Our same Jamaican apple pickers come every year on temp ag visas. If they aren't able to come, orchardists are doomed. Americans won't do that work for more than a couple of hours at a 'u-pick' orchard. And our dairy workers are mostly illegals - who do the hard, dirty work competently and well. Plus they are just nice guys...
It shouldn't need to be said that this country would be nowhere without immigrants...
My mother was from Italy. Both my dad’s parents were, too. It is disheartening to me to see many Italian-Americans supporting this truly awful administration and its policies. Do they not remember their own history in this country? Thank you for reminding us that it’s immigrants that make America great.
You speak my mind, as the Quakers say. I would love to have read your book on ethnic food. Everything you write is such a pleasure to read, and I always learn something I needed to know!
Thank you Nancy. Many a time I have had similar thoughts about how sparse our culinary cupboard would be without immigrants. The evil people in Washington will come up against a tidal wave of resistance as they attempt to destroy our country and our history.
Hear, hear! This Canadian had an immigrant father and grandparents from Denmark and the other set of grandparents from Russia. It's simply impossible to fathom the hatred emanating from "the unmentionables" in Washington.
So well expressed! The same applies to the UK - and because of a British reluctance to do the taxing farm- and food-related work for which we had to bring in labour from Europe, post-Brexit with that labour force now excluded from our shores, we are beginning radically to see just how much what is available for us to eat was dependent on willing immigrants to settle and grow and reap food that without them able or wanting to stay, we no longer can buy.
Yes, to this and more, Nancy. Food is such an extraordinary lens on and reflection of human culture. Food involves art, economics, politics, culture, science, nature, and history. It makes and reflects culture. The separation between the food and the table whether we are talking about the dining rooms and kitchens of our homes, fine restaurants, school cafeterias, and everything in between is vast and has become bigger. And more and more, the humans are left out of the equation.
Immigrants are our contemporary experts in the fields, orchards, and vineyards, slaughter and processing houses, and prep stations and dish pits, yet they are invisible to our dining and shopping eyes. The cost of food isn't only an inflationary thing, it is deeper than that.
In Pig Earth, John Berger exhibits a deep understanding of the close relationship between sustenance and subsistence in the context of farm animals, foraged foods, and vegetables, and what happens when the relationship is ruptured.
Without immigrants, ever, we would be in England most likely, if we hadn't been burned or died from torture for our heresy. All traces of our lineage, at least those with the beliefs that the first immigrants - as opposed to explorers - to the US had, would have been destroyed.
Like we did with the people who lived in - and with - this land for millennia before a group of white religious others sought refuge here, then haplessly then intentionally later on, tried to erase their existence.
Our claim to this land is based on othering. Of someone, some people, some tribe designated the dangerous invader of our lands, despoiler of the religion, threat to our ownership of the only God that we want.
Our history is one of killing, abusing, enslaving, and indenturing of people not of a specific ethnicity, and most definitely not of a specific religion.
People who were in the wrong political or environmental climate for their time, seeking survival, safety, self determination, and sometime just edible potatoes or anything, hoped this coin try would accept them. Their bravery was astonishing.
We have always depended on immigrants for everything, because we have all always been immigrants, willingly or enslaved or indentured.
Like the Irish, like the Italians, like the Polish, like Hispanics from around the world and Asians we have all been teated like unwanted immigrants - illegal entities - to use the rule of law as some agreed upon justification to treat the other as a commodity, a substance, inhuman, that can be put to good use but must be carefully controlled, policed, and punished.
The current demonstrative cultural and moral crusade is a shredding fig leaf of a crusade for white supremacy, one in which the lesser finacially endowed are happy to serve the wealthier members of their tribe, often just for a bit of bread and circus.
This is not at all new. It´s been see before, by some of us in our lifetimes.
The punitive measures against those to be controlled will get worse while we ourselves deny that what we feared and speculated and moralized could never take place is taking place. Now.
Our gardens, our diversions, our brews and our fictions will keep us above or away from the fray, we believe.
But we are living Anne Frank's Diary.
Hiding, hoping they avoid detection - surely the force of our intellectual superiority will protect us from the physical violence of it all. We abhor physical violence. Is that not enough to prevail we think.
We are going along with the goings on like the good German citizens living next door to an incinerator not allowing that such an atrocity could ever take place, ever in their established and proper word of Kinder, Küche, Kirche.
We're all immigrants who stand in the way of the insane, cruel, neurodegenerates that claim to have different political philosophies but truly seek to control and exploit resources, including human ones, that are not theirs.
They have no religious mandate, they represent no religion. Yet we still act like they are merely preaching a sermon that we just wouldn't ever hear at our church. And we still call being and acting like a decent human being acting out. Or getting something off our chests. We ask for pardon for being right.
Thank you Nancy for this reminder. I am afraid for Vermont and Maine who rely on immigrants for their dairy farming and apple picking industries.
Our same Jamaican apple pickers come every year on temp ag visas. If they aren't able to come, orchardists are doomed. Americans won't do that work for more than a couple of hours at a 'u-pick' orchard. And our dairy workers are mostly illegals - who do the hard, dirty work competently and well. Plus they are just nice guys...
