If you worry about the costs of immigration in the United States, stop focusing on our border with Mexico and start paying attention to the 4 train in New York City. That train that begins in Brooklyn, transports passengers to the heart of the financial district in Manhattan, and ends in the Bronx is an ideal symbol for the truly devastating migration that has taken place over the last few decades in our country.
As a young boy, I used to ride that train each Saturday to attend classes at the Trinity School, an elite private school that lent its facilities to Prep for Prep, a non-profit dedicated to providing educational opportunities to poor minorities in New York City. Today, many of my former classmates ride that train only to leave their offices on Madison Avenue to have drinks in the trendy bars of the Lower East Side. We have lived the American Dream, a dream that since the days of Manifest Destiny has urged Americans to go in search of opportunity and leave behind the communities of our birth. Today, many Americans are forced to stay, constrained by an inability to sell their home or find a new job, but others continue the American tradition, flying in search of riches in Silicon Valley or on Wall Street.
This migration was once the key to the vibrant growth of our economy, but today it seems to play a more sinister role. The rich, unrooted in local communities, fly from place to place, home to home, with no concern for the communities that they leave behind. The middle class, driven more by necessity than leisure, also feels its roots in the community being torn away; those who are fortunate enough to find employment must focus on the needs of a global economy that makes no distinction between Detroit, Michigan and West Point, South Carolina. Only the poor (a growing share of the population to be sure) are forced to stay behind, watching the transformation of their communities in despair.
In recent years, there has been a great furor over immigration with leaders in both parties hoping to score political points. America's real problem with immigration, however, has nothing to do with Mexico. Our real immigration problem involves Americans who were born right here in the United States and may never leave our country. They simply leave their states, their towns, and their communities in search of new frontiers. In a country where individualism is prized and mobility is cherished, how do we foster that sense of community that is an essential foundation of our American democracy? What can we do to help those who are left behind by the American Dream?