night at midnight just like all of you right and um they have to kick him out of the library every night and after two years he gets a scholarship to UC Irvine one of the big California state universities so so he's now in College full-time leaves the lettuce Fields he's in College full-time one of his professors a Latino professor says to him one day when he's a Senior I think you should apply to medical school he says medical school I haven't been to high school and the guy
looks at him and says how many Spanish-speaking doctors are there in Selena California and the answer of course was zero so he applies to medical school he applies to Case Western in Cleveland now he had no money couldn't go for the interview had no money at all but he had a trucking license and when he wanted to Take a trip he'd get a Long Haul Trucking assignment so he gets a truck a semi-trailer and drives it to Cleveland from Selena California for his he's got to be the only kid in the history of this medical
school who arrived for his interview driving a semi-trailer and not only that but it broke down outside of Chicago and he had had to fix the damn thing the night before so he was covered with grease they were smart enough to take him he was smart enough to know This was not the right place for him but he did go to University of California San Francisco UCSF medical school so he's now in medical school still hasn't been to high school during his senior year he fails a test he's devastated he works hard he knew the
stuff he can't believe that he's failed this test he goes into to see his professor and the professor looks at him and says you people how many of you have heard that One way or another you people you can't do the work you're only here because of quotas and affirmative action this test proves it pao's got tears running down his face he's worked so hard he knows this stuff he says can't you just show me the test guy shows him the test two pages had stuck together and the guy hadn't read the whole test but
because he saw Pablo Through The Eyes of you people he Assumed that he couldn't do the work assumed that he was failure so Pablo shows him what's wrong the guy says looks at it he reads the whole test again puts a big a on the top of it throws it at Pablo says get the hell out of here he was so embarrassed as he's graduating from Medical School Pablo thinks maybe I'll go to Beverly Hills and be become a plastic surgeon and you know fix up rich white Women and he says no that's not me
today friends Pablo Romero is a doctor in Selena California running a neighborhood Medical Clinic where 80% of his patients are Farm Workers he today takes care of the children and the grandchildren of the people he worked next to in the fields all those years I do not know a better American than Pablo Romero and when anybody tries to tell you you people can't do it think of Pablo Romero because you can do it he did it and you can do it thank you very [Applause] much I agree with pretty much everything you're saying and I
I think these stories are remarkable but I think you also are expressing an underlying assumption that America being an American is something people aspire to and I think in a lot of cases that's probably true but I think there must Have been some increased ambivalence or some you know differing levels of ambivalence over the year and I'm wondering if you have anything to say about that well that's a fair question did everybody hear the question um uh she was asking about whether um that there's this assumption that people Aspire look this is a Aspire to
come to America look this a select group right you know the people who don't want to be American are back in the Ukraine they're Back in Bina Faso they're not here so I'm dealing with a select group but you're but still your your your question is a fair one in a number of levels and one of the things that's happening unfortunately in this country is that we're losing out to a number of other countries who are competing with us for the best minds and um of of the generation one of the things that's happening is
if you look at um Microsoft says that onethird of the P of The of the uh onethird of the patents from Microsoft are come from the work of foreign born engineers we're in a worldwide competition for these ideas and a lot of people from India who came here for graduate school going back to India a lot of people who are going to China they're going to Canada they're going to Germany Canada is got a squadron of recruiters who prowl the campuses of California and every time they see a bright kid getting A computer science degree
from MIT or Cal Tech they say hey it'll take you six years to get a green card to America 6 months in Canada come to Canada and we so one of the things that's happening is we are losing people not everybody wants to stay in America partly because we make it hard on them particularly in terms of the Visa situation the other thing that's happening and this is a good thing countries like India is the best example but China is also not far Behind life is much better in these countries for uh a rising middle
class the the housing is better the economic opportunities social life is better so for a lot of young Indians who want to go back and be with their families and and and live back home they take their degrees from uh from America and go back home now in some ways that's a good thing because uh we that creates stability around the world Rising middle classes are helpful in any country but We're also losing some of the best Minds to to other countries that's part of it um and look uh I'm not holding out America as
the as the golden land where everything is perfect I am not doing that too smart for and I and I have stories of failure in this book and one of the things that one of the great myths about America that's not true is that the streets are paved with gold right they are not paved with gold And every one of your parents and grandparents can tell you that they are not paved with gold you got to work really hard here the streets might be paved with opportunity but they're not paved with gold and U uh
