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Humorist Will Rogers was born in 1879 in the
Cherokee Territory, which later became Oklahoma.
He poked fun at the high and mighty, especially Congress. “When Congress makes a joke, it’s a law.
When they make a law, it’s a joke.”
One society lady didn’t appreciate his subtle humor though.
At a highbrow function Rogers found himself attending, she
quickly informed him, “My ancestors came over on the Mayflower.” “That’s okay, ma’am,” he drawled.
“Mine were here waiting to meet them.” Very likely if the American Indians who
befriended the Europeans coming ashore had known what the future offered
they wouldn’t have been so friendly.
But everyone was an immigrant some time.
The Indian tribes fought each over hunting ground, driving off,
killing or merging with the survivors.
And most likely some ethnic group was here before the ancestors
of the Indians moved into the land.
The Indians were stronger and maybe wiser than those they
displaced. The white men
had tricks up their sleeves the Indians didn’t imagine.
Smallpox and “fire water” are a couple of examples. No matter how hard the Indians, especially the
Cherokees, tried to merge with white civilization, they were turned
away. They had too much
land and the new immigrants wanted it.
John Ross was the last of the chiefs in the Tennessee-Georgia
area to fight with the law to stay.
The military’s guns were too much and they were sent west in
the Trail of Tears. They
were sent to a land nobody wanted in what is now Oklahoma—until oil
was discovered. With more land opened up by Indian removal, new
settlers—preferably European—were needed.
Prejudices dictated which ethnic group could enter and which
couldn’t. Northern
Europeans were even given preference over Southern and Slavic Europeans. Orientals weren’t even wanted—except when they needed
laborers for railroads. In 1875, sculptor Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi
began work on the Statue of Liberty as a gift from the French people to
the American people to symbolize a mutual love of freedom.
President Grover Cleveland dedicated it on October 28, 1986.
The statue is a woman holding in her left hand a table bearing
the inscription date of July 4, 1776, for adoption of the Declaration of
Independence. In her right
is a torch raised high. At the base a sonnet is inscribed, called “The
New Colossus” by Emma Lazarus. It
says, in part, “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-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door.” Of course, that didn’t apply to the American
Indians whose reservations kept shrinking in size and moved from
location to location depending on the prevailing political winds.
Gradually immigration quotas and regulations took hold.
Ellis Island was a sorting place for Europeans.
World War II and the devastation of European and Asian countries
made the American shore a welcome goal. Scarcely 50 years ago, someone wanting to visit
America even from a country such as Sweden had to have a resident
American sponsor. They had
to prove they wouldn’t be a burden to the government of the United
States. Times change. America has always been an asylum for those
politically persecuted. Early
New Englanders wanted to worship free.
Others in the Twentieth Century fled dictatorships.
Now immigrants flee poverty.
America is the land of milk and honey.
Many American welfare programs were so poorly constructed it has
been more lucrative to live at the government’s expense than to work.
An influx of foreign labor was inevitable.
They are hungry and ready to do the dirty job no one else wants. The Hispanic population has exploded with legal
and illegal immigrants. Government
officials have no adequate program in place to keep track of them.
There seems to be no functional policy.
It is not unusual to see someone who can’t speak English at the
grocery checkout counter with a food stamp card.
It is not rare to see someone strange to this country’s ways in
the hospital waiting room. There are plenty laws in place, but no one
enforces them. Anyone
coming here should prove they will not be a burden to the government.
There are employers making money off them. Let these employers pay for their insurance and welfare
benefits. Americans pay
with the funds deducted from each paycheck, from their annual income tax
payments. If someone wants to be a part of “the American
dream,” they can at least learn to speak English.
No reason the whole of society and government has to be adjusted
to accommodate newcomers. Overburdened
school systems have to offer special classes for those who know only a
foreign language. Again,
put the burden on the employers. They
get the benefit of the labor. Let
them share the expense, not some poor guy who has spent his life at a
machine lathe or behind a tractor. Immigration must come.
It just needs to be controlled—which isn’t now. If Will Rogers’ ancestors had it to do again,
I’m sure they would have set up quotas and allowed only immigrants who
had a sense of humor.
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