I am going to take he plunge and add my two cents worth to the so called "immigration debate". I use quotes for more than one reason. First of all it is hardly a debate. Moreover, the issue has little to do with immigrants or their descendants. Ironically, the people who this country was stolen from were the fist group of immigrants and their descendants. My favorite cartoon on this farce has the Indians standing on the shore at Jamestown in 1609 and muttering to each other:
What are we going to do about these "Come Heres"?
Here where I live in Mathews County Virginia the "Born here" vs "Come Here" friction is very real As an academic I encountered it in another form with Town/Gown issues. My last name has been the source of rude and ugly interactions with people here and when I lived in Richmond as well. Now that Arizona got a well deserved hand slap I feel like venting a bit. Read on below for more.
Let us remember some of our history for so much gets forgotten in this insane pseudo-debate. In 1610 as the Jamestown settlement was just starting the Palace of the Governors in Santa Fe was under construction.
The Palace of the Governors (1610) is an adobe structure located on Palace Avenue on the Plaza of Santa Fe, New Mexico between Palace Avenue and Washington Street. It is within the Santa Fe Historic District and it served as the seat of government for the State of New Mexico for centuries. The Palace of the Governors is the oldest continuously occupied public building in the United States.
Doesn't that register on anyone? They were here first folks, not that it should matter other than the fact that the descendants of the Jamestown bunch often make a big deal of their ancestors arrival.
Here is but one of many sources that speaks to the reality of what we are as a Nation: A History of Immigration.
I have a personal slant on all this which is my main reason for writing this diary. My mother's parents were basically peasants who cam from Lithuania. Grandpa was illiterate and Grandma could read Lithuanian. You can get a good picture of this group of people who settled in Chicago by reading Upton Sinclair's The Jungle:
The Jungle is a 1906 novel written by author and journalist Upton Sinclair. Sinclair wrote the novel to highlight the plight of the working class and to show the corruption of the American meatpacking industry during the early-20th century. The novel depicts in harsh tones poverty, absence of social programs, unpleasant living and working conditions, and hopelessness prevalent among the working class, which is contrasted with the deeply-rooted corruption on the part of those in power. Sinclair's observations of the state of turn-of-the-century labor were placed front and center for the American public to see, suggesting that something needed to be changed to get rid of American "wage slavery". The novel is also an important example of the "muckraking" tradition begun by journalists such as Jacob Riis.
The novel was first published in serial form in 1905. "After five rejections", its first edition as a novel was published by Doubleday, Page & Company on February 28, 1906, and it became an immediate bestseller and has been in print ever since.
Here's a part of the synopsis:
The novel opens with a dramatic description of a Lithuanian wedding feast, which introduces the reader to all of the major characters and some of the secondary characters: Jurgis Rudkus (originally "Rudkos"[11]), his bride Ona, their extended family and their friends. Nearly every person who has passed by the building has been invited to attend the feast, as was the custom from the old country. The musicians play, the guests dance, food and drink flow freely, but an undercurrent of terror foreshadows what is to come, their generous hospitality has cost them much, but the traditional donations expected of the guests are few in number and small in size. Lured away from Lithuania by promises of work, the Rudkus family has arrived in the Back of the Yards neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois at the end of the 19th century, only to find that their dreams of a decent life are not likely to be realized. Jurgis has brought his father Antanas, his fiancée Ona, her stepmother Teta Elzbieta and Teta Elzbieta's six children. Teta Elzbieta's brother Jonas and Ona's cousin Marija Berczynskas come along.
My parents and I lived with my Grandparents from when I was in first grade to the second year of high school. My Grandpa died at 55 which was a long life for these immigrants. He actually became a foreman in the stockyards after he spent months learning to sign his name practicing on the white margins of Grandma's Lithuanian newspaper.
His grandson, came from a union between his daughter, my Mom and a Chicago of Bohemian descent named Mikulecky. Dad's father was actually born here but we know little more about those origins. I went on to be the first in my family to go to college thanks to the Regular NROTC Scholarship I got. After I paid that back by serving three years as a USMC officer I went on to become a PhD and a teacher of doctors, nurses, pharmacists, dentists, etc. and a well known researcher.
So my own story demonstrates the potential in any immigrant family. I have relatives who also did very well. Why, tell me please, are we afraid of new immigration? Why do we recoil from our own roots? There is a sickness in our Nation and we need to heal.