Posted on 07/26/2014 6:22:06 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Lady Liberty's lamp has been lowered. Its light flickering. The huddled masses are no longer wanted — be they tired or poor, be they homeless or hungry, be they adults or children threatened and yearning to breathe free.
The welcome light has dimmed. The spirit embodied in the words inscribed on the plaque on the Statue of Liberty rarely lived up to the reality of America's view and treatment of immigrants, whether they were from Europe, the Far East, Haiti and, now, Mexico and Central America.
In the late 1700s, the fear of immigrants, also known as aliens, partly led to the Alien and Sedition Act of 1798. Despite the desire to have immigrants to help develop America, the Germans, Irish and English were the outsiders in the mid-to-late 1800s — as were the Chinese.
During World War I, the fear of aliens and others with close ties to their homelands was a concern that led to the Sedition Act.
Opposition to immigrants also applied to the Japanese, Italians and on down the immigration line.
The majority of blacks in this country were not immigrants. They were first brought here as slaves but in both slavery and freedom were regarded as outsiders and noncitizens even after those who came after them were accepted as Americans and no longer identified by their country of origin.
There were times when immigrants from Cuba were welcomed with open arms in the early 1960s. But that was when we were trying to score points about Cuba's system of government when compared to our own.
The name Elian Gonzalez has long left our collective memory. He was the boy who landed on America's shores nearly 15 years ago as one of three survivors who fled Cuba on a small boat for America. His mother was among those who drowned in the attempt. His father wanted him back, which prompted a long immigration and ideological battle over whether he should be allowed to stay in democratic America or sent back to his father in communist Cuba. The issue was whether the conditions of his life meant he'd be better off.
There are no communists involved in the 57,000 children who have fled to America since last October 2013 to June 2014, according to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection. There is no government that is the antithesis of America's democracy. There are no ideological points from the countries of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador with crime worse than some of our worst cities.
It's just the poverty and violence from which they flee seems invalid and irrelevant to most Americans.
They keep coming, doubling the number of children who came into America in the previous fiscal year.
Where should they go? The children crossing the border into America have become more than a trickle — it's a flood with no end in sight. Land and space is not infinite. Neither is the welcome light.
As much as I agree that something needs to be done to stem the tide, one thing I can't see myself doing is standing in the middle of the road yelling, screaming, chanting and blocking the path to a busload of children.
It would seem too much of what some of my own generation and my parents' generation of blacks experienced. It would be unconscionable to turn around and do that to others.
So why does this nation of immigrants and once and still outsiders wish to block an influx of immigrant children?
People forget. They forget what their predecessors felt. Doing the undoable to others becomes easy when you don't remember or know. On the other hand, it is not all about remembering, forgetting or not knowing.
People often just turn around and do the bad that was done to them.
The oppressed become the oppressors.
The locked out become the locker-outers.
The kept out become the keeper-outers.
And so it goes in America where the light in the land of liberty grows dark on those on the outside trying to get in.
****
Frank Harris III of Hamden is a professor of journalism at Southern Connecticut State University in New Haven. His email address is frankharristhree@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter at fh3franktalk.
Ditto for me except that it’s Eastern Poland instead of Naples, Italy.
Life’s a b*tch, professor. Go re-read some world history and get a clue, you commie maggot.
There is a big difference between legal immigration and illegal. Open borders have been tried before, didn’t work out so well for the American Indians or Mexico when the opened up TX to all US immigration.
We actually do remember our past, some of us do anyway.
**Our Nation Of Immigrants Forgets Its Past**.
They need to learn English and then take the naturalization test and become legal Americans.
When my grandmother died, about forty years ago, we had to go through her things. Among her treasures we found the book that she had used to study English when she first arrived in this country a century ago.
It was a good country back then.
Correct, those whose family came on the Mayflower look at many as johnny come late-leys who ruined the country. And some of then especially detest the catholics from Ireland and southern Europe. Then there are these descendents of Spanish/Mexican who arrived in what is now the US long before all or many white europeans
The notion of legal versus illegal is a relatively new construct.
Two points:
1. We never admitted all immigrants-those with criminal records, with contagious diseases were not admitted.
2. We did not have a welfare state to speak of in the early 1900’s. I believe it was Milton Friedman who said free immigration and a welfare state were incompatible.
Yes, my ancestors were immigrants, but LEGAL immigrants who stood in line at Ellis Island hoping that they would be found worthy of entering America. They had to pass both a legal inspection and a medical exam before being released to enter the United States and there were strict quotas for admission from individual countries. Even though these requirements were rudimentary, the vast majority of those illegally entering on our southern border would not pass the tests our ancestors had to pass.
A succinct but accurate evaluation!
The writer has crammed just about every irrelevant concept into his article, while ignoring all the factors that completely refute his argument.
For what actually pertains to immigration questions in the reality of 2014, see An American Immigration Policy.
Or consider this answer to former President Bush's 2006 immigration speech: Reply To President Bush.
I am not anti immigrant. Three of my four grandparents were immigrants. They came here in a very different era, when the population was less than a fourth of the present, and everyone was expected to be personally responsible. The present is a sea change from the late 19th Century, and those changes are very very significant, and very pertinent to all of us who wish to maintain the America of the Founding Fathers. Only those who intend us ill, or who have their heads buried in the sand, will ignore the dangers posed by the sort of drivel, offered by the subject writer.
William Flax
My mother's side id a bigger mish-mash, but there is some Cherokee lineage in there, as well as legal immigrants from Ireland who were treated pretty badly.
Are we so terrible for simply wanting current immigrants to also follow the rules?
migrants are not immigrants.
How many of these “poor oppressed children” has the author of this article taken into his/her home?
She was one year old at the time, 1897.It was stamped off every day by the ship's doctor.
Any sign of TB, etc., and she would have remained on the boat for the return trip to England,
How much you want to bet this is just another silver spoon Lefty screaming doctrine for the masses that he himself would never follow in his own life.
His photo is at the link.
I have an idea...go in and occupy those Central American countries, clean them up so that children won’t feel like they have to leave.
Makes a hell of lot more sense than sending our troops halfway around the world to do the bidding of the Saudis.
The key line of the poem written for the Statue of Liberty is NOT merely about the “tired”, “poor” and “hungry”. It ends, for emphasis, with “yearning to be FREE” and last I checked most ILLEGAL immigrants have as much political freedom and human rights IN THEIR DEMOCRATIC COUNTRIES as do American citizens and the millions of LEGAL immigrants to America; and therefore the freedoms offered by analogy by the Statue of Liberty are not really talking about MOST illegal migrants.
We aren’t a nation of immigrants, we were founded by Brits rebelling against Britain, and immigration didn’t even kick off until generations after our founding, unfortunately, those immigrants who started coming in the mid 1800s brought their liberalism with them and started voting, and they vote the same today.
640 acres and a mule, now it is EBT cards, big difference.
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