United States Diplomatic Mission to Germany

Stadt und Land
The United States -  A Nation of Immigrants
Berlin, October 17, 2011
Ambassador Philip D. Murphy

Herr Malter, thank you for inviting me to speak with you this evening.

Mayor Buschkowsky, ladies and gentlemen, it is great to be here in Neukölln, one of the districts with the highest concentration of migrants in Berlin, to discuss the opportunities as well as the challenges of a diverse, multicultural society.   I know there is a lot of commitment in this room and it is an honor to be here.

Diversity is one of the most distinguishing characteristics of my country.  Immigration has defined America’s national identity since the country was founded over two centuries ago.  Waves of immigrants have come to America’s shores seeking to share in the American dream of equality and freedom.  Each group has made tremendous contributions in terms of intellectual, scientific, artistic, and cultural achievements.  Across the generations, immigrants have made America the land of opportunity: a nation that values self-reliance, freedom, and democracy and welcomes those willing to work hard for a better future.  Americans come in every hue and color; they are of many different religious persuasions; and they come from every part of the globe.

In fact, America thinks of itself as a “nation of immigrants.”  That was the title that President John F. Kennedy chose for a book that he wrote in cooperation with the Anti-Defamation League in 1957.  The book was published posthumously in 1964, a year after he was assassinated.  Kennedy argued that “every American who ever lived, with the exception of one group, was either an immigrant himself or a descendant of immigrants.” 

The exception he noted was Native Americans although of course they descended from immigrants who came from northern Asia some 35,000 years ago.  Another exception worth noting is African Americans. They came to America in chains to work as slaves and not in search of freedom.  They did not have the option to enjoy the “secret of America” that President Kennedy described.  They did not have the option to explore new frontiers and build new lives in a society that did not restrict their freedom of choice or action.  For those who came as slaves, it took a civil war to set them free and a civil rights movement 100 years later to enable them to seek equality.

For as long as there has been a United States of America, there have been peaceful and less peaceful efforts to make good on the promise of equality and freedom guaranteed by the Constitution.  And America is still not perfect.  We are still working on making good on these promises.  That means making sure that each and every community in America is a place where people can live and work in an environment where differences and similarities are respected, valued, and celebrated.

And that brings us to the topic of our conversation today and about what you are doing here in Neukölln to make sure that your community is also a place where diversity is seen as an opportunity and not just a challenge.

I believe that the concept of community is essential to any discussion of immigration and integration.  President Kennedy’s discussion of America as a nation of immigrants was also a discussion of the communities that these immigrants became a part of; and that was not always an easy process.  Back in the earliest days of the young republic of the United States of America, Benjamin Franklin, one of America’s founding fathers, for example, complained about the growing population of Germans, who he thought had different values and even different complexions.  This pattern of suspicion or ambivalence continued through subsequent migrations: the Irish, Asians, Italians, Eastern Europeans, and Latin Americans.

My own ancestors came to America from Ireland.  In the mid-1840s, a blight struck potato farms across all of Ireland.  Out of a population of eight million, one million died of starvation and disease, and at least another one million emigrated – most of them to America.  U.S. immigration records indicate that by 1850, the Irish made up 43 percent of the foreign-born population of the U.S.  They were the refugees of their day, the poorest of all the immigrants.  The going was tough and theirs was a daily battle for survival.
 
In 1847, Boston, my home town, had a population of about 115,000.  When 37,000 Irish Catholics arrived, the city grew by more than a quarter.  Many of the original residents of Boston were descendants of English Puritans who could proudly list their American ancestors back to 1620.  Some two hundred thirty years later, in the 1850s, their city underwent a "social revolution."  Proper Bostonians pointed and laughed at the first Irish immigrants.  They were occasionally slow to assimilate, or as we say today, to integrate.  But, by the same token, other Americans were also sometimes slow to accept them, preferring instead to judge them by cartoon stereotypes of Irishmen.  Irish immigrants were described at times in the press as 'aliens' who were mindlessly loyal to their Catholic leaders in place of any allegiance to America.  These problems were not quickly or easily overcome -- large problems rarely are -- but overcome they were.

