Over at Esquire Lt. Col. Robert Bateman has a powerful piece looking at Immigrants and Military Service. Bateman is a man who knows history and is not afraid to use it. For those whose xenophobia is showing…
Sometimes when I hear people going on and on about "losing our cultural heritage" or wanting to mandate a "national language" (a swipe, almost exclusively, at those who speak Spanish), I decide that I have had enough and I ask them two simple questions: "Have you served?" and "How many Hispanics do you think are in the United States military?"
They are usually not prepared for the response, which is that more than 150,000 Hispanics serving under the colors. In other words, all of the combat troops we have in Afghanistan, and then another 100,000 beyond that, could be exclusively Hispanic. This often puts things into a different light for the people who are complaining.
Bateman goes on to cite chapter and verse on the historic contributions of the immigrants who have fought, bled, and died for a country that has often treated them shabbily and worse than shabbily. And yet there might not even be a United States of America without them. Compare and contrast with
the views of Rogers Ailes, the evil genius behind FOX, as reported by Gabriel Sherman in his
biography of Ailes.
Roger Ailes had a conversation, only months ago, in which he told a politician that if he were president, he had the solution to the immigration problem. And Roger Ailes' solution would be to send Navy SEAL trainees to our southern border and have them find illegal immigrants crossing into the United States and he would give them direct orders to shoot and kill anyone coming into our country.
STELTER: And this is from an anonymous source in this case or on the record source?
SHERMAN: No. It's on the record source who related this conversation. It's based on contemporaneous notes of this conversation that took place. And Roger Ailes said, to have SEALs earn their certification, he wanted them to have to bring home a dead body.
Bates makes a simple statement that is all the more eloquent for that simplicity.
We are a nation of immigrants. Part of my family arrived in 1640, other parts in the 1850s, and all points in between and since, and the odds are that yours did too. This is a nation built upon the dreams, labor, and when needed in times of war, sometimes the ultimate sacrifice, of people who were, in the end, nearly 100 percent from someplace else. And without immigration, and the wondrous seasoning that it adds to this magnificent stew that is cooked America's melting pot, we are, ultimately, utterly, and completely screwed. So next time you hear somebody going on about closing our borders, ask them if they served, and then ask them if they know, for example, what the most highly decorated unit in all of American history was. (Hint, there was barely a "white" face to be found.)**
Read the whole thing, for the history, for the quote from Bill Murray in Stripes, and for the answer to which was the most highly decorated unit.