In the founding document of the United States, that unanimous declaration of the Second Continental Congress, is found a list of the Injuries and Usurpations which compelled the founders to the Separation. While it is often argued (see here, here) that the Declaration of Independence is not a legal document, and it is for this reason that we do not celebrate July 4th as the founding of our nation but as a pleasant time to watch the sky explode, we should occasionally return to this most fundamental and important of American documents to make sure we are not repeating the mistakes of an oppressive tyrant.
One of the Facts submitted to a candid World as proof of the Tyranny and Despotism of the English king was that: "He has endeavored to prevent the Population of these States; for that Purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their Migration hither[.]" This endeavor was so loathed by our revolutionaries that they included it in their declaration to the world, a declaration that started our process to statehood and that proclaimed, immutably and eternally, the right of the People to Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.
Today, we again face a threat to the emigration of individuals hither, which is a threat to our economy, our collective notion of self-worth, and our continued existence as a place in which dreams can become reality. This threat comes in the form of American citizens, themselves descendant of immigrants, who think that the United States of America has an official national language (it does not), who consider this country theirs and theirs alone (it is not), who see anyone with dark skin and dark hair as a threat to their personal safety (also not true). Just as in the past, immigrants today perform those jobs (in agriculture, food service, waste-removal, landscaping, etc.) that few native-born citizens seem willing to perform. But now, instead of openly shuffling the newly arrived into crappy and low-paying workshops and letting them pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, we are building continent-long fences and criminalizing large groups of aliens who come here because they cannot make enough to support their families by working in the countries in which they were born.
Loud are the voices that call for the booting of immigrants back over our borders, voices emanating from bodies that consume lettuce in the spring and cheap apples by the bushel, bodies that eat in restaurants priced reasonably because of the illegals working in the kitchen, bodies that perambulate happily in well-manicured gardens. Incensed they are, pounding their chests and saying, This is my country, and no brown person is going to sneak in and steal my job.
These xenophobic and confused people among us do not understand that our greatest national symbol stands atop a stone base on which is engraved an open plea for immigrants, no matter how poor or tired, to come to this nation. They do not understand that, since our nation's founding, we have been a haven for base and penniless people seeking to better themselves and to make for themselves new and happier lives. They do not understand that the founders of the United States of America took up arms against the most powerful military nation at the time because the leader of that nation was obstructing the emigration and naturalization of peoples wishing to settle here.
We are a nation of immigrants, and of people descendant of immigrants. Immigration has allowed our country to grow even while the populations of most other industrialized nations are shrinking. Immigration allows us to consume cheap produce and to do many things that would be prohibitively expensive if not for illegal aliens working for starvation wages just to make those things possible.
We need cheap labor in America, and cheap labor comes from unskilled immigrants. Give these people who believe so much in the potency of the American dream that they will undergo unimaginable hardships a pathway to citizenship, or at least provide them with some method by which they might more easily gain temporary employment status. Let them pull themselves up by their own bootstraps without having to live in perpetual fear of being ground down under the boots of club-wielding police officers.
I am a Son of the American Revolution, a descendant of the ur-immigrants who came ashore at Plymouth Rock, a lover of Lady Liberty and of the principles for (and on) which she stands, and I welcome any and all persons who would like to pursue their Happiness in the country for which my ancestors fought and died.
Bienvenidos a los Estados Unidos. Andale – mucho trabajo aqui.
Ultima Ratio Regum - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp
No comments:
Post a Comment