Posted on 04/03/2006 5:49:12 AM PDT by SJackson
It used to be that only open-borders activists said it. Now the entire political leadership of the United States is saying it. President Bush is saying it. Sen. Specter is saying it. Even Sen. Bill "enforcement-only" Frist is saying it:
"We are a nation of immigrants built upon the rule of law."
Of course, that cute little addition about "rule of law" is nothing but boob bait for the Bubbas (a category of persons that, in the minds of our leaders, seems to constitute about three-quarters of the country); our leaders have as much intention to enforce the immigration laws as I have to fly to Mars next week. The part of the statement that counts is the business about "nation of immigrants." To see the entire political leadership of our country pronouncing in unison this slogan, all as a part of an effort to push through the most catastrophic open-borders scheme in our history, is an Orwellian experience. If we're a "nation of immigrants," how can we be a nation of Americans?
To say that America is a "nation of immigrants" is to imply that there has never been an actual American people apart from immigration. It is to put America out of existence as a historically existing nation that immigrants and their children joined by coming here, a country with its own right to exist and to determine its own sovereign destiny—a right that includes the right to permit immigration or not. No patriot, no decent person who loves this country, as distinct from loving some whacked-out, anti-national, leftist idea of this country, would call it a "nation of immigrants." Any elected official who utters the subversive canard that America is a "nation of immigrants" should, at the least, find his phone lines tied up with calls from irate constituents.
Of course, at first glance it seems indisputable that "we are a nation of immigrants," in the sense that all Americans, even including the American Indians, are either immigrants themselves or descendants of people who came here from other places. Given those facts, it would have been more accurate to say that we are "a nation of descendants of immigrants." But such a mundane assertion would fail to convey the thrilling idea conjured up by the phrase "nation of immigrants"—the idea that all of us, whether or not we are literally immigrants, are somehow "spiritually" immigrants, in the sense that the immigrant experience defines our character as Americans.
This friendly-sounding, inclusive sentiment—like so many others of its kind—turns out to be profoundly exclusive. For one thing, it implies that anyone who is not an immigrant, or who does not identify with immigration as a key aspect of his own being, is not a "real" American. It also suggests that newly arrived immigrants are more American than people whose ancestors have been here for generations. The public television essayist Richard Rodriguez spelled out these assumptions back in the 1990s when he declared, in his enervated, ominous tone: "Those of us who live in this country are not the point of America. The newcomers are the point of America." Certainly the illegal-alien demonstrators in Los Angeles last week agreed with him; America, they kept telling us, belongs to them, not to us.
In reality, we are not—even in a figurative sense—a nation of immigrants or even a nation of descendants of immigrants. As Chilton Williamson pointed out in The Immigration Mystique, the 80,000 mostly English and Scots-Irish settlers of colonial times, the ancestors of America’s historic Anglo-Saxon majority, had not transplanted themselves from one nation to another (which is what defines immigration), but from Britain and its territories to British colonies. They were not immigrants, but colonists. The immigrants of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries came to an American nation that had already been formed by those colonists and their descendants. Therefore to call America "a nation of immigrants" is to suggest that America, prior to the late nineteenth century wave of European immigration, was not America. It is to imply that George Washington and Ulysses S. Grant (descended from the original colonists) were not "real" Americans, but that Richard Rodriguez and Julian Simon (descended from 19th and 20th century immigrants) are.
Apart from its politically correct function of diminishing the Anglo-Saxon Americans of the pre-Ellis Island period and their descendants, the "nation of immigrants" motto is meaningless in practical terms. Except for open-borders utopians (a group that has grown over the years until now it seems to constitute a majority of the Democratic Party), everyone knows that we must have some limits on immigration. The statement, "we are a nation of immigrants," gives us no guidance on what those limits should be. Two hundred thousand immigrants per year? Two million? Why not twenty million—since we’re a nation of immigrants? The slogan also doesn’t tell us, once we have decided on overall numbers, what the criterion of selection shall be among the people who want to come here. Do we choose on the basis of family ties to recent immigrants? Language? Income? Nationality? Race? Victim status? First come first served? Willingness to work for a lower wage than Americans work for? The "nation of immigrants" slogan cannot help us choose among these criteria because it doesn’t state any good that is to be achieved by immigration. It simply produces a blind emotional bias in favor of more immigration rather than less, making rational discussion of the issue impossible.
