COMING TO AMERICA
Immigrants...Our Country was built on the backbone of immigrants. From all over the world they came to be part of a success story. They wanted to be free and poverty in their countries sent them here. There were Irish, French, English, Polish, Italian, German. Jews and they all found their little niches. Then, we went on to Puerto Ricans, Mexicans. Asians, etc.
The only ones IMO who got the shaft were the African Americans who didn't ask to come here. They were kidnapped, thrown in hulls in ships and transported to all parts unknown. Their own people did this. Then, they were sold like animals. The darkest times. We can never make amends. It is up to them.. But. I would imagine they are happy to live here considering their options.
The American Indian had it tough. It was their land and they fought for it. They lost. Treaties are out there which have not been honored.
And, speaking of immigrants. I am very torn on this one, For the life of me, I cannot fathom returning a mother and child back to Honduras or sending all of these young people back to Mexico. There has to be a better answer.
Coming to America....the hopes and dreams of so many.
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My fulfilled family's dreams.
"For the life of me, I cannot fathom returning a mother and child back to Honduras or sending all of these young people back to Mexico. There has to be a better answer."
On this we agree.
Personally I believe a combination of being global leaders setting the agenda in these countries that need and want our consumers so badly, we work to make sure the countries the majority of undocumented immigrants are coming from reform, create real safety for their citizens as well as opening up job opportunities. If these countries were to embrace real reform and we stopped cooperating with countries who continue to skirt the rules and oppress their citizens, maybe they won't be so anxious to leave their home countries. But when such huge disparities exist between safety, living conditions and job opportunities there's no wonder we have so many families trying desperately to get across our borders.
If we spent one half of what Trump wants to spend on the wall assisting the Mexican military and police to combat the cartels in their own country we would reduce the numbers of illegal border crossing by far more than a boondoggle wall could ever block. Not many people want to go through tremendous hardship risking being assaulted or even killed trying to cross our borders if they didn't feel they had to in order to escape something worse.
African Americans aren't the only people forcibly brought to America as slaves or indentured workers/servants, but that aside, I like the message in this article.
What is the message ?
My family were indentured from England for ten years.
America was built by immigrants, but it is not large enough to take in all 7.5 billion people in the world so there must be some sort of limitations around it. We just cannot take in everybody who wants to move here. IMO I think the current annual limit of 1 million is too high and should be reduced.
I agree, but for the life of me, I can't look at their faces.
Thanks Magnoliaave; inspiring and thoughtful article.
My two cents are that sometimes the heart understands righteousness even when the mind can't quite grasp it. We do have to deal with immigration issues, and imho should be done so with wisdom, compassion and mercy as a guide; rather than, with political persuasion and fear.
:~)
For the agricultural industry
Trump is considering letting the ag industry to still employ illegals. The Secretary of AG is working up a proposal
Overpopulation is the problem politicians don't want to address
Yup exactly so Charger, and that is the issue that needs to be dealt with, no matter the country.
I agree immigration was a great thing before the welfare state existed. Milton Friedman saw the handwriting on the wall and explains why you can’t have open borders with a welfare state. Immigration is great as long as they are illegal.
Milton Friedman was an economist (whose fiscal ideas have been complete failures every time a republican administration has implemented them) and clearly doesn't know anything or chooses to ignore the facts around the history of immigration in this country. There was vigorous, if not vicious, anti-immigrant sentiment and activity in this country at least back to the 1850s when immigration stopped being dominantly Protestant and from England and Scotland. He seems to suggest that immigrants were met at Ellis Island with confetti and brass bands and led directly to get their job and enjoy the American "Dream." Those legal immigrants of pre-1914 were treated the same way as illegal immigrants are today--as a cheap labor source with no rights who could be exploited by the owner-class and who lived in extraordinary poverty. Their jobs, in other words, allowed them to live a subsistence life.
Friedman and everyone of his ilk or fan club propagate this myth that if you take away everything that gives the working class (and nowadays, even the middle class) and go back to the way it was before there were labor protections and minimum wages and other various social reforms that we'll be taken back to some golden age which never existed. Only people who never learned this country's history or decided to ignore it can hold this ridiculous mythology.
The Transportation Act of 1718 gave British judges sentences of 7 years of indenture in the colonies in lieu of whipping and branding. Also instead of a normal sentence of hanging for a more serious crime people would be sent to work in the colonies for 14 years. An estimated 52,000 convicted prisoners were sent to the colonies under the Act. Some historians claim as much as 10% of all migrants here at the time were British convicts. This was thought to clean up the streets of London as well as to fix the labor shortage in America.
