Illegal Immigrants--Then and Now

Every time I turn on the radio or television these days and listen to another demagogic politician or talk show host ranting about the supposed perils that illegal immigrants represent to America, I am reminded that my late mother, Helga, was herself an illegal immigrant when the refugee boat upon which she was travelling arrived in New York Harbor from Lisbon, Portugal in the spring of 1941.

Born in Berlin in 1924 to an upper-class Jewish family, Helga fled on foot across the border into Belgium with her mother Elly Ringel in October 1938, just weeks before the officially organized pogrom of Kristalnacht. My mother and grandmother subsequently lived for over a year as refugees in Nice on the French Riviera with false Polish passports they purchased on the thriving black market while seeking visas to the United States. Yet like untold thousands of other Jewish refugees from Nazism-- most of whom ended up dying in the Nazi death camps—Elly and Helga Ringel were rejected by officials at U.S. consulates in southern France bent on carrying out the overtly racist emigration laws of the era that sharply limited emigration by non-Anglo-Saxon or Nordic types.

Then in June, 1940, the German Army swept into France, and Jewish refugees in that country became a hunted species. With the U.S. and Palestine closed, desperate refugees lined up at the consulates of various Latin American countries where corrupt officials were ready to sell them visas for exorbitant sums. My grandmother spent $20,000, nearly all of the money she had left in the world, to purchase two visas to Ecuador for herself and my mother. Thanks to those precious Ecuadorian markings in their fake Polish passports, the two were allowed to board a sealed train which took them over the Pyrenees into Spain and on to Portugal.

Once in Portugal, my grandmother renewed efforts to secure visas to the U.S., but was again met with an emphatic rejection by officials at the U.S. Embassy in Lisbon. With rumors swirling that Adolf Hitler might send his army to occupy Spain and Portugal at any moment, my grandmother decided to take a refugee ship to New York and try to win the right to stay in the U.S.

When my grandmother and mother landed in New York on April 23, 1941, my mother, then 16, was taken to Ellis Island, while Elly Ringel was allowed into the city for two weeks. With the help of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, she found a benefactor, Criminal Court Judge William Ringel, who was willing to pass as a relative and serve as a guarantor for herself and my mother. Two weeks later, they sailed to Havana, Cuba, where, by prior arrangement, they were issued immigration visas by the U.S. Consul, allowing them to return to New York. My mother became a U.S. citizen on June 2, 1947, a week before marrying my father, Stanley Ruby. She went on to live a full and meaningful life in which she raised three children, worked in an advertising agency, and was active in the League of Women Voters.

It is claimed that the situation of refugees from Hitlerism was quite different than that of mainly economic refugees who are crossing America’s southern border today. That is no doubt true, yet when I hear right wing pundits sneer about ‘illegals’ in a tone implying they are less worthy of humane treatment than the rest of us, I cannot help recalling that my mother was also an illegal repeatedly denied entrance into a country she later came to love and where she worked hard to improve the quality of life for all.

When I read about Hispanic immigrants who pay huge sums to unscrupulous coyotes to guide them on the dangerous passage through the Arizona desert, I am reminded of my mother’s vivid story of crossing the German-Belgian border at night guided by smugglers who subsequently threatened to rape my grandmother unless she paid them more money than had initially been agreed upon. When I read of U.S. officials dictating that the federal government will no longer cover the cost of chemotherapy treatments for cancer-stricken illegal immigrants because Medicaid is only supposed to cover “emergencies”, I am reminded of those cold-hearted bureaucrats in 1940’s Washington for whom strict compliance with the immigration laws mattered more than saving the lives of thousands of innocents.

Is there anyone out there with the temerity to claim that my grandmother and mother were criminals because they came to America as illegal immigrants rather than waiting patiently in Europe and risking one-way tickets to the gas chambers? If not, they should also cease demonizing other desperate people fleeing poverty and violence whose principle crime is seeking to give themselves and their children a better chance in life.