An Urban's Rural View

Every American has an ancestor who came here from someplace else at some point. Few know their ancestor's story in as much detail as DTN Editor-in-Chief Greg Horstmeier.

In his recent Editor's Notebook blog chronicling his German ancestor's arrival in the U.S. in 1865, he mentions where exactly in Germany Heinrich Horstmeier grew up (Lienen in Nord Rhine-Westfalen -- Greg has walked the fields); the reason Heinrich came (avoid conscription); the ship he arrived in New York on (the Adler); and the similarity of his old farmland in Germany to his new farmland in St. Charles, Missouri (heavy, not exactly ideal, soils). See that blog entry here: https://www.dtnpf.com/….

Many of you probably have an ancestor story you could tell in at least some detail. With your indulgence, I'd like to tell one of mine.

First, though, let me speak in support of the conclusion Greg reached: As descendants of immigrants, we need to empathize more with immigrants than many of us do these days. I'd go a step further: One of the things I'm thankful for this Thanksgiving is living in a nation of immigrants.

Just think of what immigrants have contributed to our society. The stories could fill more than one book. A few examples:

In the 1880s, Serbian immigrant Nikola Tesla played a key role in the development of AC electricity.

In 1942, Italian immigrant Enrico Fermi demonstrated the possibility of a nuclear chain reaction, earning him the nickname "the architect of the atom bomb."

In 1969, American astronauts landed on the moon, and the program's director later said the U.S. wouldn't have gotten there without the work of German immigrant Wernher von Braun.

In World War II, the 442nd Regimental Combat Team that fought in Italy and France was the most decorated military unit in U.S. history for its size and length of service. It was a regiment made up of second-generation Japanese Americans, most of whose relatives were being held in internment camps. These sons of immigrants fought to the death for the U.S. despite the injustice the country had inflicted on them.

Nearly half of the Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants or their children. One is Google, which was cofounded by Russian immigrant Sergey Brin. The founder of the world's first company with a market capitalization of $5 trillion, Nvidia, which makes advanced AI semiconductors, is Jensen Huang, who was born in Taiwan.

At a time when birthrates in every developed country are falling sharply, immigration has kept the U.S. population growing. Without immigration, there would be fewer working taxpayers to support the rapidly increasing number of baby-boomer Social Security and Medicare recipients.

Without immigration, the economy would grow more slowly. Employers would be hard-pressed to fill the dirtiest jobs.

Being a nation of immigrants, the U.S. has been able to show the world that people of different ethnic and cultural backgrounds can live together. Their new American-ness unites them.

That was certainly the case with my maternal grandparents. They were born in Sicily. None of their five children learned a word of Italian. My mother said her father told them, in his heavily accented but understandable English, "We are Americans. We speak English."

Like Heinrich Horstmeier, Calogero Marci (he later anglicized it to Charles Marcy) fled to America from the prospect of conscription. He was 18 and Italy had just invaded Libya. He had no interest in dying in a war of conquest.

An Italian official in the U.S. told him he'd be arrested as a deserter if he ever went back to Italy. He never did. In taking American citizenship, he renounced his Italian citizenship, as he had to. U.S. law back then did not allow dual citizenship.

Americans who worry about immigrants not assimilating underestimate the magnetic attraction of American culture. The connection to the old country grows faint as early as the second generation. Charles Marcy's children married descendants of Germans, Frenchmen and Poles -- not Italians.

Immigration is one of our country's most divisive issues. Most of us agree it should be legal. Beyond that we differ mightily over how much and what kind of immigration to allow and what to do with those who have spent years here illegally. Some naysayers would vote to end immigration altogether.

Yet wherever Americans stand in the debate, it wouldn't hurt them to take Greg Horstmeier's advice: Have a little empathy for immigrants -- and a little appreciation for the benefits immigration has given American society.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Urban Lehner can be reached at urbanize@gmail.com

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Cyclical challenges in the grain market and shifting power dynamics in the cattle complex highlight the necessity of preparedness, not only to mitigate risk, but also to maximize opportunities.

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