and this is America has enormous opportunity but it's not handed to anybody it's got to be worked for it and so um and and there's still a lot of racism in this country there's still a lot of Discrimination as I said look at what's happening to the Muslim Community in the uh in this country today but um it's still a pretty powerful Beacon for a lot of people thank you yeah I don't have a question I just wanted to tell you we must be cousins my father's family came from beisu my goodness that uh about
the same time do you have some secret handshake that we Can but your speech was wonderful thank you well you're very kind um you have a question yeah um I just wanted to ask if you've ever gone back to your origin like your country if you ever visited it yeah the question was have I ever gone back to my country of Origins the answer is yes I have I wrote about this at length actually in a previous book my Memoir called my father's houses um was I told this story um but it was very difficult
for me you know uh being from The area of Poland and Russia I mentioned my grandfather was out of touch with his family for 50 years for so many Eastern European Jews in particular was almost impossible to go back and reconnect with our heritage our home Villages were behind the Iron Curtain our our parents and grandparents had left in Terror you know my grandfather left I don't know how many of you know what the cacs were the cacs were a paramilitary group that Specialized in beating up Jews in the in Russia and my grandfather used
to tell me the third time the cacs rode their horses through my mother's living room she said Harry get out of here and that's how he came to America um so a lot of them didn't want to look back and and and one of the things that's hard for you if you and I encourage you to talk to your parents and grandparents about life back home but often you're going to run into the ah that's the past We're Americans now we only look forward not back but I decided that I wanted to look back I
decided that and I always envied my friends say from Italy who could go back to their home Villages and see their second cousins I always envied people who from from the Caribbean from Jamaica who could do that easily I couldn't do that and a lot of Eastern European uh immigrants couldn't but once the thaw came once the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 um in in the early 90s my wife and I went back and um I called the town bistu that you you mentioned was a town in eastern uh Poland which had a very significant
Jewish population that had immigrated all over the world and there is a synagogue in an old age home in the Lower East Side of New York the bis Stucker old age home so I called them I said I'm you know I'm my people are from B stuck can you I want to go back there can you help me and they said well talk To the director he's from bisu so I talked to the director he says go see my friend anatol lashinski he's in Warsaw and he'll help you he's an expert on the Jews of
Eastern Poland now anatol himself was not Jewish but he had made a specialty of trying to preserve and and the histories of the Jews of Eastern Poland so um I wrote to anat and the day I arrived in Warsaw I called him and he said I wasn't going to take you because I'm an old man and it's a long trip but When I heard that your real family name is rovski I said I have to take you because when I was a child growing up my two best friends were arur and shmuel roguski they must
be your cousins they ain't my cousins but it was a nice story and U he would so I met Ana we went to the East and we went through a village which was near bistu which was anat's hent and he says Ah I remember remember Ur and shmuel on Friday night singing the Prayers and their beautiful voices would echo through the village and my wife says that clinches it they're no relatives of yours no one in your family can sing a note they couldn't possibly be your cousins but then I said to him I always
heard that the name rogo in America our name was rogo r o g I said I always heard that it came from a village near here he says I know the place I said you do and he said yeah but I need some Directions now my wife I had said to my wife over and over when we made this journey I said I'd like some sign I want some sign that my family had been here you know a gravestone a birth record some tangible sign so remember my name was rgw right that's on my birth
certificate all my cousins have that name we drive down this road in rural polar so rural that there's still Ox carts working the Farms and we stop at this roadside sign outside this little Village and the name is r o g o wo there's my name I said to K I wanted a sign I didn't necessarily mean a Sign by the side of the road the rest of the trip wasn't quite so funny or amusing because bisu was a town that had been devastated by the Nazis and um most of the monuments to Jews were
synagogue burned up and 3,000 people killed those kinds of incidents but I sit down a toe I want to go to the train station Because so many of the stories I had heard him my youth from my grandfather and I knew him very well I was very lucky and as opposed to many grandparents who said don't talk about the old country he wanted to talk about it and I wanted to listen so I had this wealth of stories from him and a number of them had taken place at the train station and he and anatol
says well you're in luck because the train station is pretty much the way it was 100 years Ago when you grandfather was here I walked out on the platform I could feel avam rovi's spirit I knew I was standing in his footsteps on that platform and I said pop to no one in particular I standing there by myself pop we survive and I'm here to prove it and I broke down and cried for 20 minutes I had no idea how profound the Feeling was I didn't know till that moment how strong my connection was to
that place so yes I've done that and I recommend it to everybody else because you never quite know how deep those roots go till you make that Journey okay my question uh takes you a little a little bit outside of the United States um I wondered what your interpretation is of the way that the French are reacting to a population group called The Roma and if you have uh studied that at all or have any explanatory comments to offer for that well for those of you who uh don't know the reference uh uh the Rome
