Exit strategy: American Exodus

About 30 years after Frederick I of Prussia crowned himself king, my 8th great grandfather Peter left what is now Germany and set sail for the New World. I won’t speculate as to the role of his personal politics in the decision, but he arrived in Pennsylvania, lived just long enough to get married and see his only child turn one, and died a year before Frederick II’s coronation. I thought quite a bit about this timeline while I walked the Parquet floors of Charlottenberg Palace in Berlin. Could Great Grandpa Peter have imagined when he left his homeland for the last time that one day someone far down the lineage would be tracking rainwater on the King’s bedroom floor?

I also thought of Peter when news broke just before Independence Day that the first American scientific refugees who left Trump’s America arrived in Marseille.

America. The place where Einstein fled Nazism. Science is fleeing the United States.

We opened Alligator Alcatraz the same day the scientists had their press conference in Marseille. A grim emblem of our national mood, and reminiscent of the concentration camps that have become Germany’s national shame.

Simultaneously, we are both intentionally deporting and coincidentally driving away people who have made the United States their home for decades; recently I received yet another call from a friend who has opted to head back to a more tolerant society in Canada. He spent the last 10 years serving in leadership positions at Cedar Rapids area social service agencies, and now doesn’t feel his children have the best opportunity to grow and thrive in the United States.

Between 2023 and 2024, 84% of Iowa’s population growth came from migrants, many of whom work in agriculture and manufacturing — and contribute more than $220 million in annual taxes in Cedar Rapids alone. Now, resettlement and other service agencies nationwide are laying off staff and ending programs due to federal freezes and the elimination of funding. This is creating chaos for families and the influx of workers that have sustained local economies for generations.

Very homogenous places like Iowa have a tendency to think of their majority as the standard, as the norm. We don’t think of pork tenderloins and ranch dressing as ‘culture’ or ‘ethnic food’ although they are essentially a Wiener schnitzel made of pork instead of veal and a poor man’s tzatziki. This nation has never truly been a melting pot, but our story has always been push-and-pull. People come for safety, stability, purpose, opportunity. In return, we all benefit: more workers, taxpayers, entrepreneurs. Immigrants in Story and Boone Counties represent just 6.6% of the population, but contribute nearly $400 million to GDP and pay $17 million in local taxes.

The expulsion of both our immigrants and native-born talent does not bode well for growth. Looming tariff deadlines threaten to hobble our manufacturers. In Iowa and beyond, quick reversal of pandemic-era revival efforts feels eerily reminiscent of post-Brexit Britain, which cut itself off only to learn the hard way that protectionism punishes innovation.

It does not make economic, moral, or logical sense to create scapegoats of immigrants. Some of the same people who voted for this xenophobic administration now plead for exemptions to the deportations for the field laborers who are the reason the family farm has remained a viable business. Some of the same people who voted for this are horrified to see people they know personally being sent away. Why this did not vex them in the voting booth, I do not know.

Having spent a good amount of time studying immigration in college, I remember quite vividly that the impact of stricter immigration policies historically is that when penalties are harsher, people stay longer. Strict immigration policies create a disincentive for people to leave for fear they won’t be able to get back in. When I checked in for the flight home, I was surprised to see a message of warning from the airline; certain nationalities are now restricted from entry into the United States at all.

In Charlottenberg palace, the audio tours available included a Colonialism Tour; in it, the narrator described the role of the monarchy in exploitation around the world, including the Silk Road and the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Germans have become known for a willingness to acknowledge past errors and to hold themselves accountable for history. I wonder what a similar tour might look like in some of our historic halls.

About 250 years after Peter’s journey, I stood in Berlin gazing at the vast gardens through a rain-speckled palace window, thinking about all the places immigration stories begin and end. Peter left his homeland during an era of self-proclaimed monarchs, seeking space in a new world that hadn’t yet declared independence but was inching toward liberty. Like so many migrants today, he left not for a guarantee, but for an opportunity. The land he sailed toward — one that once drew the world’s greatest minds, dreamers, and doers — is beginning to see the impacts of exodus from tyrannical rule. Not because those fleeing no longer believe in America, but because they no longer feel welcome, safe, or free in it.

We are not only losing the next immigrant — we’re losing what made immigrants believe this place was worth risking everything for.

Sofia DeMartino is a Gazette editorial fellow. sophia.demartino@thegazette.com