Immigration is a GOOD Thing
Note from Pr. Chelsea: This lightly edited piece comes to us through the large friend-of-a-friend network that connects our church members to many loved ones on the ground in Minneapolis. I wanted to share it as a beautiful example of speaking out about what we’re FOR, not just what we’re against.
I should introduce myself: my name is Naomi Kritzer. I’m a science fiction and fantasy writer. I also write an election guide for Minneapolis and St. Paul, which a lot of people here use when they’re getting ready to vote in local elections. I lived in Minneapolis from 1995 through 2012, and I have lived in St. Paul since 2012. I love my community. We are really lucky as a country that people want to move here. Immigrants are a gift, a completely undeserved gift. We should want them to come.
I will note that a whole lot of the aggression toward Minnesota is specifically toward Somalis, and Somalis are awesome. They are smart, argumentative, hardworking, funny, incredibly diverse in their opinions. I remember a mid-morning call-in radio show in 2001 or 2002 that was related to something happening in the Somali community and the host was a little surprised when she was flooded with calls from Somalis, all vigorously disagreeing with each other. I don’t know if she realized that every Somali taxi driver, which was like 95% of the taxi drivers, listened to the radio all day to improve their English. Somalis arrived here and immediately started getting involved in politics (there were Somalis out there dropping lit for R.T. Rybak in 2001, even though mostly they weren’t citizens yet). They treasure education, they want their kids to go to college, they’re aggressively motivated in general. This is an immigrant community that everyone should want and I am SO GLAD they came here to the Twin Cities, despite the fact that we have some of the worst winters in the country and they immigrated from a country where the coldest days are like 68F.
There’s a chant I’ve participated in at demonstrations that goes, “say it loud and say it clear / immigrants are welcome here.” That is a nice slogan but also: do that. Be clear in your conversations that you welcome immigrants, value immigrants, care about immigrants, consider your immigrant neighbors to be an irreplaceable part of your community. Don’t apologize for supporting immigrants. Don’t accept the premise that immigration is a problem. Immigration is good. IMMIGRATION IS GOOD. Things are really hard in the Twin Cities right now. But seeing how many people here are working hard every day to protect our neighbors makes me believe that there’s a better world on the other side of this, and we’re going to get there.
