Welcoming arms now crossed

"Hey Westneat: Do you pander to all criminals or just the criminal parasites that come from Mexico?"

What a week. I spent most of it under a barrage of phone calls and e-mails like that one. My offense was arguing, in a column last Sunday, that a woman who snuck into the U.S. from Mexico — a single mom of two kids who are American citizens — should be allowed to stay. Even though she's poor and gets housing assistance.

Suffice to say: Many, many readers didn't agree. Some said so in the most forceful ways.

"We don't need or want these people, we have plenty of welfare people and convicts who could harvest the strawberries!" wrote Kurt Hilderbrand of Bellevue.

"Yes, I want all illegals deported, but especially the Spanish speaking ones," said an unsigned letter from Kirkland. "The native-born cannot get a job unless they speak Spanish, to communicate with all the people who shouldn't be here."

"Your illegal friend there is a freeloader," phoned Everett's Ann Crawford, a former union organizer. "I'm 75. I've seen this country go downhill. I'd like them all out of here."

Some were less strident, but no less concerned. Barbara Bader, a 62-year-old Democrat from Tukwila, said first we should take care of our own.

"We're too generous. It's too much pressure on our society."

Others said it's unfair that illegals get to "cut to the front of the line." Our immigration system isn't that fair or orderly, either, but it's true people who sneak in are going around it.

Yet I can't help but hear more in all this vitriol than just a call to follow the rules. It's too visceral for that.

"Maybe not racism so much as strangerism," he said. "This country has turned the last few years from one of the most hospitable and inviting into one of the most suspicious."

I called Raban last week after 22 Chinese stowaways were nabbed along Seattle's waterfront. Their bid for America was 15 days at sea holed up in a metal cargo container.

In Raban's latest novel, "Waxwings," a Chinese man arrives half-dead in a container. He speaks no English and is exploited into a job removing asbestos. Some of his co-workers take to calling him "chink."

What a great country, right? But here's the beautiful thing: After being the meat in a human-smuggling operation, Chink isn't about to let anyone define him. He willfully mishears the slur as "Chick."

It becomes his American name. Chick. As in fledgling. Newborn.

What happened to that grand idea — that America is where the bedraggled go to be reborn? I'm not hearing it. Is it only in novels now?

OK, the borders are porous. So strengthen them. But when even congressmen take to calling the human beings who will do anything for a better life an "invasion," it seems something fundamental about our national identity has been lost.

The Statue of Liberty asks the world to send us "the wretched refuse of your teeming shore."

If we no longer believe that, we should take it down.

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