There seem to be so many crises in front of us these days. The climate crisis. The immigration crisis. The migrant crisis. The homelessness crisis. The education crisis. And the list goes on.
These are important, complicated, and even delicate challenges in front of us as residents of New York City, the United States, and beyond. These are also crises that do not have simple economic or political solutions. These are issues that began generations ago and are not easy to solve. Compromise on these issues seems to get more complicated each day and sadly, I don’t see any simple solutions on the horizon.
Just because simple solutions aren’t on the horizon, though, doesn’t mean we pack up our marbles and go home. We must stay at the table and figure these issues out because human lives are involved, as is the future of our democracy.
Trying to figure out how to best support thousands of immigrant families coming to New York City is not easy. There is a perception of scarce resources whenever we discuss providing goods and services for immigrants. However, when it comes to increasing police and military budgets, we seem to find the resources…and quickly.
As the author of “Black Ethnics” and a trustee of the Tenement Museum on the Lower East Side in Manhattan, I am keenly aware of the history of immigration to this city and this country. We have never had easy integration of newcomers. We have always treated newcomers in a less than welcoming fashion. However, just because we were unkind and unwelcoming to scores of generations of immigrants in the past does not mean we should repeat our negative history of intolerance, ignorance, and exclusion.
It wasn’t even 100 years ago that you could walk the streets and see anti-immigrant signs pertaining to Italians, Irish, and Jewish groups, as well as signs and practices excluding Asians, Caribbeans, and people from all over Latin America. Sadly, we are not far from that history and we must not repeat it. Currently, we have far too many New Yorkers and elected officials who are using rhetoric that will take us back several decades. The mayor of New York City has made incendiary comments about immigrants that sadly many people agree with. Yes, we need additional economic assistance to help absorb newcomers, but we must not let that need morph into anti-immigrant rhetoric.
Where do we go from here? The solutions are not simple, fast, or cheap. I truly don’t know how to solve the myriad crises in front of us, but I do know that scapegoating and blaming families who are trying to make a better life is not the answer.
Christina Greer, Ph.D., is an associate professor at Fordham University; author of “Black Ethnics: Race, Immigration, and the Pursuit of the American Dream”; co-host of the podcast FAQ-NYC and host of The Blackest Questions podcast at TheGrio; and a 2023–24 Moynihan Public Scholars Fellow at CCNY.