Worcester Magazine
THEY'RE SAYING THE QUIET PART OUT LOUD AGAIN: If anyone thought former Worcester City Councilor and one-time mayor Konstantina Lukes was going to stop lighting political fires in her retirement, they were obviously never really paying attention. Indeed, Lukes' eyebrow-raising Dec. 4 editorial in the Telegram & Gazette showed her at her political brawler best. The target? Allowing non-U.S. citizens to sit on volunteer city boards. On Nov. 19 she wrote, “the Citizens Advisory Council, by a unanimous vote of the eight members present, made a dangerous and shortsighted change in their own rules by eliminating the requirement that all recommended appointees to boards and commissions be registered voters.” In true Konnie form, she breezes by the sensible rebuttal – that many legal immigrants live here and pay taxes, thus entitling them to be at least a little involved in their community's civic life – and goes straight for the melodramatic bluster, that “this type of argument is outweighed by the oath that new citizens must take, which includes a promise that they will support and defend the Constitution and the laws of the land, that all allegiance to any foreign sovereignty will be renounced and that the new citizen will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by law.” Then, in a magnificent leap of logic, Lukes uses the platform to rant that, “officials have chosen the easy way out by changing the vocabulary and redefining illegal aliens as immigrants, dreamers and heroes.” All of which is a bit much when weighing whether a legal resident from, let's say England, should be allowed to serve on the Cemetery Committee. The argument is pure nonsense, but Lukes delivers it with such flair one has to applaud the audacity. Other, more reasonable heads, such as T&G “Point-Counterpoint” contributor Randy Feldman, poke easy holes in Lukes' argument, writing, “Legal permanent residents (i.e. green card holders) in the U.S. cannot vote and thus are also not registered voters. However they can and do serve in the U.S. military, go to war and risk their lives for our country and our way of life. Military service does not require one to be a U.S. citizen, only a legal permanent resident.” Lukes' editorial is, ultimately, an exercise in sheer xenophobia, and yet somehow still less stomach churning than one in The Lowell Sun Dec. 5, “New arrivals, your job is to learn English.” The editorial has a tone that's condescending in that way that one tries to appear to be offering advice, when really they're just talking down to people. Never mind that most of us whose ancestors who immigrated here in the 20th century had relatives who never learned English, the Sun editorial seems oblivious to its own privilege. The vast majority of immigrants do work to learn English when they come here, but it's not a thing that happens overnight, and it can be even slower when you're toiling under the heavy workload that a lot of those who immigrated out of dire necessity tend to take on just to survive. Condescension, of course, is its own expression of xenophobia, but honestly, both Lukes and the Sun are engaged in regressive arguments that are way behind the current immigration discussion, each editorial telling us more about its authors than it does about the complex lives and roles of immigrants in contemporary Massachusetts.