This is a tough time to be an immigrant in America. Without regard to legal status, country of origin, or length of residency, all of us are feeling targeted and uneasy. Our status as foreign-born people has revived the old term “alien,” as though we somehow dropped in from elsewhere in the universe.
Many of you know me through my writing for the Rockridge News and now the Rockridge Voice. If you’ve read my bio here, or ever met me in person, you likely know that I was born in Denmark and that I am very proud of my Danish roots. Like a majority of child immigrants, I was brought up bilingual and bi-cultural. My basic values and morals reflect both my home culture and the American ideals that brought my family to this country.
In the difficult postwar years in Denmark, steady work was scarce, and despite being a fully trained carpenter, my father had been unemployed for nearly a year. When their turn finally came under the American immigration quota system in 1955, and with my father’s uncle in California offering sponsorship and the promise of reliable work, the opportunity felt both practical and hopeful. Having witnessed how my grandfather lost everything after refusing to do work for the Gestapo during the Occupation, my parents chose certainty over regret and set out to build a future in the United States.
I have spent over 40 years as a neighborhood activist and volunteer. My roots in Rockridge can be traced back 120 years to the great-uncle who sponsored our immigration, but my roots in Denmark go back 10,000 years, to the time when the ice sheet retreated north and my ancestors followed it to settle land never before inhabited by humans. My own family has been traced back 1,000 years through church records, which are now all online.
With connections and loyalty to two countries, the politics consuming my thoughts are international, as America’s President Trump threatens to seize Greenland, a sovereign part of my homeland in the Danish Kingdom. My country, America, has put my homeland and my entire extended family at risk of war for no apparent logical reason. And here I stand, one foot firmly planted in each country, with no real way to choose between them — nor any desire to do so.
Immigrants have often faced resentment from established residents, but this time the attack feels institutionalized. It’s coming straight from the White House and is clearly defined by race and skin color. Black and brown people are hunted by newly militarized and expanded ICE forces. Most white European immigrants like me are not targeted — unless we are vocal about our lack of support for current immigration policies or the administration itself — but we feel strong solidarity with those who are.
Being a child immigrant is complicated, because child immigrants are always involuntary immigrants. Dependent children are forced to live with a choice they did not make and often do not fully understand.
As a child immigrant myself, my heart is broken by the experiences of children being rounded up by ICE, separated from their parents, and deported to countries they do not know — often sent to relatives who, while family, are strangers to them. Many of these children only speak English and face a language barrier where they are sent. They will never forget what was done to them here, and many will never forgive. This will affect America’s future relationships for generations.
Among adult immigrants like me, there are stunned feelings of betrayal. Millions came on the strength of promises made to them that if they obeyed the rules, they would be able to live here under the full protections of the Constitution. Yet, despite this, we have seen too many immigrants being deported.
The current talk by the administration of reviewing the status of naturalized citizens, with a view toward stripping them of their American citizenship, is terrifying. There are millions here who came from countries that no longer exist after the breakup of the old Soviet Union. Stripped of their American citizenship, such individuals would be stateless — the worst possible status globally. I am among the fortunate; I am a legal dual citizen of my home country.
My family members have visited the United States many times. Some have taken extensive road trips through America’s different regions and have visited more states than I have as a resident. They have loved America and what it stood for — freedom most prominently, freedoms expressly guaranteed by the Constitution.
I can only speak for them and my friends in Denmark when I say they, too, feel betrayed. Almost a century of strong ties has been mocked and discarded. Our government and Royal House have been rudely dismissed, and our military sacrifices made on behalf of the United States belittled as trivial. No one can understand why, but they do know they won’t be buying from American corporations — several apps that have appeared help ensure that.
They have also stopped virtually all travel to the U.S. Three generations of my family will not be back. And most worrisome, there is a mounting exodus of Danes from America. People I have known for decades have pulled up stakes and moved back, some after having been here as long as 50 years.
All I ask is that, as individuals, we continue to honor the unspoken contracts of goodwill and cooperation that have existed between native-born and immigrant communities, in the hope that this, too, shall pass — and that we will all be able to work together to begin repairing the damage to our nation and its people.
