Yesterday in
After winning a second term, propelled in large part by attracting 70% of the Latino vote, both the President’s promise and Latinos’ insistence that he honor it have surged to a place near the top of the charts in importance. In fact, it is not just the President and Democrats who feel now is the time to move on this issue. Republicans, given their surprisingly poor showing in the Presidential and Senatorial elections, are motivated to rehabilitate their relationship with the Latino community.
- “What's changed, honestly, is that there is a new, I think, appreciation on both sides of the aisle — including maybe more importantly on the Republican side of the aisle — that we have to enact a comprehensive immigration reform bill." (This past Sunday on ABC's "This Week.)
The Irish, Polish, and various groups of Latinos, among others, have faced great resistance in their efforts to settle here in
Depending upon what or how you remember your American History, Christopher Columbus discovered
In 1492,
The “Gentleman from Genoa,” after having his proposal rejected by John II, King of
Amerigo Vespucci, also an Italian, was a financier, cartographer, navigator, and explorer. Between 1499 and 1502, Vespucci made two voyages to what would later be named
But this geo-historic puzzle is not complete. While not part of the typical American’s lore, Leif Ericson, a Norse explorer arrived in North America, and established a settlement at Vinland, on the northern tip of
Columbus, Vespucci, and Ericson had at least two pursuits in common. They were all explorers, of course, but perhaps more important each of the men was a colonizer. As such, they claimed the lands they “discovered” for the governments they represented. Moreover, they were granted considerable authority over the land areas they claimed.
The territory that we now know as the
On July 4, 1584, an expedition dispatched by Sir Walter Raleigh landed at Roanoke Island, in
You see, this is part and parcel to a plethora of dirty little secrets that regularly go untold from day-to-day in
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With
conquering limb astride from land to land;
Here at
our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty
woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the
imprisoned lightening, and her name
Mother of
Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows
world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The
air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“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!
The more the claptrap continues, the more I think about the words in the opening stanza of Woody Guthrie’s “This Land:”
This land is your land,
this land is my land
From the California to the Staten New York Island
From the Redwood Forest
And when I envision the dimensions and demographics of “This Land” when the settlers, or immigrants, or whatever you prefer to call them, arrived, I see that “This Land” was already inhabited. But that’s not all; I am reminded that large portions of America's indigenous people were wiped out by virulent strains of a variety of diseases that the Europeans brought to the “
In clear-eyed retrospect, I can see why many people
are so concerned about the inherent dangers of immigration. If one ascribes
the motives and actions of the original settlers and their benefactors to contemporary immigrants, potential consequences
could, in their view, indeed be dire. In
fact, if the horizon were to incorporate those dynamics, the gun-lobby’s
fixation could also be explained.
Of course, the fact is, we
live in a different world. The
challenges, and there are challenges, are different. Now our charge is to figure out how to
integrate immigrants into our nation’s economic machinery; not how to keep them
from ripping our country out of our grasp.
Through it all, we should remember that as this country was being
founded, a simple truth resonated…”Immigration:A Pathway to Citizenship!” Thus, it
is as it has ever been. Moreover, whether the
folks we call founders were Pilgrims, Patriots, or merely pilferers, no one
complained about them being extended amnesty.
I’m done; holla back!
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