Siva Strikes Again

My man, Siva, again states what needs to be said. I'm in awe of his ability to poignantly state what I cannot. From his recent post on Altercation:

Altercation covers a lot of depressing and dangerous topics like war and corruption and the like. And it's one of the best places to go if you have not been angry at the present administration yet in your day. But every once in a while I like to bring in a reason or two to feel good about stuff. I especially like giving Altercation readers a reason to feel good and proud about this country.

So if you are ever too down or frustrated about the state and direction of our nation, just spend a day hanging around Florida International University in Miami. Or, better yet, slip in to a graduation ceremony there, as I did yesterday. I have been to dozens of university commencements. And this was by far the best.

Florida International is a 34-year-old public university that sits west of downtown Miami. It has one of the most ethnically diverse populations of any university I have ever seen. It started out as a commuter school but has grown into an ambitious residential research university. It opened a law school three years ago and just got approval from the Florida Legislature to open up a medical school as well. South Florida has been devoid of great public universities. The two state flagship universities sit in the northern part of the state. So the growth of both FIU and its cousin up the coast in Boca Raton, Florida Atlantic University, have vastly improved opportunities for students in the southern part. FIU, in particular, serves families that have not been blessed with opportunity in previous generations. Living up to its name, it attracts students from hundreds of national origins and represents the vitality and diversity of South Florida very well.

At the graduation ceremony, I was deeply struck by the looks of awe and respect that these graduates' families had for their efforts. These were not folks who took this opportunity for granted. They had no sense of entitlement. They were modest and directed.

The ceremony itself was no-nonsense, unpretentious, and fun. There was no long-winded address by some famous person who charged $20,000 to tell students to give back to their community. Students spoke. Faculty spoke. Everyone was brief. At one point the president of the university, Modesto A. Maidique, asked all the students who graduated cum laude to raise their hands. Then he asked if any had a grade point average of 3.98. Three did. He asked them to come to the stage -- impromptu -- and tell everyone how they did it and which professor gave them the A minus. The students were shy and witty. They were clearly moved and tickled by this move. The three students with such a high record of achievement, one could not help but notice, were from Peru, Argentina, and Trinidad.

On a day when immigrants all around the nation were letting people understand just how essential they are to our daily lives, these three students stood out and promised us all excellence and inspiration. They stood for the dynamic opportunity that still exists all over this great nation.

As they told their stories, I could not help but reflect on how much of the recent immigration debate has focused on immigrants as labor (muscle) vs. immigrants as skill sets (engineers), as if those were all that immigrants bring to this country. Every high-minded and economically informed pundit, including folks like Paul Krugman, have emphasized that we benefit more from immigrants with skills than immigrants with muscle.

But no one counts imagination, inspiration, and chutzpah. You can't quantify that stuff. Immigrants refresh and reset our national imaginations. They remind us what is possible and introduce us to new possibilities. They check those of us fortunate enough to be born here from getting too comfortable, complacent, or whiney.

Among recent changes in American society, I consider the influx on Latino, African, Caribbean, and Asian immigrants to be our greatest boon. This is a better country for the ideas, languages, flavors, and rhythms that have flowed north and east to our shores.

Another great change has been the imaginative power of communication. When I was a kid my family would call our relatives in India only if someone were sick or had died. A phone call from India was painfully expensive, hard-to-hear, and unwelcomed. But now I don't hesitate to call my uncle Mani in Madras (Chennai) whenever I just feel like checking up on him. I use Skype, a high-quality Internet phone service that costs almost nothing to use. Sometimes I put the baby in front of a Web camera so that relatives around the world can see her smile in real time via AOL Instant Messenger. The very sense that such connections are possible and affordable alters our sense of citizenship and connection with the world.

But all of this is in danger. Consider this: I use Verizon for my high-speed Internet service in my home. Verizon is basically a phone company. And since I started using Skype and AOL Instant Messenger to communicate with friends in family from England to Israel to India, my phone bill is pretty much the basic local fee.

Given the chance, wouldn't Verizon want to slow down the digital packets that flow through Skype, Vonage, ICQ, and AOL? Of course it would. If Verizon makes IP telephony work badly, it can either extort a fee from these companies, favoring one over another, or just squelch them all to drive business to its own services. Time-Warner Cable, my other option for high-speed Internet, has the same conflict. It now offers voice-over-IP phone service as well. Why should I pay for that when Skype is better and cheaper? Exactly.

The Internet has been powerful -- revolutionary, in fact -- because just about anyone with a good idea has a chance to get noticed. Think about how brilliant new services like YouTube have risen in just the past year to dominate Web video services, at the expense of dumb dinosaurs like Time-Warner (see where this is going?) and become more important than even rival Google Video. If you want to see cool video like this you turn first to YouTube. And it's a good thing, too. But YouTube has no future if cable and phone companies either choose to crush it or extort from it like an old-time Mob enterprise.

There are free-speech implications to this problem as well. If Verizon does not take a liking to what I am writing here, it could block this site, my blog, or any site linking to me. It could at least make these pages slow to load for Verizon customers. I could switch to Time-Warner. But most Americans don't have a choice for broadband. And Verizon customers could be losing out without even knowing it.

For more, see this.