Autorentext
George W. Bush served as the forty-third President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. He had previously served as Governor of Texas. He and his wife, Laura, live in Dallas, where they founded the George W. Bush Presidential Center at Southern Methodist University. President Bush is the author of three #1 bestsellers: Decision Points, his presidential memoir; 41, a biography of his father, President George H. W. Bush; and Portraits of Courage, a collection of oil paintings and stories honoring the sacrifice of America’s military veterans.

Klappentext

In this powerful new collection of oil paintings and stories, President George W. Bush spotlights the inspiring journeys of America's immigrants and the contributions they make to the life and prosperity of our nation.

The issue of immigration stirs intense emotions today, as it has throughout much of American history. But what gets lost in the debates about policy are the stories of immigrants themselves, the people who are drawn to America by its promise of economic opportunity and political and religious freedom-and who strengthen our nation in countless ways.

In the tradition of Portraits of Courage, President Bush's #1 New York Times bestseller, Out of Many, One brings together forty-three full-color portraits of men and women who have immigrated to the United States, alongside stirring stories of the unique ways all of them are pursuing the American Dream. Featuring men and women from thirty-five countries and nearly every region of the world, Out of Many, One shows how hard work, strong values, dreams, and determination know no borders or boundaries and how immigrants embody values that are often viewed as distinctly American: optimism and gratitude, a willingness to strive and to risk, a deep sense of patriotism, and a spirit of self-reliance that runs deep in our immigrant heritage. In these pages, we meet a North Korean refugee fighting for human rights, a Dallas-based CEO who crossed the Rio Grande from Mexico at age seventeen, and a NASA engineer who as a girl in Nigeria dreamed of coming to America, along with notable figures from business, the military, sports, and entertainment. President Bush captures their faces and stories in striking detail, bringing depth to our understanding of who immigrants are, the challenges they face on their paths to citizenship, and the lessons they can teach us about our country's character.

As the stories unfold in this vibrant book, readers will gain a better appreciation for the humanity behind one of our most pressing policy issues and the countless ways in which America, through its tradition of welcoming newcomers, has been strengthened by those who have come here in search of a better life.

Leseprobe
E Pluribus Unum

On a stormy Atlantic crossing in 1630, one of the first immigrants to the New World wasn’t sure he would make it. The Puritan John Winthrop knew that America was worth the risk, writing that it would be “a city upon a hill,” a place of refuge and liberty. For nearly four centuries, immigration has been—as it will always be—a salient and, at times, controversial part of the American story. A source of strength, prosperity, and hope, the flow of people across the lands and seas has also led to bouts of anxiety and fear. Every American generation, and every American president, has confronted questions about immigration, starting with the first. In 1783, George Washington articulated a guidepost for his successors: “The bosom of America is open to receive not only the opulent and respectable stranger, but the oppressed and persecuted of all nations and religions.”

One hundred seventy-five years later, John F. Kennedy published a book called A Nation of Immigrants, in which he explained immigration’s role in our history. “The wisest Americans have always understood the significance of the immigrant,” he wrote. “Among the ‘long train of abuses and usurpations’ that impelled the framers of the Declaration of Independence to the fateful step of separation was the charge that the British monarch had restricted immigration.” The document signed on July 4, 1776, complained that the tyrannical king “endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither.”

President Ronald Reagan devoted a portion of his final speech at the White House to immigration. “This, I believe, is one of the most important sources of America’s greatness,” he said. “We lead the world because, unique among nations, we draw our people—our strength—from every country and every corner of the world. And by doing so, we continuously renew and enrich our nation.” It was President Reagan who, remembering John Winthrop’s brave passage and inspiring words, taught us to think of our country as a “shining city upon a hill”—a beacon of hope in a world of shadow.

In an attempt to reform what had over time become a broken and outdated immigration system, I spoke to the nation in 2006 from the Oval Office.

“We’re a nation of laws, and we must enforce our laws,” I said. “We’re also a nation of immigrants, and we must uphold that tradition, which has strengthened our country in so many ways. These are not contradictory goals. America can be a lawful society and a welcoming society at the same time.”

Yet for all our noble intentions of being a welcoming nation, some throughout the years have reacted negatively, and sometimes harshly, to immigrants. At times, immigration has inspired fear—fear of open borders, fear of job losses, fear of cultural degradation. Presidents have had a choice: to soothe those fears or to stoke them. History shows that the latter route should be the road less taken.

In the fog of war in 1798, when the national existence seemed at stake, John Adams signed the Alien and Sedition Acts, increasing the waiting period for applicants to become citizens and giving the President unchecked power to deport foreigners at will. To Adams and the Federalists, saving America required suspending its spirit. Many disagreed, believing that liberty must be sacred, not seasonal. In a letter to Thomas Jefferson, James Madison called the bill “a monster that must forever disgrace its parents.”

Fifty years later, the sight of Europeans fleeing revolution and famine stirred up what I call the three “isms” that pop up in our country from time to time: nativism, protectionism, and isolationism. This time, they took the form of an anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant political party that came to be called the Know-Nothings.

An 1882 law barring any “lunatic” or “idiot” from the country was expanded in 1891 to send anyone considered sick back home. As the historian Jon Meacham has written, the inward-looking, shortsighted fits continued “with the Chinese Exclusion Act under Chester Arthur, and with anarchists under Teddy Roosevelt, and with punitive immigration quotas after the Bolshevik Revolution on through the 1920s and ’30s (a period of ‘America First’), and with refugees from the communist bloc in the early 1950s.”

Today, Americans rightly worry about the consequences of a fast-changing world and a broken immigration system. Unfortunately, as in the past, fear seems to dominate the discourse. In the process, we tend to forget the contributions immigrants make to our nation’s cultural richness, economic vitality, entrepreneurial spirit, and renewed patriotism. In 2019, I decided to write this book to help us remember…