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.
We haven't forgotten our Immigrant past; we just don't appreciate a government run invasion. I am also sick of being expected to assimilate to the culture of those who are being imported to my Country! There's something fundamentally wrong with going to a public place in South Florida and the English language is barely spoken.
Excellent point. Cesar Chavez has become an icon among liberals and labor activists and Hispanics and those who favor more immigration. Yet Cesar Chavez was against illegal aliens coming in to this country.
Do you really not get it? They want them here because they come from countries where the populace is dependent on government to supply their needs - which is what the democrats need to stay in power. Importing hordes of these types of people creates a n endless supply of victims that need government to provide for them.
Yep.
Have a nice weekend, 2DV
All of my immigrant ancestors played by the rules and entered the country legally.
um..
the difference is this continent was once basically empty, and we could gladly accept whoever wanted to come here to help tame and fill it.
NOW we are bursting at the seams! we are running out of water, our infrastructure is stressed to the max, we can’t build or expand our roads or power plants fast enough to deal with the people we already have here!
Basically... we are FULL! no vacancy!
go some where else!
The wife is headed to a Lion’s Club function where they’ll sort through donated used eyeglasses to be shipped overseas to needy people with no other recourse. They’d distribute them here, but it’s against the law. Her company’s charity has specially made buses (”Vision Vans”) with labs inside to make brand-new glasses for poor kids here since used ones aren’t allowed.
nancy’s clearly Biblically Illiterate.... to say the least
WHERE are Al and Jesse on this mess anyway??
Just like the bills she votes on, Nancy hasn’t read the Bible and has no idea what it’s about.
Boy! Did I used to get that lecture from my grandmother when I started to pick up Sicilian from my grandfather, who was in the last years of his life and had started to talk in the native tongue again.
She was all over me like a hawk with the same admonition:
‘We’re in America now. Don’t listen to that crazy old man. We’re never going back to Sicily. Speak English!’
Brutal? You bet! We weren’t raised to be pu$$ies.
Actually, I’d like the United States to REMEMBER its past when immigrants came into this country legally using controlled procedures.
Because they have been told that America is vile vile, capitalist country which has stolen the world’s wealth and they hope to loot America.
***********
America used to be the Land of the Free. Now its just the Land of the Freebie. The more that “settle” here, the more will come. This is an invasion, pure and simple.
I emailed the author( his email is at end of article) using many of the salient points in here and especially explaining what a Legal immigrant was and is
Of course it won’t change his mind
but I am so tried of this crap
that somehow we are haters if we don’t want thousands poring in who will force us to borrow more and more
A journalism “professor”. What the hell would this clown know about anything? And once again, I am NOT a “nation of immigrants”. That drivel is nothing but sicko commie crap. I am a Native American without the high cheekbones. I was born here. My father, grandfather and great grandfather were all born here. I can’t go back any further than that because I don’t know who they were or where they were born. I am pretty sure though that they were born here. KMA “prof”!
Old Professor Frank is a little out of date. We used to be able to take in a lot of unskilled people because we could give them forty acres of land to build their dreams on. We don’t have that anymore.
There are seven billion sad stories in this world. I don’t have the money to pay for every sad story a Democrat hears. They need to toughen up.
” ... that means that we have to have unfettered illegal immigration?”
Like charitable giving, the US has one of the most open, accepting immigration systems in the world, as well as people who understand and accept immigrants.
Say, as compared to Mexico ... and many, many others.
But this professor of yellow journalism just wants to parade his lieberal credentials—maybe he’s seeking tenure or was recently caught with a live boy or dead girl.
Like Hollyweird actors who say really outrageous things—when they need work.
In any event, he’s bravely standing and reciting ... what they all believe. Obamagumbe says it, so it must be true; Big Bro’ does it, so it must be good.
I would be impressed if a professor stood and said, “Why aren’t we enforcing our immigration laws?”. It would probably be front page news in the `Chronicle of Higher Edumacation’.
Prof. Frank is behind the curve. The new term is no longer “immigrant,” now it’s “refugee.” That’s what the Obama spin machine is moving toward - designate the illegals as “refugees” from poverty and violence.
Soon that’s the only term you’re going to hear from the White House and the talking heads.
They seem to miss the fact that our nation once had a frontier that needed to be populated and a growing industry that could absorb semi-literate, semi- and unskilled labor in huge quantities.
This simply doesn’t exist any more. We NEEDED immigrants once. We don’t need them now.
A group home for foreign invaders right next door to the professor.
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