“Immigration aided Colorado Springs’ growth,” The Colorado Springs Business Journal, February 17-23, 2017, p. 19.

We Are All Immigrants

I am an immigrant. What does it mean? And, more importantly in this political climate, to whom, neighbors, colleagues, or the INS? After forty years of being legally in the US (35 as citizen), I’m still struggling to explain to myself what this means.

There are refugees or forced immigrants, and there are voluntary immigrants. Forced immigration can be political or economic, can be domestic or international.

The Census Bureau reports that the average American moves about 12 times in a lifetime, some for jobs, others for marriage or family, and still others for retirement (Colorado Springs has its fair share of retirees).

Witness the array of bars and restaurants in town and you’ll quickly perceive the appeal of Springs Orleans for those who moved from the south and are looking for comfort dishes reminiscent of “home cooking” all the way to Edelweiss with its distinctive old-world German cuisine.

Are Korean or German spouses of military personnel involuntary refugees or voluntary immigrants who chose to marry their loved ones and believed a better future awaits them here? Each case unfolds its own narrative, its own web of circumstances.

My parents were refugees, escaping Germany in the late 1930s to survive the inevitable Nazi onslaught. They chose to leave at a particular moment (and thus escaped the concentration camps), but their “choice” was obviously involuntary.

When I think of my own immigration, a voluntary one from the comfort of my bourgeois home, it looks laughable compared to the ordeals my parents had to endure on their way to the British mandate in Palestine. I could have gone back; they had no such luxury.

My own process of assimilation took some years, experiencing anti-Semitism for the first time in my life. Perhaps what saved me was my (compulsory) service in the IDF (as every young man and woman have to serve in the military), so I was given some respect when encountering quizzical locals in Colorado who respect the military.

I recall the day when I stood with my attorney and two neighbors, one a veterinarian, the other a balding gas-distribution owner and scion to a legendary local family, to discuss our development plans for the Warehouse complex. Three Caucasian males with their attorneys, looking at a century-old decaying building I just bought with my sister and brother-in-law.

The two neighbors insisted that I had no right to develop the building, that it would adversely affect them, and that they would use the arm of the law to block us. I thought it would be a friendly exchange in which we would explain our vision.

At some point, the elderly bald man turned to me and said: we don’t need newcomers like you here! Why don’t you go back to where you came from!

I turned to my attorney and asked whether I should punch him or respond. He kindly deflected the tension and begged me to remain calm. I was young, the two neighbors were old. Really, I asked him, just remain quiet? I did remain quiet.

I had to come up before City Council for approval, since my neighbors appealed every zoning and building permit we manage to acquire, legally, mind you. The mayor was magnanimous and Council members supportive, thankfully.

Now, some twenty years later, an abandoned building is paying a hefty annual real-estate tax bill, business tenants are employing dozens of young people and paying sales taxes, and in general, what used to be drug and prostitution area has been cleaned up. The police thanked me at the time! 

I’m still an immigrant, perhaps a more successful one than when I accepted a tenure-track position at UCCS in 1996. That position, too, was risky at the time, with less than 3,000 students in a commuter campus.

Times have changed. The Warehouse is a downtown institution. My involvement with Smokebrush, Kimball’s movie theater, my dear partner Perry Sanders in the Mining Exchange complex, and a couple of other restaurants in town have all been downtown contributions. The city has grown as well.

UCCS is a local powerhouse with more than 12,000 students and more buildings than I ever imagined. The reputation of the university extends internationally, far beyond the impact it has on the local economy. All the faculty moved into town from elsewhere.

Do we want to stop growth? This was the sentiment of one of the guys who hired me: too much traffic, he complained (with 150,000 population). Don’t you want the energy and diversity that all newcomers bring to our lives, whether they come from Chicago or Syria?

Next time you have a hatred-like itch, don’t scratch. Stop and think: are you Native American? If not, you are an immigrant, too!