The most extraordinary descendant of that wave of Irish immigrants was John F. Kennedy, whose great-grandfather left Ireland in 1849.  Although other Presidents had Irish roots, John F. Kennedy was the first Roman Catholic President.  For millions of Irish Catholic Americans, his election in 1960 signaled an end to the century-long struggle for full acceptance in the United States.

Almost three years ago, another historic presidential election campaign came to an end.  Senator Barack Obama was elected President of the United States of America.  His election was exceptional for a number of reasons; one of them being the message it sent about diversity in the United States and the role that "identity" plays in our politics – and in our lives.  As you probably know, President Obama’s father was black and he came from Kenya in Africa; his mother was a white Midwesterner from Kansas.  He has one half-sister who is partly Indonesian and married to a Chinese-Canadian; and he has Kenyan half-sisters and brothers in Kenya and Europe, including one who studied here in Germany.  The President’s wife, Michele Obama, is descended from slaves.  As the President says, Obama family gatherings sometimes look like the United Nations.

President Obama’s election was one further step in America’s long track record in tackling the challenges that go with diversity and integration.  And as he himself has often said, and I quote, "We can choose to be defined by our differences, and give in to a future of suspicion and mistrust.  Or we can choose to do the hard work of forging common ground.” 

And when we talk about strong, cohesive communities, common ground means creating an environment that goes beyond tolerance.  It means creating communities and a society where what we have in common is more important than our differences.

Well, one would assume that with America’s background as a nation of immigrants and with its historical commitment to equal rights, Americans would not, now at the start of the 21st century, still be debating immigration and integration.  Wrong! 

Why?  Faced with the unprecedented level of migration around the world and in particular the high volume of immigration to the United States, combined with increasing globalization, economic downturns, and national-security concerns, U.S. society often seems less than welcoming and sometimes even hostile to newcomers.  The disconnect is that to continue thriving as a nation, we must make more efforts, not fewer, to weave immigrants into the social, economic and cultural fabric of society. 
Of the approximately 311 million residents of the United States, 39 million are foreign born.  Of those 39 million foreign-born residents, 17 million are naturalized citizens; 11 million are either legal permanent residents or temporary residents, such as students; and the remaining 11 million are estimated to be undocumented.  That means they do not have the authorization to live or work in the United States.  Much of the current debate on immigration is centered on the issue of these unauthorized or “illegal” immigrants.  And it is true, in the United States, there is a lot of talk about much-needed immigration reform.

In the heat of the debate in my country about so-called “illegal” residents, people sometimes forget that the large majority of foreign-born residents did indeed arrive in the United States through legal channels.  Policy debates on unauthorized immigration often obscure the important fact that most immigrants do indeed become citizens.  This makes their integration into the neighborhoods and communities where they live crucially important.

It is all the more pressing because immigration to the United States has increased steadily over the last 60 years.  The United States currently receives over a million new legal immigrants every year.  For the past several decades, states like California, Illinois, Texas, New York, and Florida welcomed the majority of immigrants.  But with the steady rise in immigration, many states, cities, and neighborhoods that experienced little if any immigration over the last century are also becoming gateways to America.  The seven states experiencing the most rapid change between 1990 and 2009 were North Carolina, Georgia, Arkansas, Nevada, Tennessee, South Carolina, and Nebraska.  In each of these states, the immigrant population has increased by at least 200 percent over the last two decades.

In addition, across America, small towns and suburbs are attracting more immigrants proportionally than large metropolitan areas.  In many cities, immigrants settle in the suburbs, not the traditional inner-city enclaves that so dominate our imagined ethnic landscapes and these suburban neighborhoods are emerging as new multiethnic communities.

These communities are coming to terms with new languages, cultures, religious practices, responsibilities, and demands on resources.  The realities they now face include: multiple languages in schools, the need for interpreters at county hospitals and courts, and religious practices that require accommodations in the workplace, to name a few.  This unprecedented dispersion of immigrants to new destinations across the country has contributed to the debate about integration in the United States.

These developments paint part of the picture of the dramatic demographic shift that the United States as a whole is undergoing.  By the year 2050 there will no longer be an ethnic majority in the United States.  By mid-century, the Hispanic population is expected to nearly triple, the Asian American population more than triple, and the African American population to rise by 71 percent. 

