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Nearly two million years ago, on the savannas of Africa, the first humans stood upright and, almost immediately, began to migrate. They followed herds and growing seasons or moved to escape more aggressive rivals. After populating Africa, they began a migration that eventually reached every corner of Eurasia. These early humans evolved, with their climate, diet and breeding, to form subspecies – culturally divergent, with different languages, gods and customs. As they began to trade, war and intermarry, they formed new mixed-races and cultures. Families formed tribes and conquered their neighbors to create kingdoms, which became empires. Empires eventually collapsed under their own weight or were subjugated by other empires. Wars between kingdoms and empires created diasporas and large numbers of refugees moved from land to land in new waves of migration. Around twelve thousand years ago the first immigrants to the Western Hemisphere came across a land bridge that was believed to have spanned the Bering Straits between Siberia and Alaska. More recent research claims that a different group may have come fifteen hundred years earlier from Australia, but it was the Mongoloid peoples from Asia who populated the Americas. Then, “In fourteen hundred and ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue …” and the Americas became the recipient of the greatest migration in history. People poured in from Spain, England, France, the German states and the Netherlands. They quickly settled the “New World” displacing the natives, who were run off or exterminated. The natives, whom they called Indians, couldn’t be enslaved, so they brought slaves here from Africa. Almost three hundred years after the voyages of Columbus, in the latter part of the 18th Century, the Great American Experiment began: a democratic republic called the United States of America. With its establishment, great opportunity was created and further waves of migration swept onto shore. Scandinavians, Irish, Italians, Chinese and Ashkenazi Jews made their way to the Land of the Free. And year after year for the next hundred years they came and they broke their backs building this country while striving to achieve the American Dream. Today, though, we are hearing an outcry from some citizens, politicians and so-called pundits who hold great concerns over the impact that the newest wave of immigrants will have on our country. Their hue and cry has led to a revival of the term “nativist”. These new nativists fear that a continued influx of illegal immigrants will bring about a loss of jobs, diminished wages and a shredding of our social fabric. These people are even concerned that masses of poor people immigrating to the United States will cause us to become a third world country. The nativists claim that it’s not the same today, that the influx of immigrants streaming over our southern borders is not to be equated with the legal immigrants who came before them (our great, great grandparents). And, in that sense, they are correct. Prior to the “Chinese Exclusion Act” in 1882 there were no laws regarding immigration – anyone could immigrate to the United States of America. There were laws in place regarding naturalization but none that limited immigration. The one exception came about during the California Gold Rush, which coincided with a bleak period in Chinese History. Immigrants poured in from China for meager wages that, to them, seemed fantastic. They would take the most menial jobs, and work hard at them, for pay that Americans, as well as European immigrants, wouldn’t accept. This created tremendous animosity and, with it, political pressure that led to our first ever anti-immigration legislation. Thirty-five years later, over Woodrow Wilson’s veto, Congress forced through another, the “Immigration Act of 1917”. This new law levied an entry fee of $8.00 on all immigrants and barred certain “undesirables”, such as: “… idiots, imbeciles, feeble-minded persons, epileptics, insane persons, polygamists, prostitutes, stowaways, anarchists and aliens over sixteen years of age, physically capable of reading, who cannot read the English language, or some other language or dialect, including Hebrew or Yiddish.” It should be noted that Mexicans were exempted from these limitations because of the great need for farm labor in the southwest: a need that apparently still exists. Until the “Immigration and Nationality Act” of 1952, the Chinese were the only nationality that could not freely immigrate to the United States. This is not to say that all were welcome. In the 19th century, too, many Americans were fearful of the throngs of immigrants arriving on these shores – poor wretched immigrants, with a different culture, a different religion and different values: the Irish – drunken immoral papists, who would steal their jobs and destroy their society. This is when the term “nativist” was coined. And a group of them called the “Know Nothings” attempted to keep my ancestors from pursuing their dreams of a better life, as the new nativists attempt with today’s immigrants. How ironic to see the surnames of these new nativists: Irish – O’Reilly, Hannity and Buchanan, and Italian – Tancredo. Or the one who tops them all, syndicated columnist, Michelle Malkin. Her maiden name is Maglalang and she is the American born daughter of Filipino parents who were in the country on work visas. This woman now rails against “anchor babies”, that is, children born to tourists and temporary workers who automatically (as did she) become citizens. Ms. Malkin has stated, "Citizenship is too precious to squander on accidental Americans in name only ….” The English ancestors of CNN commentator Lou Dobbs likely came over much earlier but they, too, were immigrants. As already noted; the earliest European immigrants to America had to make room for themselves, their farms and their cities by first ridding the land of the natives that they supplanted – and there were no laws in place to hinder them. So, now this is his country and he fulminates nightly about invading Mexicans who are intent on taking parts of it back. Which brings us to the objection held by some people regarding the multitude of Spanish speakers moving in around them: They should remember that our forefathers expropriated Florida, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, and Puerto Rico from them (Spain/Mexico). And we should not forget that, through NAFTRA (North American Free Trade Agreement), we've destroyed what standard of living our neighbors to the south had in their countries – we have created the need for them to cross the border, as well as the jobs that reward them when they arrive. We, who call ourselves white Americans (English, French, Irish, Swedish, German, Italian, etc.), are the result of assimilation – but it didn't happen overnight. What language did our immigrant ancestors speak when they landed here? For many it wasn't English. It was their children, and often their children's children who assimilated. Contrary to urban legend, the United States never adopted an official language. It was proposed but never acted upon because the majority of our founding fathers recognized that we are a nation of immigrants: ‘E Pluribus Unum’ – from many, one. Copyright © June 2007 Michael D. Kerrigan “Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she With silent lips, "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
- Excerpt
from “The New Colossus”, by Emma Lazarus |