The colony of Georgia is historically thought of as a penal colony. It was originally setup to be by James Oglethorpe to use criminals released in a wave from the British prisons with no means. He took them as debtors to Savanna, but it didn't really work as Oglethorpe is quoted "as many of the poor who had been useless in England were inclined to be useless likewise in Georgia." most of the debtors (90%) during the peak wound up in Maryland and Virginia. Virginia tried to pass an a law to prohibit convicts from being sent in 1670 and was overruled by the king. In 1722 Pennsylvania tried to pass a tax for the importation of any people for servitude who had been found guilty of any heinous crimes. This too was overruled.
Women at the time were convicted of for such heinous crimes as being lewd and walking the streets after 10pm. Many times men were convicted for political reasons as prisoners after some battle.
There are writings as early as 1630 talking about Scots being sent after losing battles. Other writings of Irishmen sent during their wars with Britain.
Darn, this is interesting. In my history it seems that two brothers were sent over indentured and ended up in N.C. I have the goods on one, but not the other.
My ex-wife's sir name was made up so a certain band of Irish criminals could identify and find one another once they got here.
Incredible! A tidbit......You know the one I said I had the goods on? Well, he sat in that hot smoky room with the D of I and Constitution people. Wonder what his crime was in England. Couldn't have been much.
My Irish ancestor's surname was Mallon. The surname of "Typhoid Mary" was Mallon. I submit this as a cautionary tale about finding out too much about one's ancestry. *
*just to be clear, "my" Mallons were not related to "that" Mallon.
Now there's a tragic historical tale. Almost 30 years in isolation... wow.
One should get the ancestry from accounts of the time when possible.
Trouble is, the record keeping in the 1850s was sketchy at best. Many if not most Irish immigrants tended to aggregate first in Maryland due to its high concentration of Catholics as the only original colony that was set up as a haven for them. Many of those immigrants moved west (as mine did) but we have no accounts of that journey. My aunts and older sisters did find out that my Irish GGM and German GGF met at the Mother Seton "complex" in MD and were married there before heading to central KS. Interestingly, I just recently learned that my GGM went first to Quebec before entering the US. It seems both had extended family members who either came as a group or had already settled in KS when my kin arrived in the late 1850s. I mention all this just to illustrate how difficult in my case at least it was to come up with much or very solid details.
My brother went through the Mormon Church records, most of them are really accurate, he also went to our home towns in Kansas to go through the grave yards to find names he knew of, then he tracked down others he found on birth certificates and, census records.
And the earlier you go the worse it gets. My gf's mother took a trip to Ireland a couple of years ago to track down family records there. Their US records go back to the late 1800's/early 1900's. Her father is planning a trip to Poland to do some research on his side of the family. They came through Ellis Island so were documented there even with a name change.
I've done no research on my families.
Yes, and try to track down a Thomas Murphy in Ireland without specific knowledge!
I've got my English and French ancestry down pretty well, but it's Thomas that is the problem.
LOL, Thomas Murphy, the John Smith of Ireland.
Have you tried using the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints to find him? They have really great ancestry records.
Yes, they do. I have tracked the family to settling in MS. Farmers. I have the original court record where he signed his approval for his 15 year old daughter to marry. She became my grandmother's mother. Interesting.
How about maritime records? Passenger ship records anything like that?
It seems the Thomas Murphy name is just too common,
Funny though on ship records. I found that my French ancestor was a cabin boy on a French ship that came into the MS Gulf coast. He became an Indian scout, married an Indian and became in charge of Indian Affairs in Washington.
Later records were quite good. My dad's parents came through Ellis Island and we actually got copies of the original ships manifest and the processing records from Ellis Island for both of them.
Really cool stuff!
That is cool stuff.
That is cool.
Yeah, through the Ellis Island Foundation we got the actual check in sheet (a copy) with their name on it, a picture of the boat they came across on, all matted and framed together. It is really cool.
One of the nicer gifts i've ever had the pleasure of giving.
I can totally understand that, my family didn't come over and, land at Ellis Island, we got here before it was used.
My family is a mixed bag, some newer, some old. Moms side has been here for nearly 400 years. Lots of history there, very difficult to track.
What's the problem? There couldn't be more than a few dozen thousand by that name at any one point in time there.