By W. Leon Smith, Iconoclast Editor

SAN FRANCISCO – Don Arbor, with assistance from filmmakers and noted musicians, has created a music video, “Everyone Comes from Somewhere,” that encourages the welcoming of immigrants into the United States. The video includes the tracking of his own immigrant roots.

Arbor says he was inspired to write “Everyone Comes from Somewhere” to counter a disturbing tide of anti-immigrant sentiment that is in opposition to U.S. history. He says that although “we have our faults, we have mostly kept the doors open and the light of liberty shining, and that’s what truly makes us great. Today’s Dreamers are tomorrow’s citizens, just as our parents and grandparents became the patriotic Americans of today.”

San Francisco Bay Area filmmakers Charles Koppelman and Irene Young assisted in weaving a tapestry of images that portray America’s immigrant history, past and present, along with live footage from a 2017 live performance. The track includes musical performances by Barbara Higbie (of Windham Hill fame); lead guitarist Stef Burns; and Huey Lewis and the News.

Early reviews of the musical video have been positive, such as “a powerful statement in an unforgettable form” and “pristine vocals and a heartfelt message.”

The link to the musical video is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AAAHX5w7S0

Arbor consented to an interview with The Lone Star Iconoclast, which follows:

ICONOCLAST — I have watched your music video several times and find it very persuasive. What I find interesting is that your personal story forecasts today’s Dreamer issues. When composing “Everyone Comes from Somewhere,” what came first, the lyrics or the tune?

ARBOR – The first thing that came was the title and a conversation with an immigrant who was actually my mother’s caregiver when my mother was 90 years old and in her decline. Her personal story of the animosity she was feeling as an immigrant struck me as unfair, unsafe, and inappropriate, and triggered for me that everyone comes from somewhere as a way of saying we’re all kind of the same.

Common humanity was the theme I was trying to express to her. She said, ‘You should write a song about that.’ She knew I was a songwriter. I thought that’s a good idea. So, that title came without any melody. It just came as a thought. I was trying to express a common humanity as opposed to divisiveness that was affecting her personally and was affecting our society as a whole as the divisions are exacerbated by harsh rhetoric.

So then after that, it was a long period of time, really a year-and-a-half of writing. Whenever something struck me about the difficulties of coming to a new place, I would keep a file and I had a very hard time trying to narrow it down to the things that finally made it into the song.

I would say that the first verse came out pretty much whole. “Let me be the very first to welcome you” came out with the melody and the lyrics at the same time. The others I wasn’t sure that all fit into the same song or not, but it works.

ICONOCLAST — How long did it take to write and what was your methodology, and did you envision a video version from the start?

ARBOR – I didn’t envision a video exactly, but I am a very visual writer, so oftentimes when I am working on a song I do see images in my mind, but what happened with that, going back to your question about how long it took to write and what was my methodology, I basically set a deadline for myself for a show my band was doing. That was in the spring of last year, April of 2017.

I thought if I set a deadline that’ll make me come up with how to make these ideas fit together, and that worked, and then at the show one of my good friends who’s a filmmaker was there and he came up after the show and told me how much he liked the show and I said that maybe we could work up a video together.

Once we met and talked about that, a lot of the images that were already brewing in my mind started to come up to the foreground instead of being way in the back.

ICONOCLAST — Songs are written for different reasons, some merely to entertain and others to enlighten.  How would you categorize yours?

ARBOR – I have written some songs that are mostly just to entertain, but it’s really not the main goal I have. Even when I’m writing songs that are lighter in subject matter I’m usually trying to say something that’s true. I’m not writing to fill four minutes or three minutes of air space.

If you go to my website there’s a recent song I did. It’s called “It Should Have Been Me.” It’s very lighthearted. I wrote that after my wife told me about a great trip she had taken many years ago with an ex-boyfriend. I just thought it’s a great story, but it should have been me. That song was a true feeling and everything that I put out there I try to make it a true feeling and not just entertainment.

With a song like “Everyone Comes from Somewhere” there’s a more over-arching awareness of the world around me. I’m trying to make a personal statement that reaches other people in a way that communicates how I’m feeling and what I’m thinking and hopefully their reaction will be encouraging, positive, thoughtful and it communicates something to them.

