Welcome to America, depending

The Statue of Liberty does not say: "Give me your lettered, your connected, your fluent professionals yearning to write code."

It says give me people like Hassan Sayed. Hassan is 17. When he's not suffering from senioritis at a Shoreline high school, he's changing oil for $8.50 an hour at Jiffy Lube.

Like a lot of young grads, Hassan's got a dream: to go to the University of Washington and become a surgeon.

Yet five years ago, Hassan lived in a refugee camp. He was born in a camp after his parents fled Afghanistan in the 1980s.

When he arrived in 2002 at the Chicago airport, neither he nor his mom, Najeeba, had any money or spoke any English.

"We lost one of our bags and didn't have enough words to ask about it. So we left it there. It's probably still there today," he says in excellent English.

I met Hassan Tuesday after he gave a short speech in downtown Seattle denouncing the immigration bill now pending in Congress.

Introduced last week, the bill's proposed rules for who gets admittance to America have taken an ideological pummeling. Some conservatives say they coddle illegal immigrants. Some liberals say they're too harsh. Some centrists say they're too confusing.

I don't honestly know. It's a relief we're no longer talking about rounding up and jailing 12 million immigrants.

But Hassan, who is here legally, says there is one thing deeply un-American about this bill. It proposes a new way of ranking who should get in. It's titled "Increasing American Competitiveness Through a Merit-Based Evaluation System for Immigrants."

Immigrants would get a point score, up to 100. Up to 75 points is based on education and skill level, with the most points for advanced degrees and work in specialty fields, such as health or engineering. Knowing English already gets up to 15 points. Having family here is worth 10 points.

"We had nothing when we came," Hassan says. "No English, no education. I thought that was the meaning of America — it's the land of opportunity. Now it's only for the privileged?"

It does seem like something fundamental about our national identity is changing here.

Take my grandfather. He came through Ellis Island in 1908. He spent his youth riding horseback around logging camps in Australia, preaching the Gospel. (Yes, apples do fall far from the tree.)

According to the manifest of his ship, at EllisIsland.org, my granddad didn't have much when he got here either: 60 bucks and a desire to go to college. About all U.S. officials asked was if he was a polygamist or an anarchist. (He said "no.") The occupations listed on that ship ran from "artist" to "fabricant" to "none."

You weren't turned away if you didn't hew to some corporate view of human value. My grandfather wanted to preach. He went to a Christian school and became a Baptist minister.

I added up how many "merit points" he'd be worth if he were arriving now. Twenty-four out of a hundred. Most of that for speaking English.

I doubt I would be here today. Would you?

Danny Westneat's column appears Wednesday and Sunday. Reach him at 206-464-2086 or dwestneat@seattletimes.com.