NPR reporter discusses immigration, diversity at Town Hall South
Your family history is likely to include a story or two about ancestors seeking a better life in what then was the New World.
Perhaps they made choices similar to that of Nicolai Ordahl, who traded his dim prospects for success in agrarian 19th-century Norway for a voyage across the Atlantic and trek into the American Midwest.
“He felt he had no other option,” his grandson Tom Gjelten said before segueing a contemporary home-country equivalent: “His situation was virtually identical to young men of Central America today.”
Tom Gjelten covers issues of religion, faith, and belief for NPR News, a beat that encompasses such areas as the changing religious landscape in America, the formation of personal identity, the role of religion in politics, and social and cultural conflict arising from religious differences.
In 1986, Gjelten became one of NPR’s pioneer foreign correspondents, posted first in Latin America and then in Central Europe. In the years that followed, he covered the wars in Central America, social and political strife in South America, the first Gulf War, the wars in the former Yugoslavia, and the transitions to democracy in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.
He is married to Martha Raddatz, ABC News’ chief global affairs correspondent and a former Town Hall South speaker.
Of course, as the longtime National Public Radio correspondent told his capacity Town Hall South audience Dec. 5, Nicolai and other settlers of the time had a distinct advantage once they arrived.
“No one marginalized them as newcomers,” Gjelten explained. “They took that part of America as their own, and no one questioned their claim.”
His presentation at Upper St. Clair High School focused primarily on U.S. immigration practices and policies, with its linchpin the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965.
“No law passed in the 20th century had such a big impact on the character of our country,” he asserted. “We are today a very different nation than we were 50 years ago.”
His book “A Nation of Nations,” published in 2015, examines the shift in societal composition in the wake of the act, with the Washington, D.C., suburb of Fairfax County, Va., serving as an illustrative microcosm: In 1970, 91 percent of the population was Caucasian. Today, 30 percent of residents were born outside of the United States.
“Our notion of the quintessential American was of a white European who happened to move here,” Gjelten said.” This actually was deliberate policy on the part of our country.”
Take a look at immigration laws enacted in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and the titles are rife with words such as “exclusion,” “alien” and “quota.” In the midst of the Civil Rights Movement and calls for equality, the favored course of action was to stop blocking people of certain backgrounds from moving to the United States.
“We actually went one step further. We actually encouraged more pluralism,” Gjeltern said about belief that there should be diverse and competing centers of power in society.
Such aspirations initially drew praise. Consider former President Ronald Reagan’s pronouncements in one of his final public speeches.
“We are all equal in the eyes of God. But as Americans, that is not enough. We must be equal in the eyes of each other. We can no longer judge each other on the basis of what we are, but must, instead, start finding out who we are. In America, our origins matter less than our destinations, and that is what democracy is all about.”
“As late as 1992, that was the notion that unified our leaders,” Gjelten explained, referencing the year of Reagan’s address at the Republican National Convention.
Unification obviously has given way to polarization as the United States continues to become increasingly diverse with regard to race, religion and traditions, to the point where a majority of the population by midcentury will be classified as nonwhite.
“What we’ve found is that it’s a real challenge for us to regain our national identity,” Gjelten explained. “That’s something we, as Americans, have to focus on and work toward.”