ICONOCLAST — I once interviewed classical pianist Van Cliburn who said that classical music is not to entertain, but to nurture and expand the mind. Do you feel that your song falls into that category, as well, what with the political issues that are ever-present today?

ARBOR – I almost have to laugh that I am included in the same sentence as Van Cliburn who I admired growing up. I knew that he was a world-renowned, prize-winning prodigy. I don’t consider my musicianship being in that category, but I appreciate the sentiment and I do hope that my songs will open some avenue of thought and experience that the listener hasn’t had before or that gives them a new perspective on.

ICONOCLAST – One thing about Cliburn is that he didn’t write his own songs.

ARBOR – No, he didn’t.

ICONOCLAST – I asked him if he had ever considered doing a score for a movie, and he said no, but he might think about that, but he never did.

ARBOR – How long ago did you interview him?

ICONOCLAST – It was in 1995.

ARBOR – I have this memory of him back in the 60s, getting recognition for winning some prize in a competition. Was that part of your interview?

ICONOCLAST – I think the competition was in Moscow. The reason I interviewed him was that his grandfather founded the newspaper that I was publishing, so he had family history that went back. We had a centennial edition and he invited me to his mansion in Fort Worth. We were there about two or three hours.

ARBOR – That’s quite an experience.

ICONOCLAST — You noted that your family immigrated to the United States, which compares to the founding of our nation, made up largely of immigrants. Do you think the description of America’s being a melting pot is a viable argument for the Dreamers?

ARBOR – Another very complex question. The simple answer is yes.

The more complicated answer is that in our history as a nation of immigrants, we’ve gone through historic tensions between the instinct to welcome strangers to our shores on the one hand, and competing instinct to protect what people feel as their homeland against the same immigrants and we’re experiencing that on a magnified level currently because of our president and what he has to say.

So, the idea of building a wall is a waste of money and won’t be effective. I think of the wall as a physical symbol of division, which is much more relevant on a social and psychological plain by the tweets and the insults, using expletives to describe certain countries and looking for immigrants who are from white Nordic countries the negative stereotypes that are blatantly false, about immigrants from Central America and Mexico.

I’ve done some research on this and the fact of the matter is that immigrants are less likely to be involved in criminal activities than native-born U.S. citizens and that’s been documented by our own National Academy of Sciences.

When someone in leadership comes up and compares immigrants to rapists and drug dealers, that’s just so wrong and it’s not true. It’s intentionally divisive to create a voting block among those who feel they want someone else to look down on.

The idea of a melting point that you are asking about suggests that everyone goes into the same stew and comes out in one bowl. But there are people who are trying to make that not happen, so yes, I do think that overall America is a great melting pot and that example is why you have a reputation as a magnet for people from other cultures who think that America is a shining beacon, but once you get here, the reality is that there’s going to be a lot of feelings going both ways and the people in leadership really should be encouraging what Abe Lincoln called the better angels of our nature and not the worst demons.

ICONOCLAST — I assume that the big question lies in the influx of immigrants who did not follow laws set forth for immigration and will perhaps now be deported, leaving children behind. Do you think that illegal aliens who have ignored these laws should be provided the same rights as legal aliens?

ARBOR – I don’t know if you want to talk about the Dreamers, who came as children when they had no choice in the matter and have already been granted some form of legal status. I do think it’s a good starting point because 80-90 percent of the country thinks that those Dreamers should be allowed to stay. They didn’t come by choice, they didn’t break any laws. They were children.

The Dreamers have to be either in school or have a diploma. They can’t have any serious criminal records. They are teachers and doctors and ministers and they are in the military and there’s no reason that I can see to be deporting or ending the semi-legal status of the Dreamers. We should be looking for a way to solidify what is already a strong contribution to the fabric of our society.

So the idea of using them as a bargaining chip – we’ll give you the Dreamers if you give us reducing the immigration quota by 50 percent and if you give us no more family unification – to me, those are not fair trade-offs.

That being said, I do acknowledge that there is a logic to giving some preference to people who have come into the country legally, but if you look a layer back from that, you have to look at what are the laws and why are those laws in place and are we enforcing them in a selective or fair manner.

If, for example, you have immigrants that are being targeted for deportation if they are people of color or they are from Central America whereas, as a prime example the President’s in-laws, Melania’s parents, are here on a green card, as far as what I read in the papers, although they don’t answer all the questions.

