Posted on 09/03/2007 5:18:38 PM PDT by armymarinedad
After watching a commercial using several celebrities promoting the organization Save Ellis Island I goggled save Ellis Island. Second from the top is a website sponsored by Arrow named We Are Ellis Island followed by the statement “Save This Great National Monument. Help Preserve America’s Birthplace” America’s Birthplace? With all due respect America was here when Ellis Island was built!
Refereeing to the immigration processing facility as the Birthplace of our Country is a huge slap in the face to all of the work, blood, and effort that was put forth during the true birth of our Nation. Forgetting the first two hundred seventy years of our Nation’s history also conveniently dismisses our Christian roots starting with the arrival of the Mayflower.
Coming from a family who debated in the House of Burgess about the birth of our Nation and followed that debate with loss of life, I take great umbrage with dismissing our true roots. Maybe the mindset of dismissing the first century of our Nation is why so many Americans take our constitution so lightly. Forgetting how America was born and then almost split asunder by a Civil War causes one to forget just what so many talk about when we speak of the “American Dream”. What Arrow is promoting is giving taking advantage of a birth and calling it their own.
Ellis Island is an important part of our History but let’s not forget our entire two hundred seventy year history prior to Ellis Island. Our forefathers gave a lot in order for immigrants to blend into American society. We were born for Religious Freedom, to allow our citizens to become successful with hard work, and give us all the right to life, and liberty. Arriving in a ship to a Nation already forged is an honor not a birthright. You are here due to hospitality of a Nation of people who had a dream and made it a reality.
I always thought Jean Bo’s mud hut in Carter’s Grove was far more important than all that later stuff anyway.
Ellis Island belongs more to the recent immigration debate than to any notion that it’s where our nation began. It’s not, but too many PC stooges are more comfortable with Ellis Island than with Jamestown and other early settlements, and other early contact with American Indians.
And, as the article says, there was 270 years of Europeans in America, creating and building and founding the USA, long, long, before anyone thought of making Ellis Island an immigrant receiving center, or before the Statue of Liberty was erected.
We are NOT a nation of immigrants, but a nation of settlers and builders who created a nation that later immigrants desired to become a part of.
I agree with your comments.
The left wants to convince US Citizens that there is nothing different about Mexicans crossing our borders illegaly, and people being processed through Ellis Island.
It’s rather humorous to see them make this claim, because about everyone knows there is a big difference.
Around the time of Ellis Island I see a shift away from the Founders thinking.
“We are NOT a nation of immigrants, but a nation of settlers and builders who created a nation that later immigrants desired to become a part of”
Exactly!
You are so right and I as a son of the revolution on both side of my family get very angry with these pc dopes.
And again...
The concept of “Ellis Island” has of course been bastardized by people like Senator Domenici with his idiotic “Little Pete” stories who emotionalize it into this magical wonderland.
In fact, Ellis Island was a place where all immigrants were subject to strict screening for health and criminal records—which is the very least we should demand of our current immigration system. In this sense “Ellis Island” is a model which still has validity, as long as it’s the real one, not an exercise in phony nostalgia.
No knock on people who came through Ellis Island. There are a lot of great Americans whose families came through Ellis Island. There are also a lot who did not. To call it the "birthplace of America" is a slap in the face to everyone on the above list and, I suspect, similar lists which a lot of Americans could make.
If only more people would grasp this!
The original American settlers did not "immigrate" because all they did was move from one part of England, Netherlands, Sweden, France or Spain to New England, New Netherlands, New Sweden, New France, and New Spain, which were also parts of the same country.
My ancestors no more immigrated than I would immigrate today by moving to Alaska.
“”Around the time of Ellis Island I see a shift away from the Founders thinking.””
America didn’t survive Ellis Island.
I had some ancestors who were here before the Revolution (I belong to the SAR), and six immigrant ancestors, but only two of them came through Ellis Island. A lot of 19th-century immigrants (such as Irish and Germans) came before Ellis Island was in operation, and many came though ports other than New York.
I agree with your comments. The part about knowing the information about your pre-revolutionary war ancesters, was particulary interesting. Very good.
“The original American settlers did not “immigrate” because all they did was move from one part of England, Netherlands, Sweden, France or Spain to New England, New Netherlands, New Sweden, New France, and New Spain, which were also parts of the same country.”
I think they technically migrated and settled in a vast land which then contained around 10 million people. My ancestors settled around Jamestown about 1610. This “Nation of Immigrants” nonsense gets old, and is a definite, self-serving distortion of America’s history.
Also nothing against later immigrants, but Europeans had been here 270 years, and the revolution and constitution were about a century in the past before Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty came into existence. Everyone seems to desire to maximize their story and importance to the good old USA, which just celebrated its 400 anniversary of the true beginning of America.
Thanks for posting this. VERY good point!
That's because we let too many in too fast. That's how we got the likes of Teddy Kennedy and some other lefties. Hey, corporations wanted cheap labor then too. We were finally smart enough to see the light. I guess it's going to take some more violence like 'the gangs of New York'. One would have thought that 9/11 would have done it.
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