To see the uselessness of the "national of immigrants" formula as a source of political guidance, imagine what the British would have said if they had adopted it in 1940 when they were facing an imminent invasion by Hitler’s Germany. "Look, old man, we’re a nation of immigrant/invaders. First the Celts took the land from the Neolithic peoples, then the Anglo-Saxons conquered and drove out the Celts, then the Normans invaded and subjugated the Anglo-Saxons. In between there were Danish invaders and settlers and Viking marauders as well. Since we ourselves are descended from invaders, who are we to oppose yet another invasion of this island? Being invaded by Germanic barbarians is our national tradition!"
Since every nation could be called a nation of immigrants (or a nation of invaders) if you go back far enough, consistent application of the principle that a nation of immigrants must be open to all future immigrants would require every country on earth to open its borders to whoever wanted to come. But only the United States and, to a lesser extent, a handful of other Western nations, are said to have this obligation. The rule of openness to immigrants turns out to be a double standard, aimed solely at America and the West.
It is also blatantly unfair to make the factoid that "we are all descended from immigrants" our sole guide to national policy, when there are so many other important and true facts about America that could also serve as guides. For example, throughout its history the United States has been a member of Western civilization—in religion overwhelmingly Christian (and mainly Protestant Christian), in race (until the post-1965 immigration) overwhelmingly white, in language English. Why shouldn’t those little historical facts be at least as important in determining our immigration policy as the pseudo-fact that we’re all "descended from immigrants?" But immigrant advocates are incapable of debating such questions, because there is no rational benefit for America that they seek through open immigration. Their aim is not to strengthen and preserve America; their aim to demonstrate themselves to be good, non-racist people—by surrendering America to the immigrant invasion.
Jamestown settled by members of The Virginia Company Entrepenuers-Explorers
The point is that everyone living in America is that their descendants came from somewhere else(i.e immigrants). Your and my descendants didn't grow out of the ground in Ohio.
So we are a nation of immigrants.
1)That they were very fortunate to have been granted the *privilege* of living in the US
2)That there would be no free lunch after you arrived.If you worked hard,there was a real possibility that you'd do well and have a happy life...and the longer you engaged in the hard work ethic,the better it would be for you,your kids *and* succeeding generations.
3)You were expected to assimilate.You were expected to learn English...and use it.You were expected to send your kids to school and insure that they studied hard.You were expected to willingly become part of the "melting pot".
There can be no doubt that,today,these requirements are seen as "racist","xenophobic" and "mean spirited" by immigrants and their "advocates" (meaning the movers and shakers at DNC Headquarters).
The pilgrims were a very small bunch of puritans who were not happy with the way the Church of England was handling the reformation and left for Holland. They then found the problem with Holland was that their children were turning Dutch so they decided to try the US instead. If they were so unhappy living in England one wonders why they sailed 3000 miles across the Atlantic to once again be under British rule for the next 156 years. . . . .
99.999% of English christians who stayed didn't share their views.
Well, you weren't Americans until 1776 - before that you were British colonists. As for being 'legal' immigrants, I guess that depends on your point of view - I suspect most of the native Americans around at the time would have had varying opinions on how legal it was for us British to turn up unannounced, plant our flag and tell the locals how lucky there were to be British now! :D
Having said all that, it's probably hard for me to understand as my house is 100 years older than America and I can trace my relatives back 1200 years within a few miles of where I live to this day. . .
Beat me to it. Needs to be said over and over. I've been accused by other FReepers of "splitting hairs" and "playing semantics" by spelling out the difference in those two statements.
We are a nation descended from immigrants, not a nation of immigrants.
