@CalamityJane,
CalamityJane wrote:
Immigration is a good thing - the backbone of America. We are all immigrants from somewhere - if not immediate then parents, grandparents came from another country. Immigrants made this country great and continues to do so.
What would we do without Mexican laborers? Who would work in the fields of El Centro where we harvest three times a year and the weather reaches beyond 100 F in the summer while pesticide planes are hovering over the fields? Who would work in the massive strawberry fields where every strawberry needs to be handpicked? Who would work in the hotel industry cleaning rooms, working in the kitchen, and so on ? It's Mexicans who work very hard manual labor and live in primitive conditions saving every Dollar so their children can have a better life. Who are we to deny this to them?
What about all the Asian immigrants? Most colleges could fold up shop if it weren't for Asian students who take learning very seriously.
What about the Iraqi immigrants who fled Saddam Hussein from persecution and their neighbors the Iranians who fled the country after Shah Reza died?
The list can go on and on......bottom line is, this country benefits from immigrants and needs immigrants to keep us all afloat economically.
The sociological reality is that before 1850 the country was WASP, Southern Black slaves, and Northern free Blacks. The Catholics and Jews came due to crises at home (Revolution of 1848 where liberal Germans were the losers; Jews from Czarist Russia, due to pogroms; Irish due to the potato blight and kicking them off their land, and others (for free or low cost land out west) - all after 1850. And, coincidentally (read sarcastic) it coincided with the Industrial Revolution where the newcomers manned the assemby lines, or built whatever, while those pre-1850 WASP's were raised to the "managerial class." The early bird always catches the worm.
But saying we are a nation of immigrants is leaving out the salient fact that the arrival of the teeming amasses was all based on self aggrandizement of the early arrivals (self-serving so to speak). So, to be honest, the country, in my opinion, is owned and run by those early arrivals. The earlier the better, so to speak. Everyone else usually takes a generation or two to join the American mindset and give up the emotional baggage of the old country. In effect, if one has a hyphen in their identity then they require a "narrative" as to why they are loyal Americans; however, in my opinion, those early birds always say they are just American, no hyphens, no narrative.
