They're Coming To America:Part 1: The Long Tradition of Immigration

AMERICA
Neil Diamond
Written by Neil Diamond


Far
We've been traveling far
Without a home
But not without a star
Free
Only want to be free
We huddle close
Hang on to a dream

On the boats and on the planes
They're coming to America
Never looking back again
They're coming to America

First off, let me tell you that I have not read the President's entire proposed policy on guest worker cards or amnesty or anything related to it. All I've heard so far is exactly what I wrote in the first sentence. But, I decided to talk about it in economics and security from my perspective.

Everywhere you read on conservative blogs, you pretty much get the feeling that people want to stop illegal immigration. They also may believe that we are allowing too many immigrants of any form into the US. I'm not sure what anyone believes is appropriate in terms of numbers or how they are supported.

The first thing that I think we need to recognize is the obvious: people enter the US illegally every day. We have thousands of miles of border either linked to other countries, like Mexico and Canada, or open to the sea. Every day, people pay thousands upon thousands of dollars to be led into the shining city on the hill. They come here because there is freedom and there is work and there is money. Some people actually indenture themselves to what amounts to sweat shops and slave labor, just to have the chance to come here and live the American dream, the dream that we talk about as being the grandest ideological and economic scheme on the entire planet. Is it any wonder that people want to come here?

The second obvious fact is that many people enter the US, perfectly legal, and remain in the US past their legal limit. Why? Are they all a bunch of criminals and possible terrorists? No. It's that dream factor again. It's the American Dream. So grand that it reaches people in the darkest corners of the world, beaming into their minds and luring them to the bright shores of hope.

In the latest diatribe against immigrants, many have now taken up the cry of possible terrorists entering the US through these back doors and that, of course, makes immigrants even more suspicious than they were before. You think anyway.

Before I go on to the core of what I believe is one hell of a grand scheme in controlling immigration, I want to talk a little about the history of immigration to the US and my own family's personal story.

Think back, way back into the annals of the American saga. The United States did not exist. It was a continent with great powers vying to settle it first. The pilgrims we so revere were in a very real since, illegal immigrants, if you want to cut the cookie just so. There were some people that lived on the continent long before the pilgrims and we call them Native Americans or Indians. You know, they weren't really all that happy after the first couple of boat loads of strange people, with strange clothes and strange customs and strange language, started landing on the shores and building fortified towns, taking up their good hunting and farming land. I believe there were many instances where the existing people actually took up arms and tried to force those new immigrants off the shores of this great land.

But those pilgrims were a hardy bunch and weren't going to be denied their first taste of real freedom and opportunity by a bunch of "savages". I bet you, way back in the day, there were some tribal elders sitting around pondering what the hell they were going to do with all these new people flooding into the country. They would take up the land, force them, the natives, to live in ever smaller spaces. Some apparently decided that they could bargain with these folks. Sell them a plot of land and write a treaty telling them that they could go this far ___ and not a step farther. Funny how those new immigrants just didn't listen and kept on coming as the word spread about this new land of opportunity.

Certainly, the tribal elders were right in many respects. The land that they controlled and used for their own got increasingly smaller and the resources that were so abundant got increasingly smaller and their culture became increasingly changed from their interaction with the new immigrants. Of course, the immigrants were quick to adopt some of the native habits and practices since they worked here so well.

The tribal elders were right. Their way of life changed irrevocably and nearly disappeared except for the names of places, the techniques of farmers even today like irrigation and soil conservation and the plants that they grow. You can even see their style of dress that influenced the immigrants even to this day. Yet, we hail those first immigrants as the founders of a great new nation. The movers and shakers of their times.

After the great protestant immigration came the Catholics particularly, the Irish. They were a despised lot of immigrants. The now long-standing Protestant "natives" thought they were a bunch of savages. They complained about their ignorance, taking up space, taking up resources and generally changing the society and culture around them. Then came the Italian and the Chinese and the Germans and the Swedes. Entire peoples and with each new wave, those that had come before them and established a beach head of their own either in existing communities or moving out and settling "unsettled lands", always claimed that they were better than the new comers. They were here first. Those new comers were going to ruin everything these folks who had come before had established. They would take jobs and land don't you know.

It's been the lament of every generation and every population group that came before them. This land isn't big enough for the all of us.

As a noted Brit used to say: Poppycock.

My maternal grandfather came to this country ILLEGALLY. In 1921, at the age of 16, he stowed away on a cargo ship with another friend, bringing nothing but a few momentos, clothes and a bible in German and landed some where on the east coast. He never did pass through Ellis Island. He made his way to North Dakota where some other family and friends lived and established himself as a fine upstanding citizen of the US. My great grandmother on my father's maternal side came to the United States with her two sisters around 1889. The potato famine was not yet a distant memory in Ireland. There were still rebellions and economic problems. Katherine, Kitty and Mary Murphy sailed from Munster in 1889 and landed in the US at the height of immigration.

Katherine married a Cherokee named Own Mae (English spelling) who had taken the last name "Howard" from the people that he worked for in Tennessee. They literally drove across country in a covered wagon to a little place called Nevada (Ne-vay-da), Missouri where they brought their seven children, the youngest, my great grandfather.
I could go on and on about each of my relatives and how they got here. The point is, they were a bunch of immigrants, for the most part, and, for the most part, they were illegal. And, for the most part, with each wave of new immigrants they were shunned and blamed for everything from the rising crime rate to the rising cost of bread. And, all they did was fornicate and have children, those savages.

Many people claimed that the continued immigration was going to be the ruin of this great land. They formed committees, sponsored laws and, yet, those darned immigrants kept coming. Instead of being the ruin of this land, they were the making of it. If it weren't for the Irish and the Germans filling up the ranks of the Union Army, we'd have two countries on this continent: the United States of America and the Confederate States of America.

Immigrants, both legal and illegal, brought their skills and knowledge to this country and shared it with others who took some of their skills, knowledge and even technology and turned it into the biggest and most successful industrial revolution of all the nations. Aside from innovation and technology, the immigrants brought something else to the table that fueled this great industrial and economic boom: cheap labor.

They were scorned for it, too. There were already too many people here looking for job, people said. These groups had a tendency to move into communities that were like their own from back home and not assimilate, people said. It caused untold friction and sometimes, outright wars.

Yet, here we are, over 150 years later and the nation did not fall, nor falter, but kept right on growing and the immigrants kept right on coming. These immigrants filled our factories and filled the ranks of our military in times of crisis. They contributed to the growing American Dream and to the economic growth and stability of the country. Where would we be if those immigrants hadn't come before us? One thing's for sure, we'd still be singing, "God Save the Queen" instead of "My Country Tis of Thee".

And, here we are, listening to the same complaints of many about the new flock of immigrants, whether they be Asian, Philipino, Latin, Arab, African, Russian, you name it, they all want to come to America and everybody who's been here for awhile want to talk about them, just like their ancestors were talked about so long ago. It's almost ironic. It is, in a very real sense, the test, the right of passage for each group of immigrants that come and finally pass muster and become just another group of people in the melting pot of America.

Stay tuned for the second half of our post: Economics and Security where we'll discuss the economics of improved immigration and the impact on security.