With clean hands and a clear conscience

By Helen Ang

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Fifty years ago, John F. Kennedy was a junior senator at a time when the USA was locked in debate about the direction its immigration policy should take. 

In 1958, Kennedy wrote ‘A Nation of Immigrants’ which presents a chronology of the main events in his country’s melting pot history.  

It is a timeless essay that observes how the contribution of immigrants could be seen in every aspect of American national life – religion, politics, arts, athletics, entertainment and many other areas.  

The monograph was written well before the advent of Rev. Jesse Jackson (candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984 and ’88)), long before Colin Powell, Condoleeza Rice, Oprah Winfrey, Will Smith, Michael Jordan and of course Obama Barack, currently a frontrunner in the presidential caucus. 

Kennedy wrote: “Every ethnic minority, in seeking its own freedom, helped strengthen the fabric of liberty in American life. Similarly, every aspect of the American economy has profited from the contributions of immigrants.”  

Immigration reform was a lifelong concern of Kennedy and he returned to the manuscript when he became President. To commemorate its golden anniversary, Harper Perennial reissued the book with a new introduction by Edward Kennedy, hitting American bookshops yesterday. ‘A Nation of Immigrants’ was first published posthumously in 1964 with an introduction by Robert Kennedy.  

The ideas contained in JFK’s landmark discourse were ultimately put into practice with the Immigration Bill of 1965, for which his successor President Lyndon B. Johnson gave him full credit. 

“Immigration policy should be generous; it should be fair; it should be flexible,” President Kennedy wrote. “With such a policy, we can turn to the world and to our own past, with clean hands and a clear conscience …” His brother, Senator Edward says, “The words he wrote half a century ago ring just as true today.” 

We are not immigrants in Malaysia. Last weekend, my family drove to Bukit Tambun (in Penang) where my mother pointed out to us a derelict row of abandoned houses belonging to my great-great grandfather. I’m fifth generation (maybe more) in this country. Yet how am I treated by my government, in effect run by one party which is an anathema to me?  

The Kennedy brothers are grandsons of Irish immigrants who began life on an equal footing in the country where they were born. 

“This was the secret of America: a nation of people with the fresh memory of old traditions who dared to explore new frontiers, people eager to build lives for themselves in a spacious society that did not restrict their freedom of choice and action,” said this famous grandson of immigrants. 

Kennedy had also mused, “American society is a process, not a conclusion”. Those in his country are proud to be American. Are we here all accepted as full and first class proud-to-be Malaysians?  

Where is our Bangsa Malaysia?  

We’ve been called ‘monyet’ and ‘beruk’ by the PM’s son-in-law. We are truly middle-class monkeys behind the wheels of cartoon ‘national cars’ which crumple from a blow of the sledgehammer … and driving backwards.  

Bangsa Malaysia, like American society, is a process. We, civil society, are a rainbow coalition of the nation’s ‘dispossessed and disenfranchised’. Ours is a process to regain our dignity so affronted by the Barisan Nasional. Well, aren’t we indeed dispossessed and disenfranchised in terms of human rights and dignity? 

This process must begin now. If not, when?  

We are many colours, one dream. Power to the People’s Parliament!