Slamming the Golden Door
Diligent readers abreast of the latest news (wildfires, wars, mass shootings, environmental collapse, political insults du jour) are well aware of the nation’s simmering problems with immigration. It’s again a hot topic of political brick-batting in the current election cycle. (e.g., “Build that wall! Build that wall!”)
The Immigration Problem (it’s always a ‘problem,’ not a ‘resource’) has been variously summarized by the virulently MAGA mob as:
- “Too Damned Many Im’grants!”
- “Too many rapin’/robbin’/killin’/crazy im’grants!”
- “Damn im’grants don’t speak no good English!”
- “They’s bringin’ in drugs and disease!”
- “Damn furriners takin’ jobs from hard workin’ ‘mericans!”
- “Don”t need no more o’ them damn (insert applicable pejorative: micks/chinks/kikes/dagos/wetbacks, krauts/babylonians)!”
Alas, the recurring immigration sentiment woven throughout U.S. history seems to be: “Why’nt they all go the hell back where they come from?!”
For better or worse, America is nothing if not a saga — a drama — of immigration: celebrating, attacking, banning and regulating it. All, no doubt, to the amusement of Native Americans whose ancestors immigrated from Asia when this place was even empty of echoes. Those Indigenous Immigrants were here when the White Devils arrived, first in a trickle then a flood that eventually swamped their land, savaged their people and herded survivors onto Tribal Lands, a/k/a “reservations.” Damned immigrants!
Indeed, history tells us that slavery in America was — at its core — a tale of immigration. Forced, to be sure, but a mass migration of people – in chains – to a land where they had never lived & never wanted to. It took a Civil War to free them.
As to millions of Chinese imported as cheap labor for the mines, mills & wineries of 19th century America? When they were seen as taking too many jobs from white folks, in 1882 Congress banned them, too.
Ah, Congress.
Since the passage of the Naturalization Act in 1790, Congress — like the nation — has tortured itself with the who/how/what/when/why/”ya-gotta-be-sh*ttin’-me!” of who should/shouldn’t be allowed to enter and/or stay in the U.S. A summary of the thirty-one (yes!) immigration laws passed by Congress since 1790 can be found at: https://www.migrationpolicy.org/sites/default/files/publications/CIR-1790Timeline.pdf.
Making matters worse, the French (our besties since 1776) were so enamored of America as a fresh start for the Entire World that they gave us the symbol of freedom for peoples around the globe: The Statue of Liberty.
Designed by the sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, it was gifted to the U.S. in 1886 and named Liberté éclairant le monde: “Liberty Enlightening the World.”
She was installed in foul weather with great ceremony on Bedloe Island in New York. It was a time of great social unrest in the U.S. not unlike the present, with considerable rich/poor, native/foreigner, employer/employee, black/white, & men/women conflict.
But all these years later, who would have thought that a poem inscribed in bronze on The Lady’s pedestal would inflame virulent 21st century anti-immigrant MAGA mobs? American poet Emma Lazarus wrote:
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-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.
Yep. That’s why them “damned illegals” swarm our borders: We invited them! Did anybody think to invite more billionaire immigrants, like Rupert Murdoch and Elon Musk?!
Nope! Just . . . tired, poor, huddled people. Wretched refuse. Yearning to breathe free. Homeless. Tempest-tossed people.
What self-respecting country invites those people?