It is critical to note that the demographic changes taking place are driven as much or more by the children of immigrants as by immigrants themselves.  One out of every four children in the United States is an immigrant or the child of immigrants.  Second-generation immigrant children outnumber first-generation children by more than six to one.  Born in the United States, they are American citizens.  These children are growing up in a context shaped by how well their parents are able to integrate into the United States.

There is a similar situation in Germany.  According to the latest data from the Statistische Bundesamt, 31 percent or one out of every three children in this country is either an immigrant or the child of immigrants.  These children too will grow up in a context shaped by how well their parents – and they themselves – are able to integrate into German society.

We have learned that changing demographics affect every aspect of community life – and that goes for both of our two countries.  Solutions to the new challenges that these changes bring with them are often arrived at community by community.  But I am convinced that local experiences can lead to broader solutions for communities across countries and even beyond our borders.

Herr Malter, I see this lecture series as a call to action for broader engagement.  Obviously, the same strategies will not work the same way in all cases and in all communities.  Community-based programs that develop organically are by definition tailored to local circumstances and tend to respond to the unique needs of that community – but there is always something that we can learn from others. 

Mayor Buschkowsky, for example, I am very interested in learning more about how the situation here in Neukölln and what has worked and what has not.

It is essential that we proactively bridge the gaps between natives and newcomers.  Immigrants are a vital and integral part of the social and cultural fabric of our societies.  Historically in the United States, the so-called melting pot was the model used to measure the ability of immigrants to assimilate or to become assimilated into American society.  Today the concept of assimilation and the metaphor of the melting pot have been replaced by the concept of integration and an image of a mixed salad or a vegetable soup. Some years back, civil rights leader Reverend Jesse Jackson compared America to a vegetable soup where each ingredient retains its particular flavor and shape. As the soup thickens, it gains in flavor because each vegetable adds a unique taste.  Assimilation implies that minorities must become more like the dominant ethnic or cultural group.  By contrast, integration is a two-way process in which newcomer and established residents share responsibility for the well-being of one another and of the broader community.  Integration is a dynamic give-and-take process.  Ideally, it transforms both the newcomers and the receiving society, creating a new whole that is much greater than the sum of its parts.  Immigrants are not “them”; and immigration is not “their problem.”  “We” are all in this together.

In the United States, service providers working with immigrants typically emphasize programs for English language acquisition, citizenship preparation, or integration of immigrants into the workplace.  That has not changed.  Those services still exist.  But we have learned that positive community relations require the concerted action of both immigrant and native-born residents. How can immigrants integrate successfully if they feel unwelcome or if their neighbors are not prepared to accept them?  How can we expect their neighbors to welcome them if no effort is made to manage the confusion, fear, and anxiety these neighbors feel about the changing nature of community life?  Those who work in communities, like the Stadtteilmütter here in Neukölln, understand the importance of promoting social interaction and civic engagement.

There are a number of benefits that immigration can bring to a community.  But none of those benefits happen magically.  They are most often the results of hard work and the commitment of many people and many institutions.  For example, there are local and broader regional economic benefits.  In the United States, the influx of immigrants into a community has been shown to reverse economic decline and indeed breathe new life into urban areas, small towns, and rural communities. 

Successful integration can be a key to entrepreneurship and future economic growth.  Recent research shows that nations that focus more on immigrant integration have higher levels of economic competitiveness, are more innovative, and have higher rates of entrepreneurship.  Understanding how federal and state laws facilitate or hinder integration is therefore an important component of setting integration policy.

But there are different kinds of capital assets that societies stand to gain from successful integration.  These assets depend as much on people as governments – federal, state or local.  I am talking about social capital assets.  The central thesis of social capital theory is that relationships matter.  Interaction enables people to build communities, to commit themselves to each other, and to knit the social, cultural, and economic fabric of a strong community.

Early in his presidency, Barack Obama announced the creation of a Social Innovation Fund to provide seed money to extend the reach of the most promising, results-oriented non-profit programs throughout the country.  This is a different way for the government to do business – and it reflects President Obama’s approach to governing and his own experience as a community organizer.  He wants to identify the best social innovations; partner with those who are leading change in their communities; and create a policy environment for these innovations to thrive.  This is the way to find new solutions to old problems.