It shouldn't need to be said that this country would be nowhere without immigrants...
My mother was from Italy. Both my dad’s parents were, too. It is disheartening to me to see many Italian-Americans supporting this truly awful administration and its policies. Do they not remember their own history in this country? Thank you for reminding us that it’s immigrants that make America great.
You speak my mind, as the Quakers say. I would love to have read your book on ethnic food. Everything you write is such a pleasure to read, and I always learn something I needed to know!
Thank you Nancy. Many a time I have had similar thoughts about how sparse our culinary cupboard would be without immigrants. The evil people in Washington will come up against a tidal wave of resistance as they attempt to destroy our country and our history.
My father (UK) and grandfather (Slovakia) were immigrants to the US and now I am an immigrant in Italy. Thank you for these words!
Exactly, Nancy xo
thank you! Perfectly said.
Brava my friend!
I love this, Nancy!
Hear, hear! This Canadian had an immigrant father and grandparents from Denmark and the other set of grandparents from Russia. It's simply impossible to fathom the hatred emanating from "the unmentionables" in Washington.
Amen!
Beautifully articulated… HCR is a must read for all.
This would be an excellent time to bring back that book you didn't publish.
So well expressed! The same applies to the UK - and because of a British reluctance to do the taxing farm- and food-related work for which we had to bring in labour from Europe, post-Brexit with that labour force now excluded from our shores, we are beginning radically to see just how much what is available for us to eat was dependent on willing immigrants to settle and grow and reap food that without them able or wanting to stay, we no longer can buy.
Yes, to this and more, Nancy. Food is such an extraordinary lens on and reflection of human culture. Food involves art, economics, politics, culture, science, nature, and history. It makes and reflects culture. The separation between the food and the table whether we are talking about the dining rooms and kitchens of our homes, fine restaurants, school cafeterias, and everything in between is vast and has become bigger. And more and more, the humans are left out of the equation.
Immigrants are our contemporary experts in the fields, orchards, and vineyards, slaughter and processing houses, and prep stations and dish pits, yet they are invisible to our dining and shopping eyes. The cost of food isn't only an inflationary thing, it is deeper than that.
In Pig Earth, John Berger exhibits a deep understanding of the close relationship between sustenance and subsistence in the context of farm animals, foraged foods, and vegetables, and what happens when the relationship is ruptured.
Without immigrants, ever, we would be in England most likely, if we hadn't been burned or died from torture for our heresy. All traces of our lineage, at least those with the beliefs that the first immigrants - as opposed to explorers - to the US had, would have been destroyed.
Like we did with the people who lived in - and with - this land for millennia before a group of white religious others sought refuge here, then haplessly then intentionally later on, tried to erase their existence.
Our claim to this land is based on othering. Of someone, some people, some tribe designated the dangerous invader of our lands, despoiler of the religion, threat to our ownership of the only God that we want.
Our history is one of killing, abusing, enslaving, and indenturing of people not of a specific ethnicity, and most definitely not of a specific religion.
People who were in the wrong political or environmental climate for their time, seeking survival, safety, self determination, and sometime just edible potatoes or anything, hoped this coin try would accept them. Their bravery was astonishing.
We have always depended on immigrants for everything, because we have all always been immigrants, willingly or enslaved or indentured.
Like the Irish, like the Italians, like the Polish, like Hispanics from around the world and Asians we have all been teated like unwanted immigrants - illegal entities - to use the rule of law as some agreed upon justification to treat the other as a commodity, a substance, inhuman, that can be put to good use but must be carefully controlled, policed, and punished.
The current demonstrative cultural and moral crusade is a shredding fig leaf of a crusade for white supremacy, one in which the lesser finacially endowed are happy to serve the wealthier members of their tribe, often just for a bit of bread and circus.
This is not at all new. It´s been see before, by some of us in our lifetimes.
The punitive measures against those to be controlled will get worse while we ourselves deny that what we feared and speculated and moralized could never take place is taking place. Now.
Our gardens, our diversions, our brews and our fictions will keep us above or away from the fray, we believe.
But we are living Anne Frank's Diary.
Hiding, hoping they avoid detection - surely the force of our intellectual superiority will protect us from the physical violence of it all. We abhor physical violence. Is that not enough to prevail we think.
We are going along with the goings on like the good German citizens living next door to an incinerator not allowing that such an atrocity could ever take place, ever in their established and proper word of Kinder, Küche, Kirche.
We're all immigrants who stand in the way of the insane, cruel, neurodegenerates that claim to have different political philosophies but truly seek to control and exploit resources, including human ones, that are not theirs.
They have no religious mandate, they represent no religion. Yet we still act like they are merely preaching a sermon that we just wouldn't ever hear at our church. And we still call being and acting like a decent human being acting out. Or getting something off our chests. We ask for pardon for being right.
Best start raging against the dying light of Democracy. Now. MayDay. #50501 https://actionnetwork.org/event_campaigns/may-day-strong