Raphael Sassower is professor of philosophy at UCCS. He can be reached at rsassower@gmail.com See previous articles at sassower.blogspot.com

    

 

      

Colo

"From Greek Tragedy to European Farce," LeadStories.com, August 13, 2015.

From a Greek Tragedy to a European Farce

Raphael Sassower

When my sister and brother-in-law asked a cab driver in Portugal, just two weeks ago, what he thought of the economy, he casually answered: “What Hitler started, Merkel will complete.” This comment rings true as much in Greece as in Portugal.

The current German chancellor Angela Merkel’s behavior is far from the nastiness of Adolf Hitler and his fascist and racist regime, but her steadfast control of the European Union’s economy is reminiscent of the National Socialist Party’s concern, in the 1930s, over Germany’s inflationary descent into one economic crisis after another and its debt, post-World War I, to other European countries. So, on one level, economic conditions have historically dominated Germany’s political and ideological agenda.

On a second level, what the cabbie’s comment reminds us is that German dominance over Europe still upsets the Europeans, whether it is military occupation or economic supremacy. Germany’s economic strength is dependent on its exports to other European countries just as much as on its own economic discipline and efficiency. This has been amplified in finance capitalism, a new form of state-capitalist imperialism, where the banking sector determines all economic and political choices. Add to that the national guarantees afforded private banks, and the lines of demarcation between public and private interests are quickly erased.

And on a third level, there is a sad recognition by cabbies around the less fortunate EU member countries that German hegemony is malicious and intent on hurting them. Recall the derogatory PIGS or PIIGS (Portugal, Italy (and Ireland), Greece, and Spain) associated in the early 2000s with nations whose debt and economic strife came short of the financial targets set by Germany? It’s Germany’s way or the highway, as we say in the US! And those disgusting PIGS must conform to our high standards and turn into beautiful white swans.

But what makes the latest Greek tragedy of internal political strife and broken negotiations with bond-holders and yet another bailout request a European farce is the shift from financial analyses to explicit moralizing. Greek’s latest crisis is exposed as a moral failure as much as a financial one. The Greeks are singled out as corrupt tax evaders and lazy pensioners. Their refusal to follow austerity measures is an indication of leftist irresponsibility and infantile expectation that the nanny-state will provide unlimited and free services.

Unpacking the litany of moral accusations deserves careful analysis; instead, one may provisionally answer these charges in three ways. First, tax evasion is a cherished billionaires’ sport played around the world (and this doesn’t make it right). Greek billionaires registering their fleets and their multinational corporations in tax-haven islands is no different from German or American ones, from Halliburton’s headquarters in Dubai and Apple’s banking in Ireland all the way to those depositing their fortunes in private, secured accounts in Luxembourg and Andorra (as Switzerland is now more cooperative with foreign governments).

Second, since when did pensions become an indicator of laziness? Would Americans condemn military personnel, police-officers, fire-fighters, and teachers as inherently lazy? Last I checked, they all have pensions after anywhere from twenty to twenty-five years of service, similar to what Greek civil-servants enjoy, and this is a moral principle worth protecting (perhaps even extending to all working citizens).

Beware when financial arguments turn into moral judgments not because morality shouldn’t be part of the conversation but rather because it should. And if financial debt, as in the case of the Greeks, is so morally offensive, then the third point to recall is the German debt to Greece dating back to World War II (see an interview with London School of Economics’ Albreht Ritschl http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/27261-germany-s-unpaid-debt-to-greece-albrecht-ritschl-on-germany-s-war-debts-and-reparations).

Germany’s debt—financial and moral—to its European neighbors will never be fully repaid. Whenever self-righteousness is flagrant, as we have seen in the bailout negotiations with Greece, a farce is about to be exposed! Wasn’t it megabanks in the US who enjoyed a taxpayers’ bailout less than a decade ago?

“Comparing double standards with debt-ridden Greece,” The Colorado Springs Business Journal, April 24-30, 2015, 25.

