bRight & Early

Jim Lynch April 7th, 2006 8:36 am

As our representatives in Congress make their latest attempt at legislation regarding immigration let me lay out my thoughts. Originally this post was slated for posting on Tuesday, but it has grown in size and taken much more time than I had originally anticipated. I’m going to break it up into smaller pieces over the next several days.

The entire immigration debate is actually composed of several components: Cultural/Racial, Security, Economic, Amnesty, Practicality, Political, and perhaps others. Let’s examine them one by one.

Cultural/Racial

It is interesting to me that, except for the issue of assimilation, the cultural/racial component is not a motivation behind the call for reform. That’s not to say that there haven’t been attempts to portray it as a racial issue. There have been many. It is the main cudgel that those opposed to any toughening of the law use to try and intimidate the opposition.

Jay Tea had a very interesting post on Tuesday (04.04.06) that examines the difference between immigrants and colonists.

The recent mass protests in favor of illegal aliens showed their true colors — red, white, and green. Mexican flags were highly prominent, in some cases even being flown over United States flags (and in one stunning display of contempt, flying over an inverted American flag).

These are not the actions of immigrants. This is a declaration of intent by would-be colonists.

My great grandmother came to the United States from Warsaw. I can only recall meeting her once when I was three or four years old (she was the only one of my ‘greats’ alive when I was born). I remember that her English was very hard to understand and that she spoke to other members of the family in a language I didn’t know.

Her son, my grandfather, worked in a sugar factory (so I’ve been told) years before I was born. When he began working there his Foreman told him, “from now on you’re Smith,” and that was the family name for quite a few years. I have his WWI discharge papers with the name Stanley A. Smith on them.

In the very early Fourties Grandpop moved his family to a farm in Ewan, NJ. It was there that they once again began using the original family name — Szymanski. Mom was in third grade and had to re-learn to spell her own name.

The point of that story is this, from my great grandmother’s broken English, to my grandfather’s service in WWI, to the entire family history, there was always cultural pride, but there was an even greater pride in being Americans. They brought their heritage and made it a part of the melting pot, but their desire was to be Americans.

While I am sure that there are racists who favor strong immigration reform there is no QED that all who favor reform do so based on race. In fact, most of the arguments and discussion that I’ve read make it very clear that race plays no part in their opinions.

This issue is not about race, but it does include the idea of assimilation. I first remember learning about the concept of a ‘melting pot’ back in the days of the fondue craze, and I’ve always tied the two together. Irish, Polish, English, German, and French are my melting pot. The greater American melting pot includes all races, all nationalities, all backgrounds. Assimilation makes them a part of the bigger whole. But throw a rock into the fondue pot and it remains a rock. It may be covered with cheddar, but it is still a rock at it’s core.

Very few of those who are here illegally show any interest in adopting and adapting to being American. This must be part of any plan for reform if it is to have any success at all. To leave this out will actually foster racism by those who are more interested in their race then in being citizens.

In the next post I’ll take a look at the Security component. Can we all agree that secure borders are important? I think so too.

UPDATE: I am sure that many others are writing on this topic. If you have a post dealing with the Racial/Cultural aspect of illegal immigration, please create a trackback to this post, leave a comment, or drop an email to lakelandjim at gmail dot com.

Linked with TMH’s Bacon Bits Bacon Break — Palm Sunday Weekend and the picnic at basil’s blog.

• Illegal Immigration , Second Cup
• Comments(3)

Add your blog to the Blogiversary Database

172 views