Naturally Immigrants Look "Back Office." That's Why They're Here
Immigration is “a humiliating trial that exposes your most unflattering characteristics and your deepest weaknesses.” That’s Anya Gillinson in her 2024 memoir, Dreaming In Russian.
Gillinson’s memories of immigration’s humiliations (her family came from the former Soviet Union) came to mind while reading Charles Gasparino’s latest piece in the New York Post. The Fox Business commentator wrote it to celebrate a recent celebration he attended for Italians on Wall Street.
Italian Americans have come a long way. As Frank Bisignano (Social Security Administration head, and longtime top finance industry executive) put it at the gathering, “They put us in the back and somehow we got to the front.” Yes!
In truth, that’s kind of the point. If Italian Americans had reached the U.S. with the “right” accents, looks, and the seemingly effortless demeanor necessary to be "front office," then it’s not an unreasonable speculation that they wouldn’t have risked it all to come to the United States in the first place.
It can’t be said enough that the act of immigration is one of personal improvement. Certain individuals want better for themselves and their families, so they leave all that they know behind for the great unknown. Think about all this with the United States top of mind.
As written here last week, Americans are in a very real sense at home everywhere they go. English is broadly spoken globally, the dollar is broadly accepted, and the restaurants, stores, and superstores Americans are intimately familiar with from home are also open for business all over the world.
It’s rarely embarrassing to be an American outside of the U.S. As evidenced by the abundant existence of Americana everywhere, we have a unique confidence born of everything being familiar. Americans always feel like they belong.
It’s so easy being American, but not so easy coming to America. Once again, imagine the discomfort for new arrivals. What’s important about the discomfort is that it’s rooted in wanting to belong, wanting to fit into a nation and culture that’s revered globally. How else to explain the humiliation expressed by Gillinson. We know it as Americans, albeit within the United States.
In a very real sense everyone’s looking up, including every American. And when we don’t belong, or when we’re made to feel as though we don’t belong, it’s agony.
Still, implied in hurt and humiliation is the human desire to fit in, to be like others. It’s something for Americans to remember when they hide behind “we can’t assimilate them” and “they don’t appreciate our culture” as excuses for arming the borders, building walls, and most horrifying of all, entering private businesses to arrest and deport the “back office” (if they’re very lucky) immigrants of modern times.
How shameful. How bereft of any compassion, all of it rooted in abject falsehoods about “assimilation” and “culture.” Please be serious. The desire to assimilate is what brings immigrants here, but it’s also what explains why they’re not immediately assimilable.
The path to fitting in, to looking "American," is plainly paved with extraordinary embarrassment. But happen it does as Americans know as well as anyone. This includes Italian Americans. Once "back office" in most ways, they’re now among the top faces in one of the most prominent business sectors in the richest country on earth.
Thank you to Charles Gasparino for reminding readers of this. Italians, like all immigrants, arrived here looking like many things, none of them “Wall Street.” They arrived to better themselves, to among other things, look “Wall Street.” Really, what could be more American than talking, dressing, and looking the Wall Street part?
Originally published on Real Clear Markets.