I’m going to add one more point (or two) here bc this issue is kinda personal to me as well (immigration).
Everyone that has come to this country has come bc they were being persecuted back home, were starving, or needed a job and economic opportunity. That covers the Puritans, the Irish, the Italians, the Jews, the Eastern Europeans…everyone except African Americans. Hell, even the native Americans came here across the Bering sea land bridge looking for game and land, they just happened to be the first humans to get here.
We didn’t have any immigration restrictions at all in this country until we brought in Chinese workers for the western part of the transcontinental railroad building and we got a huge influx of Irish immigrants during the potato famine.
And guess what the Chinese and Irish were considered not “American “, not white, not of good moral character, not “worthy” of being American and their immigration here was destroying our country and diluting our country. Same thing happened again with the Italians and the Eastern Europeans later.
Our first immigration laws wren passed based on ethnic and racial bigotry and discrimination.
Now, we see the same ****, the same bullsh1t arguments against my people, Hispanics, being trotted out again.
Now, I agree 100% that we need immigration laws and we need a secure border. No question about that, but we can enforce those laws humanely and we can recognize that the Latinos coming here are no different than any of our ancestors who came here for the same reasons back in the day.
I’ll say it again on here, our country is a country of immigrants, we have no distinctly unique American culture, it is a culture of “no culture, or all culture mixed together”. We see that with our food, American cuisine is a hodgepodge of all the cultures that have come here with a twist on it, we’re the ultimate fusion dish.
The secret sauce to our success as a nation is our diversity. A crashing together of different ways of thinking etc is why we have so much innovation. When everyone looks, talks, and acts and thinks the same, you don’t get 5he internet, mass production, splitting the atom, putting men on the moon, social media, automobiles for everyone, the stock market, and on and on.
By not being burdened by a culture or history that goes back 1000s of years, we are free to create new ideas/ideals (like our founding fathers/principles)
We are defined as Americans not by race, creed, or ethnicity, or any other physical or geographic characteristics.
We are defined by our principles and we are bound together by them, the idea that we have a god given right to individual life, liberty, and the persute of happiness. Everyone who lives here and is coming here wants the same thing.
We. Have always become better and stronger and more profitable as a nation as a result of immigration. Don’t be scared just because they’re mostly tan and speak a different language from you. Within one or two generations, they’ll be completely “American” just like the Italians, Irish etc before them.
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