I do think there is an issue of fairness the selectivity of enforcement, so I wouldn’t want to see the idea of deporting undocumented immigrants as an excuse to exacerbate those tensions I was talking about earlier.

ICONOCLAST – I recently read that the top three surnames in Texas have changed from Smith, Johnson and Jones to Garcia, Smith, and Martinez, due in large part to illegal immigration. Do you think this is a good thing?

ARBOR – I don’t know all the details you’re talking about. Certainly California also has a lot of immigration, both legal and illegal and I don’t want to claim knowledge of statistics that I’ve never read about. One thing that I did read about recently is a book by Dennis Carroll. He is a seminarian from Colorado with a Guatemalan parent and an American parent and one of the things I read there, I’m pretty sure, is that there are a very large number of legal citizens of Spanish language descent.

So, I would want to know before assuming too much about that which you talked about, how many people named Garcia or Martinez are already legal citizens from generations past. The balance could be a very large number of illegal immigrants or could be just a very small number that happens to be on top of those who are already here legally and some from generations past. So I can’t comment whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing in absolute terms.

ICONOCLAST – Do you think your movement on behalf of Dreamers will ultimately impact a positive outcome, given lawmakers who want to build a wall?

ARBOR – I think that the answer is going to depend on November 2018. We have a minority government. We like to think of ourselves as a democracy and in some ways we are because we get to vote, but when you look at the fact that every branch of the government was elected by a minority of the United States population, that’s a problem.

Every state gets two senators. We have 37 million people like California or 600,000 people like Montana or Wyoming. I’m sure they are actually larger now, but I have a memory of driving through Montana when I was 11 years old and the Chamber of Commerce had put an ad on the radio that says Montana is Big Sky Country and we’ve got 600,000 people and room for 600,000 more.

The point of it is that it takes 20 states to add up to California and those 20 states have 40 senators and 30 of them are Republicans and 10 are Democrats. So when you look at the map of it the senate is a 51-seat majority of Republicans who represent a minority population-wise.

When you look at the President, it is well known that he lost the popular vote. When you look at congress, you have gerrymandered districts, for example Pennsylvania where the vote was 50-50, the result was 13 Republicans and five Democrats because they pack the Democrats into a small number of districts and get fewer representatives. So the Democrats have some tough walls to climb – that’s just a metaphor – some obstacles to get over to get into a position where they can either set policy or swap the policies that are currently being promoted.

Now how that affects the wall is that Trump is trying to use the Dreamers as a bargaining chip to get the wall that he thinks somehow would help us. There’s pressure on the Democrats to agree to that because they are so supportive of the Dream population being admitted that they might give something up, something like these walls. If the Democrats prevail in the House of Representatives in the fall of 2018, I think that’s history for the wall.

ICONOCLAST – Your music video is somewhat like an “anthem,” just like “The Star-Spangled Banner” was an anthem based on immigrants settling in the new world. Do you see “Somewhere” and its message catching on among the millennials and perhaps aiding in awareness and ideologies that support the Dreamer population for future generations?

ARBOR – I have had a lot of very popular response to the song and the video. Some of it is from younger people, some of it is from older folks like me. I didn’t aim it at the millennials. To the extent it reaches them, I’m very happy about that. I do like the songs that communicate. I do write because I feel strongly about what I’m saying, so whatever group responds to it I’m happy about it and I have two millennial sons, a 21-year-old and an 18-year-old, and certainly they are very much more open to immigrants than some of the older population. I do think that is the wave of the future.

ICONOCLAST – Are there any other comments you would like to make?

ARBOR – I guess I’d like to say that one of my inspirations is a poem by Maya Angelou called  the “Human Family” that has a great line in it where she says that we are more alike, my friends, than we are unalike. “I note the obvious differences between each sort and type, but we are more alike, my friends, than we are unalike.”

That is how I feel. No matter what policy we wind up with, we should administer it with an eye toward our common humanity instead of divisiveness, even if the policy is to enforce the immigration laws to the letter or more strongly than they are currently. It shouldn’t be done selectively and with hatred. It shouldn’t be done in a way that promotes division. To the extent we can focus on our common humanity, the prospects for a better future will be increased.