Good morning.
Sunday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of 33. Sunrise is 6:43 AM and sunset 7:15 PM for 12h 32m 07s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 24.6% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1915, Typhoid Mary, the first healthy carrier of disease ever identified in the United States, is put in quarantine for the second time, where she would remain for the rest of her life.
Most people in Whitewater are welcoming, and newcomers receive a supportive reception. Sadly, the city’s reputation as an unfriendly place comes not from most residents, but only those few who occupy notable positions in the community. For that tiny number, there is an expectation that newcomers should, as was once said of children, be seen but not heard. And so, and so, a few who dominate public and private institutions cling to these positions even when far more talented newcomers arrive.
(A word about this, that should be obvious to longtime readers of FREE WHITEWATER: it’s an understatement to say that I have never aspired to the roles of these few: a serious and settled person charts his or her own course. There are a thousand possible roles within a community, and striving for a place among development men, these ‘Greater Whitewater’ types, would be to seek a decidedly lesser position in the community. In this way, describing them as ‘notables’ or ‘town squires’ was always a term of derision, not aspiration. Honest to goodness, Whitewater’s ordinary residents are far more talented than a few local landlords, bankers, and public relations men.)
There is, however, yet ample room for truly accomplished people in Whitewater, and a column from Catherine Rampell, Drain Putin’s Brains, reminds us where we might find them:
I don’t mean attacking the Russian people. I mean welcoming them here, particularly if they have significant economic and national security value to Russia.
We should start by expediting the most compelling humanitarian cases in the region. In Russia, these include dissidents and journalists risking their necks to challenge Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked war. But we should also actively court those who might be less political: the technical, creative, high-skilled workers upon whom Russia’s economic (and military) fortunes depend.
Already, Russian talent is rushing for the exits, in what might represent the seventh great wave of Russian emigration over the past century.
….
“Lots of people are not ideological; they just want an opportunity for a good life,” says Stuart Anderson, executive director of the National Foundation for American Policy, a nonpartisan think tank that focuses on immigration and trade. “They see that as extremely difficult to do in Russia right now.”
Russian self-exiles are mostly flooding into nearby countries such as Turkey, Armenia and Georgia, but we could smooth their pathway to the United States. Congress already has one blueprint: In early February, the House passed the America Competes Act, which would, among other things, increase immigration of entrepreneurs and PhD scientists from around the world (not just Russia). Alternatively, Congress could tailor a measure toward Russian STEM talent, or the Biden administration could make Russians more broadly eligible for refugee status. (We did something similar for people fleeing the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War.)
Sharp and creative émigrés would enrich our community, and we’ve room for many. Their opportunities — and ours by consequence — would be unfettered if only the community would step past a small number of tired locals.