It's very strange isn't it? Why isn't the pride of our past and your Grandparents still prevalent? I like the story of the old conveyor belts! People like your grandparents made America great.
Here in the UK, we seem to be happy just to let people in and then let them vanish! Then they show up selling pirate DVD's in pubs, or smuggled cigarettes in shopping centres.
I'm proud of the fact that I'm from a country that other people want to live in. And I'm proud that my government is benevolent enough to grant asylum to the persecuted of the world.
I'm just furious that they think letting them into the country and paying them for doing nothing is where they think their role ends. It does no good to the people of the UK and it does no good to the immigrants who end up illiterate, disenfranchised and firmly entrenched in the black economy.
And it certainly doesn't do any good for the legal citizens of the country, either.