sometimes called gypsies although they don't like that name uh the name that is now used in Europe um is generally Roma they which reflects their origins in the country of Romania um they're an itinerant people uh they have often live in makeshift camps um they um there's Been a wave of um uh uh resentment towards them throughout Europe in France and other countries these camps have been closed down by the Saros government I have two feelings about that um on one level um uh there is a um uh at times of economic stress there are
uh these this kind of xenophobia this nativism gets worse there's a lot of stress in Europe as there is here um but uh I think the treatment of the Roma is probably similar to other things you're Seeing in France the barring of Muslim women wearing headscarves the in in um in Switzerland you have laws that are Banning minettes on mosques what is this about well to go back to the lady's comments earlier America is hardly perfect I'm try to be very candid about that but we have a tremendous Advantage which is and this is reflected
right in this room there are many models of what an American looks Like right there are many models every one of you wherever you're from can see a model including in the White House of an American who looks like you and sounds like you and has been successful in this country that's not true in France that's not true in England I have a woman in this book who is a tamel tamls are a small uh minority people from the island nation of Sri Lanka uh very talented very dark skinned Uh very uh Dynamic people uh
and she was uh in an arranged marriage she was living in London and she said to her she was living in America her husband to be was living in London she said I'll marry you but not in Britain because in Britain I'll always be a pachy which is an ethnic slur for for South Asians I'll always be a pachy in Britain and in Bethesda I they live right here in monom County Bethesda I can be an America because there was a Model for someone who looked like her as a citizen there wasn't the same model
so what we're seeing I think is in Europe these countries are far more homogeneous they're far more it's far more difficult for them to accept immigrants you see it in France from North Africa you see it in Britain from Pakistan and and and India um because they don't have the history they don't have the models they don't have the legacy of absorbing waves of immigration over many generations Thank you I think that's the core of it it's more complicated than that but that's the core of it um and um uh they're really only about three
or four countries in the world that have quite the same Legacy of welcoming immigrants um Canada Australia to some extent Israel of course but that's limited to Jews not Jews from other countries but not to Muslims or or others but particularly Canada and and and Australia really the Only other two countries in the world have anything like the same history of Legacy please sir hi um I hope some of the students come on I I want to hear some from some of your students I want to hear some of your questions go ahead he's a
student all right good I'm a student yeah good um my mother immigrated to um to the United States from Mexico when she was 16 she was pregnant with me and uh growing up she would always told me this you're an Anchor baby I'm an anchor baby I should get a t-shirt um and she would always tell me about how um she didn't speak any English but she stumbled across this place that had really amazing burgers and so every every every payday she would go and you know it was it was like her Burger night and
she didn't know she didn't know how to order the burger she would just point to it and the guy would like and she would pay her money so now it's just with our family I guess our Symbol for like the art orange is is a hamburger whenever I've had whenever I've had a good week I go to Five Guys and I get a burger and I call him mom I just got a burger and she says oh good week yeah good week um but um I guess my question um is with the haters that you
um that you talked about um how do we how do we combat that how how do we combat that how do we um you know establish common ground with them You know and and and open up some sort of dialogue instead of having an US versus you know us versus them um is it is it possible or is it just something that or is that sure it's possible sure it's possible um one of the ironies of the group that who would wanted to build that mosque in lower Manhattan is they were committed to Interfaith and
Inter ethnic dialogue that's who they were that's what they that organization was And I for them to be reviled for wanting to build that mosque just was particularly dispiriting but I think there are two things can look that's why I'm here that's why I wrote this book I I I in my very small way I hope that it'll be part of a of an attempt to educate Americans into the reality of this I don't sugarcoat this experience there are problems that come from illegal immigration there are pressures on the Labor pools in places like uh
Southern California I'm in Arizona I'm not downgrading that but one way to do this is to tell the stories one way is to remind people of the history one way is to show that uh the the the negative stereotypes are unfair and inaccurate but the other thing is just history the other thing is just history because my father and grandfather fac discrimination as Jewish I've never faced that discrimination Because in the Next Generation the Jews will become a fully part of America Next Generation the Latinos will be fully part of America the Next Generation the
Muslims will be fully part of America the the people who um who are will insult the woman wearing a hijab today a generation from now it'll be more common and more accepted and they'll be far more used to it so in the end I take comfort from history I take comfort from history it takes a Generation but in the end the process works and um uh and you will contribute to it everybody in this room will contribute to it your history I really want to thank you for all for coming and I enjoyed talking to
you and um uh I appreciate being asked to be part of this community because it's my community and um hopefully one day you'll write your own stories and don't let your family stories die uh because your children will want to hear your Stories of the old country as well so uh uh tell your tell your faculty members here you want to write your stories okay nice to be with you [Music]
