Who is Maria Lewitt? What particular ideas does her poem "Smugglers" communicate about and through its representation of the Australian immigrant...

Although the
immigrants come to the new country, they ¨smuggle¨ in their past, their heritage, and their
crises.

We smuggled in
Values and slanted
opinions.

People are always a part of the land they have
lived in, the God that they have worshiped, and the customs that they have held.  So, when they
enter another country, some can not relate to them, nor can they easily assimilate into the new
culture.

W. Somerset Waugham said that no one can understand someone unless
he is that person; unless he has sung the same songs, believed in the same wives' tales, and
shared other experiences. This is the dilemma of the immigrant. He is a foreigner not just in
nationality; he is foreign to the culture, the little wives 'tales, the customs and the food
that one eats, and no so on.

Assimilation into a foreign country is always
difficult. People coming into a new land are examined and looked at askance. For, they must
prove that they are not going to be a problem:

We were
left alone
And wherever we go,
We leave a trail
Of unsuspected
contraband,
Sometimes polluting, sometimes enriching
Our adopted
Home.

When one is not part of a culture, he/she is looked
at with some suspicion. In her poem Lewitt writes of the alienation of a person leaving her
country for another, a strange land where the immigrants are treated as less than worthy
compared to the citizens.