The most inane statements heard by the open borders crowd is (1) "we are a nation of immigrants" and (2) "immigrants built is country"
The first statement is innacurate and, even if it were accurate, what might have been good policy for America in 1850 or 1900 (admitting large numbers of unskilled immigrants) does not necessarily mean its good policy in 2006. But the statement is not accurate...even in the sense that we are all descended from immigrants (which is obviously what is meant since most Americans today are, in fact native-born Americans). My family's (the Aldriches) progenitor (George Aldrich) arrived in Dorchester, MA in 1631...and my family spread out throughout New England, New York state and, in the early 1800's...out West into the Iowa territory. My forebears fought in the King Phillip's war, the Pequot war, the French and Indian War, my gggg-grandfather, Stephen Aldrich, served in the RI militia during the American Revolution...another ancestral clan, the Shields family, built Fort Shields in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee...from which John Shields came (he served as Lewis and Clark's gunsmith) and from which they later ran a segment of the underground railroad ...
the Aldriches intermarried with the Adams family (I directly descend from Henry Adams, John and Samuel's great-grandfather), the Tafts, the Spragues, the Bartlett's the Mowry's and dozens of other families that settled virgin lands, built towns and states, fought Indians, French, Spanish and each other...imported Enlightenment era-inspired systems of governments throughout the towns, states and ultimately a new federal government.
When I hear that immigrants "built this country"...I wonder...didn't my ancestors have any role to play? Were they all just sitting around building nothing until the first big wave of American immigration in the 1850's?
It turns out that several years ago, Richard A. Easterlin, wrote a piece in the Harvard Encyclopedia of Ethnic Groups, in which he argued that the vast immigration into the United States in the 19th century probably did not alter substantially the growth of output per capita (which is the real measure of a nation's wealth). Easterlin notes that the innovations that drove American economic growth such as mass production in manufacturing, were already in effect by 1850 when mass immigration was only just getting under way and over the next 100 years, both France and Germany outstripped the US in per capita output growth.
Maybe the old and oft-repeated line that "immigrants built America" is less true than saying that they jumped on a train that the colonial Americans and their progeny had already started moving
In reality, we are not—even in a figurative sense—a nation of immigrants or even a nation of descendants of immigrants. As Chilton Williamson pointed out in The Immigration Mystique, the 80,000 mostly English and Scots-Irish settlers of colonial times, the ancestors of America’s historic Anglo-Saxon majority, had not transplanted themselves from one nation to another (which is what defines immigration), but from Britain and its territories to British colonies. They were not immigrants, but colonists. The immigrants of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries came to an American nation that had already been formed by those colonists and their descendants.
Thank you for posting this. Many people, even those here on FR, seem to have no conception or appreciation of what people such as my ancestors did in settling and founding this land, and creating the American nation and its institutions that they now enjoy thanks to our benevolence. My forebears did not "immigrate" in any recognizable sense of the word. They moved from one part of Great Britain to another (specifically Wessex and East Anglia to New England), just as we might today move from Pennsylvania or North Carolina to Idaho or Alaska or Florida.
The later immigrants are now Americans because our British ancestors have permitted them to take up our language and customs and join our nationality, just as we permitted the New Dutch, Pennsylvania Germans, Acadians, and Huguenot French to also do so in Colonial times.
The monuments we caused to be erected at the site of the battle at Concord Bridge beautifully explain this truth, but good luck finding anything about it in a normal American history book, most of which seem to be written by people barely off the boat.
>Your and my descendants didn't grow out of the ground in Ohio.
What a pathetic argument...uh,...dumb*ss, nobody's descendants grew "out of the ground". Can't use criteria that no human(s) can meet. That's the point of the article.
(OK, maybe Adam.)
Imagine the uproar of returning to the original understanding of who could be naturalized as an American - free white persons only.
That can be said by almost everyone on the globe. Man didn't just "grow out of the ground" in Europe or Asia. What's your point?
"You were expected to learn English...and use it."
Since it appears that Congress is going to create some form of amnesty for illegals, I think we Americans should get something positive out of the new program. I say someone amend it to establish English as our official national language - no more voting ballots printed in 67 languages, no bilingual teaching, etc.
There were jobs available Native Americans wouldn't do.
Christopher Columbus wasn't British. Oh, and welcome to FreeRepublic.
Great article! Blind faith in the cult of open borders and multiculturism is ruining this country. It is undoubtedly true we need some immigration, but it needs to be limited, controlled and based upon the specific needs of this country.
LaLaLand Conservative
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