|
 The
conventional wisdom is that immigrants come to America for one
reason: to make money. It is endlessly conveyed in the "rags
to riches" literature on immigrants, and it is reinforced by
America's critics, who think America buys the affection of
immigrants by promising to make them filthy rich. But this
Horatio Alger narrative is woefully incomplete; indeed, it
misses the real attraction of America to immigrants, and to
people around the world. It misses why the pilgrims came here
nearly four hundred years ago, and why we celebrate
Thanksgiving each year.
There is enough truth in the conventional account to
give it a surface plausibility. Certainly America offers a
degree of mobility and opportunity unavailable elsewhere, not
even in Europe. Only in America could Vinod Khosla, the son of
an Indian army officer, become a shaper of the technology
industry and a billionaire to boot. America's greatness is
that it has extended the benefits of affluence, traditionally
available to the privileged few, to a large segment in
society. America is a country where "poor" people have
television sets and microwave ovens, where maids drive rather
nice cars, where plumbers take their families on vacation to
Europe.
In India, I was accustomed to mind-numbing
inefficiency, and multi-layered corruption. I arrived in
America to discover, to my wonder and delight, that everything
works! The roads are clean and paper smooth, the highway signs
are clear and accurate, the public toilets function properly,
and when I picked up the telephone I got a dial tone. I could
even buy things from the store and then take them back. I
found America full of numerous unappreciated inventions;
quilted toilet paper, fabric softener, cordless phones,
disposable diapers, and roll-on luggage.
 So,
yes, in material terms America offers the newcomer such as
myself a better life. Still, the material allure of America
does not capture the deepest source of its appeal. Recently I
asked myself how my life would have been if I had not come to
America. I was raised in a middle-class family in India. I
didn't have luxuries, but I didn't lack necessities.
Materially, my life is better in the US, but it is not a
fundamental difference. My life has changed far more
dramatically in other ways.
Had I remained in India, I would probably live my
entire existence within a five-mile radius of where I was
born. I would undoubtedly have married a woman of my identical
religious and socioeconomic background. I would face
relentless pressure to become an engineer, a doctor, or a
computer programmer. My socialization would have been almost
entirely within my ethnic community. I world have a whole set
of opinions that could be predicted in advance. In sum, my
destiny would, to a large degree, have been given to
me.
In America, my life has broken free of these
traditional confines. At Dartmouth College, I became
interested in literature and switched my major to the
humanities. Soon I developed a fascination with politics, and
resolved to become a writer, which is something you can make a
living doing in America, and which is not easy to do in India.
I married a woman of English, Scotch-Irish, French and German
ancestry. Eventually I found myself working in the White
House, even though I was not an American citizen. I cannot
imagine any other country allowing a non-citizen to work in
its inner citadel of government.
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In most of the world, even today, your identity and
your fate are largely handed to you. This is not to say that
you have no choice, but it is choice within given parameters.
In America, by contrast, you write the script of your own
life: what to be, where to live, whom to love, whom to marry,
what to believe, what religion to practice.
Some critics, both in America and abroad, have noted
that this freedom to shape one's own life is a mixed blessing.
Freedom can be used well or badly. Some Americans do indeed
make mistakes with freedom as the country's high divorce and
illegitimacy rates suggest. These are unfortunate social
trends, but we should remember that while freedom allows vice
its scope, it also gives greater luster to virtue.
Those who have tasted the exhilaration of freedom -
which entails responsibility for one's own choices and one's
own life - can hardly imagine living in any other system. The
core American idea is the "pursuit of happiness", which means
that happiness is not a guarantee, but that in America you
have a chance to find it for yourself. No wonder that so many
young people through out the world are magnetically attracted
to what America represents: they find irresistible the
prospect of being in the driver's seat of their lives.
Like the pilgrims, the immigrant discovers that America
permits him to break free of the constraints that have him
captive, so that the future becomes a landscape of his own
choosing. For this freedom, I am truly
grateful. |
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