Immigration

By

William D. Dannenmaier

Five hundred thousand illegal immigrants enter the United States each year. Feeble attempts to stop this violation of our laws are protested by multiculturalists and illegal residents. They argue that the United States is a nation of immigrants.

That is true. The first immigrants of whom we are aware were American Indians. They settled in various parts of this continent in different cultural groups, some more successful, some less successful. Probably their one unifying characteristic was their willingness to war on one another and to torture and kill any captured enemy: man, woman or child. (In this they were similar to African tribes such as the Zulu. European tribes of the same period were equally willing to make war on one another, but seldom carried that to the torture and death of women and children.)

Following waves came from Europe, seeking to escape totalitarian rules. Unlike founders of Central and South American countries, the founders of the United States had no interest in being totalitarian rulers. Our founders developed the previously unimagined concept of legal equality for free citizens.

Continuing waves of settlers to a nearly uninhabited land included French Huguenots, Germans, Swedes, Norwegians, Irish, Poles, and Italians.

There were interesting commonalties among these peoples that extended well beyond the color of their skins. The vast majorities were seeking to escape the feudal conditions of their homelands. Mostly, they wished to live in peace and have the right, as free and equal citizens, to work and worship as they wished. They had no interest in bringing with them the cultures they had left. They endorsed the beliefs of the founding fathers and accepted an intellectual and emotional kinship with them. Neither were they believers in multi-culturalism. A friend of mine, whose grandmother had immigrated from Ireland, said his grandmother despised St. Patrick’s Day and claimed the only people who loved Ireland were those who had never grown up there.

Another commonality was their interest in joining society. They learned the English language. The Germans did not demand the right to have laws written in English translated into German for their benefit. Similarly, none of the others claimed special privilege for the languages of the nations they left. They might speak the language of their homeland among themselves, but they were proud to use English in public, even if with an accent.

While currently condemned for their treatment of the Indians, European settlers actually brought, perhaps forced, peace on the warlike Indian tribes. A plaque in the West commemorates the last conflict between Indians of which I am aware. A hunting party of 200 Crow Indians were trapped and killed by the Blackfeet in the 1990’s. This inter-tribal warfare ended with the establishment of law by the European settlers, although it did not end the hatred between tribes as still exists between the Sioux and the Chippewa.

Another interesting fact: none of the nations from which these varied immigrants originated demanded that the United States make special rules to accommodate them. They accepted the United States as an independent nation.

Now things seem to have changed. The new wave of immigrants, primarily Central and South Americans of Indian descent, expect the nation to change its habits and its laws to accommodate them. Official and unofficial documents, at a cost of millions of dollars, must be printed in Spanish as well as in English. An immigrant from the Muslim Middle East demanded, and received, the right to have her driver’s license photograph taken with her wearing a burka and a veil. In her homeland she would not have been permitted to have a driver’s license, but Florida issued her one. That license could be used by any man or woman who chose, all they would have to do would be to cover everything except their eyes. In California they are editing the textbooks to present positive, and false, images of the nations our new immigrants, legal and illegal, have rejected.

I’ve seen no such demand to cleanse histories of the European nations. Quite the opposite, we dwell on the horrors of the European past, emphasizing slavery, while neglecting to mention that those slaves were enslaved by their black chieftains and sold to Arab masters who, in turn, sold them to Europeans. One hears little, however, of the Europeans sold as slaves in Africa, a practice that continues in modified form into the present.

Another interesting change has been the protests by Mexico of our treatment of illegal immigrants and of convicted criminals of Mexican descent. If Poland or Ireland or Germany or any other of the European nations ever objected to our policies concerning immigrants who came from their nations, I’ve not heard of it.

The United States may be a nation of immigrants, but early immigrants accepted the language and the guiding principles of the founders of the nation. This current wave is primarily illegal. These illegal entrants have rejected our law and our sovereignty by their very presence as do those who support them. During the recent Hispanic demonstrations they waved Mexican flags and argued that California, Texas and several other states belonged to Mexico.

I don’t believe we should want, need or have such people in our nation. They do not wish to be citizens of the United States, they wish to change the United States. A hundred and fifty years ago we fought the bloodiest war of our history to prevent the dissolution of our nation. Will we accept it now? It would be a true world disaster if the United States, currently one of the most desirable places in the world in which to live, were to dissolve into a middle European or Middle Eastern or Middle African type mess of multiple “nations” with multiple languages and multiple sets of principles.