Double Standards

Just as banks are tested by standards different from those they apply to their customers, so are countries that owe a great deal of money, like Greece.

How “healthy” are the largest banks? If derivatives are not considered as part of banks’ assets (Fed), then they can withstand another financial crisis without bailouts (with 13% capital); accounting practices of the FDIC claim that they cannot (with only 5%).

While our political leaders and the moneyed elite espouse conservative ideals of small government, you can readily find them courting military contracts (of big government spending, if not waste) and prohibiting the laissez faire market forces of recreational marijuana sales, infusing government control.

What about endorsing the proliferation of houses of ill spirit (if not ill repute) in the center of downtown because of sales revenues, while responding to their dangerous prospects with the surveillance of street cameras (Big Brother).

Pointing out these kind of inconsistencies may seem like sound medicine, but as many scholars remind us, facts seldom change beliefs. So, what does? 

Perhaps a trauma or a crisis, the kind that shakes the very foundation on which such beliefs rest. The imminent threat of a Greek default on its Eurozone debt provides a good case study.

The so-called cradle of democracy, Greece, has a population of 11 million and an annual GDP of about $240 billion. By comparison, Colorado has a population of around 5 million and an annual GDP larger than $270 billion.

With over $300 billion in foreign debt, Greece is rumored to be on the verge of default. All the questions about the adverse repercussion of a default—from creditor-banks and their respective government guarantees to a potential exit from the Eurozone—may miss some moral issues related to this situation.

To begin with, as David Graeber (2014) reminds us, the very notion of debt is bound by two unrelated moral principles. One has to do with the obligation one ought to feel about repaying borrowed money, and the other is that lenders of money are considered inherently evil.

Those who fail to repay what they owe are then considered evil. How do we view individuals who take out mortgages and default on them, or those filing for personal bankruptcy to wipe clean their debts?

But by the same token, we also consider lenders to be evil, whether under the influence of Jesus’ condemnation of the money-changers in the Temple, or more recently the bailout of banks who gambled foolishly and received taxpayers’ help.

In local communities like ours, the very notion of public works of any sort, like the City of Champions, is considered problematic (evil?) because public debt may saddle the community with additional taxes. But what if debt is labeled investment? Will the next mayor go on record in support of such investments?

The Greek case study is much more complex than we are led to believe from sensational headlines that ensure the volatility of the stock-market (where brokerage firms enjoy the ride).

If we remain on the moral level for a minute, we should ask whether or not one country has a moral duty to help another? Though philosophical in nature, the answer is commonly couched in practical, utilitarian terms: yes, as long as it can afford it.

The Greek government, says Frank Jordans (AP), is reminding the German government—its largest creditor—that after WWII Greece was among 22 countries that agreed to halve Germany’s debt (1953).

More concretely, Greece has definite reparation claims against Germany from its WWII occupation of Greece: billions of euros worth of infrastructure destruction, millions of euros as compensation for massacres of resistance groups and Jews, about $7.7 billion of an interest-free loan made in 1942. This isn’t an exhaustive list.

So, who is the debtor and who is the creditor? On balance, who owes whom how much? Is there a moral injunction for aid among nations, even when it’s called debt?

The Germans, leading the Eurozone’s claims against Greece, insist that it’s the moral failings of the Greeks, as individuals and as a society, that have contributed to their current crisis: lazy tax evaders who expect the state to spend more than it can afford.

This systematic irresponsibility has raised the question every parent asks: should I enable bad behavior? If I punish, will I lose my child?

And punishment is expected in the Greek case, from austerity measures that hurt the poor to leaving the European Union, the kind of punishment our local leaders inflict on young entrepreneurs who haven’t made it yet to the top.

Can a small local startup expect the same royal treatment reserved for the military-technological complex? What will the next mayor do?

Raphael Sassower is professor of philosophy at UCCS. He can be reached at rsassower@gmail.com See previous articles at sassower.blogspot.com