American WASPs still stinging immigrants

So the U.S. has the worst immigration laws in the world?  Well, let me respond with a little ol’ American folk song, parodied by yours truly, to go somethin’ like this:

This land was their land.

It wasn’t our land

from California to the New York island.

We took it from them.

Sometimes we paid them.

Now we must share this land for all.

No other nation on earth has our history—and sole purpose to admit people from around the world including our own hemisphere—especially within the past 500 years.  Everyone on the planet knows America’s convoluted, though in premise sparkling, history.  Europeans started migrating over here in the 1600s.  But the land the White man named America was not uninhabited.  There were thousands of native tribes, mostly brown-skinned people (described as red-skinned by the White man).  What would become the United States of America was born in multicultural conflict, not to mention the issue of enslaved Africans dragged in chains all the way over here to work the land for free till death.  What a multi-cultural mess: this vast territory, unstable, shocking and terrifying until forced colonization by the English-speaking Christian British.

Anglo Americans can’t forget our shameful past in ‘settling’ this land, right up to the late 20th century when Americans began to realize through public education the damage done to ancient civilizations and Native people.  And we think we have the right today to squawk about illegal immigrants?  If there weren’t jobs for them, people south of the Rio Grande wouldn’t keep coming up here.  American businessmen had a lot to do with creating the alleged illegal immigration problem rued today.

And who’s doing the ruing?  Mostly businessmen and the rich of WASP ancestry.  This is why Americans who felt our nation was not-so-great returned to electing a forty-fourth white man president.  To put a stop once and for all to illegal immigration, even in cases of asylum, the new president’s policy was to separate Central American parents from their Native speaking children.  Say what?  Some of the Indigenous families do not speak Spanish let alone English.  Despite the new get-tough deterrent, after traveling hundreds of miles and undergoing insurmountable hardships, many families crossed over, assumed the position to surrender in arrest to the United States while watching their own children taken into separate custody hundreds and thousands of miles from South Texas.  Many of the little ones were understandably traumatized by the family separation.  What an unholy mess yet again by White-ruling Americans.

Red and yellow, black and white

Something drastic had to be done to stop illegal immigration.  Not really.  Illegal crossings along the southern border have been reduced substantially: from more than a million annually during the Clinton years to less than a quarter of a million annually with the vast majority of those people seeking asylum.  Decent people cannot and will not live in Central American narco states where drug cartels rule with brutal beat downs, shake downs, gang rule, murder and rape.

Now American history is coming full circle.  It was similar hostilities—called ‘religious persecution’ in our schoolbooks—when English and European families began to leave everything behind for the New World.  Some died during the rough six-week boat ride across the choppy Atlantic Ocean.  Naturally, many arrived sick, feverish, infected, infectious, and yes dirty.  Through the decades, most European immigrants did not speak English.  Yet somehow they kept coming and coming and coming all the way over to this land right here.  The Catholic Irish were discriminated against for employment.  Then Italians were treated similarly.  And on and on with each nationality, although most Whites generally agreed to uphold equal discrimination against people of color from Central and South America, Africa and Asia.

There isn’t a plot of land in the entire country that anyone can claim free of past Native occupation.  But Native Americans did not believe the earth was something man could own or possess—only to care for, love, appreciate and cultivate.  All the earth belonged to God—their Sky God, the Supreme Being.  Whites took advantage of the sincere spiritual philosophy, offering trade for land: horses, pots, rifles, skins, whatever, maybe coins.  Who knows?  God knows.

Many supported Trump’s campaign to Make America Great Again (evidently code for Make America White Again).  Americans of fifth and sixth or more generations have had enough playing around with Spanish and English: seeing grocery signs, billboards, government documents and election ballots in both languages; infuriated with every business phone call a language selection cue to press 1 or 2.  Public schools in states bordering Mexico are becoming majority Hispanic.  Much to worry about … if you’re White and want everything and everyone to stay as it seemingly was in the last century.

Things change.  Times change.  Territories change.  Societies change.  Of this Europeans still residing in countries with bloody histories spanning a thousand-plus years know well.  Human migration is nothing new—in truth, it’s the way of the world.  But to a Baby Nation not yet 300 years old, with a ruling class still carrying on our forefathers’ prejudices and bigotry, immigration is the number one cause of all the world’s problems.

During the 20th century, America was great at assimilation: everyone melting into White privilege and culture.  But by the end of the century, when hyphenated Americans began to have pride in their diverse ancestral heritage, a social push back began.  African-Americans, Mexican-Americans, Cuban-Americans, Asian-Americans, Arab-Americans, Native Americans, etc., will no longer resonate WASP prejudices.  Those days are gone.  So we Americans and all the wanna-be Americans can accept, understand and enjoy our multi-cultural past, present and future.  Or we can go our separate ways—refusing to live together peacefully.