But it’s not just government looking for solutions.  Mayor Buschkowsky, government, as you know, has to be at the table because of its responsibilities in areas that touch the lives of all residents.  I am talking about schools, health services, and police work.  Herr Malter, the private sector also has to be at the table but the most important element is the power of the people.  First and foremost, social capital is about linking individuals within a community.  Networks often link people together who are already engaged or have some common likes or dislikes or interests in a community.  These are what the social scientists call bonding networks.  Things start changing when networks bridge interests and bring people together who don’t normally talk with each other.  Building trust and what we call a sense of community requires face-to-face encounters.  Over time, trust between strangers becomes a broader trust of social institutions.  Ultimately, it becomes a shared set of values, virtues, and expectations within society as a whole. 

In the United States, as a result of bridging efforts within communities, people have learned that the dreams and aspirations they have for their families and especially for their children are very similar – no matter where people come from or what color their skin is or what their religious beliefs may be.  Newcomers become “one of us” and not “they.”  Without this kind of interaction, trust cannot flourish and a lack of trust can manifest itself in serious social problems.  In the United States, there is a range of evidence that shows that communities with a good 'stock' of such 'social capital' are more likely to benefit from lower crime figures, better health, higher educational achievement, and better economic growth.

At the Embassy, we have seen how social capital can be created between countries through our exchange programs.  And we are working very hard at developing some new bridging programs that reach out to young people who normally would not qualify – and therefore not bother to apply – for some of the more traditional academic exchange programs.  It is our hope and also our expectation that participation in a non-traditional exchange program, one for example that includes a community service element, will inspire them to move ahead and do bigger and better things.  And here too, we have the data that shows that this is indeed possible.  The First Lady of the United States, Michelle Obama, grew up in a working class ethnic neighborhood in Chicago.  Scholarships and grants gave her the opportunity to study at Princeton University and Harvard Law School.  She is a role model for girls around the world.  Girls look at her and see something more for themselves, more than society expects of them.  Anything is possible.  This is part of the vision that Martin Luther King, Jr. talked about in his great "I have a Dream" speech, when he said that one day "our children will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."

Despite America’s admittedly less than perfect record in living up to the promise of freedom and equality for all our citizens, we have made major steps in the past 50 years since President Kennedy’s book A Nation of Immigrants was published and since Martin Luther King spoke from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.  On the weekend, President Obama dedicated the new Martin Luther King Memorial on the National Mall in Washington DC.  It stands between the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorial where a quarter of a million people marched with Martin Luther King on that August day in 1963.   President Obama celebrated the achievements of Dr. King and all those who worked so hard to bring about change.  He also reminded us that Dr. King’s work, is not yet complete.   We are not there yet.    In his time, Dr. King refused to accept what he called the “is-ness” of today.  He kept pushing towards the “ought-ness” of tomorrow. 

Discrimination still exists in my country despite the fact that people in the United States enjoy the strongest laws in the world to protect them against discrimination.  Equal opportunity legislation guarantees that no legal resident can be denied opportunities because of his or her national origin or citizenship.  Racial, ethnic and religious discrimination is illegal in all areas of life.  Nevertheless, incidents involving racial, religious, gender or age discrimination continue to occur across my country day in and day out – and I believe they occur here in Germany as well.  These incidents reflect a basic disregard for the ideals of equality upon which both of our countries were founded – although our histories are very different.  The hurts of bigotry are often not readily obvious, but they are damaging, nonetheless. In each such encounter, the victim comes away diminished in terms of personal dignity, self-esteem, pride, and confidence, and in many cases, filled with anger and resentment.  And left unaddressed, we know that there are explosive links from this kind of anger and resentment to poverty, and worse, violence and extremism.

And, what can we do about it?  As I just mentioned, First Lady Michelle Obama is proud to be a role model. She says, and I quote, “Let’s not underestimate the power each of us has to change the world for someone – and let us not be afraid to try."  And I say to you this evening, let’s not underestimate what you and I can do to improve the climate for tolerance and understanding in our communities and in our world.

Vielen Dank für Ihre Aufmerksamkeit.