LAND OF DREAMS; U.S. STILL PROMISES FREEDOM FOR COURAGEOUS IMMIGRANTS.

Byline: STEVE VLASICH Local View

AS America celebrates her 223rd birthday, her proud citizens pause to wish her well and to say, ``Keep up the good work.''

Sometimes we forget that except for the native American Indian, we are all immigrants or descendants of those who came from distant lands.

As the proud son of an immigrant father, I stand in awe of the courage that it took for him and millions more like him to leave their native soil to come to America.

Some, who are fortunate to have been born here, see the arrival of immigrants today as more threatening than courageous. But stop for a minute and consider the courage it must take to come to a new country.

In 1914, my dad left his native Croatia. He gave up a familiar language and culture, his home and family to come to a country he never saw - which was as foreign to him as he was to it - to follow a dream of freedom and opportunity.

I recall stories of the long sea journey in less-than-human steerage class; hot, sweaty quarters; and poorly prepared food that tasted good only because he was always hungry.

Like so many before, he landed in New York City and was processed through Ellis Island. My dad worked hard and learned to speak fluent English in less than five years and became a doctor of chiropractic medicine practicing in Chicago.

When he died in 1940, he had become a citizen of the country he loved and one that delivered on its promise of freedom and opportunity.

Today we hear the term barrio and ghetto spoken as symbols of isolation and exclusion, but I remember when I was growing up on the west side of Chicago in a Slavic neighborhood. The city then was a series of ethnic neighborhoods - Polish, German, Italian, Jewish, etc. Immigrants, then as now, clustered together for mutual protection and convenience.

In my neighborhood, merchants catered to Slavic needs and tastes by offering freshly killed geese and rabbit. Live fish swimming in wood barrels were scooped out and wrapped in newspapers for the trip home to make a tasty supper. Aluminum beer pails used to bring draft beer home from the corner saloon. This was our barrio; this was our ghetto.

As the children of immigrants adopted the American culture, the ethnic neighborhoods gave way to a blend of many nationalities. After they developed more language skills and absorbed American ways, the immigrants dispersed throughout the city and suburbs, but the pride in their ethnic heritage remained and became a part of the American experience.

For those newly arrived in America, there is much to learn by their experiences. Be proud of your heritage, but work hard to become a part of the American fabric and convert the ghettos and barrios into multicultural neighborhoods instead of places of isolation and exclusion.

In 1944, when I served with the U.S. Army in Europe, I learned to understand what my dad went through as he struggled to learn English. England, of course, offered no language problems, but the Army still gave us a handbook on understanding English culture.

When we landed in France and swept through Belgium and into Nazi Germany, it was maddening not to be able to comprehend when communicating with people. I can now empathize with immigrants struggling with both the language and culture of America.

Those who seek to pit one group against another use diversity to advance their own agenda. But blaming any racial or ethnic group for real or imagined ills is not the American way. America was not born to kill any of our people's dreams.

The people who come from every corner of the world to America bring us new ideas, new cuisine and new energy. Because they see opportunity here that was either denied them or nonexistent in their countries, immigrants are willing to work long and hard for a piece of the American dream.

This is a lesson that should not go unlearned for many of our own people.

America's experiment in freedom was not conceived in a vacuum but evolved as a result of constant trial and error, suggesting that not everything we have done is perfect.

While America has made some mistakes along its journey to greatness, we have come closer to that magic moment of perfection than any other nation on the face of the Earth. We have no Tiananmen Square, no Berlin Wall, no Belsen or Buchenwald, no Kosovo.

Our people are free to think and say what they want even if it offends some of us. As we celebrate another July 4th, we should revel in our freedom and thank God for it.

In America there is no class or caste system that tells us we can be no better than our fathers. There is no ceiling to opportunity for those willing to pay the price in hard work. Even the glass ceiling that has denied opportunity to our brightest and most talented women is beginning to shatter and crack, just like the biblical walls of Jericho.

We must press for equal opportunity for all. Those who laid down their lives from Valley Forge to Normandy would have settled for nothing less.

America's freedom was neither guaranteed nor certain. It was fought for with the blood of its citizen soldiers who left their homes to go to places they never heard of, to do things they never dreamed of and to secure freedom for people they never met.

They served America well because of a simple principle - duty and love of country. Today some hear those words and think them old-fashioned or think patriotism and flag waving aren't hip or chic in the '90s.

Fortunately such was not the belief of those who forever sleep in military cemeteries in Normandy and other killing fields.

We Americans are keepers of the dream; let's work hard to keep it alive for our children and all of the children who follow. Let's work to keep the dream alive for the many, not for the few, and let us pray that God grants us the courage to correct whatever injustice we encounter along the way.

As painful as our country's mistakes may be, full disclosure and ultimate correction speak eloquently of America and its people.

My dad was not lucky enough to have been born in America, but he was smart and courageous enough to come to America and become an adopted son. As a native son, I say again, Happy Birthday, America, and thank you, Dad. God bless you both.

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