The declining value of American citizenship.
My father legally immigrated to the United States in 1906 from his native Sicily at age16. Originally, he planned to return after remitting sufficient cash for his parents and siblings to purchase more land and homes. After a few years here, he realized there was no going back for him. He married, settled down, raised a family and began the long, arduous task of becoming a U.S. citizen.
On his march to citizenship, I vaguely recall something called a half paper, then more vividly his first paper a few years later, then his exam on basic American history and civics for which he laborioously studied and I quizzed him on over the years. Then , one fine day his triumphant return from Boston after being sworn in as a U.S. citizen.
My dad's pursuit of citizenship was certainly not unique. Nearly all other immigrants in those post depression, pre ww2 days in Lawrence, Mass., circa 1939, shared the same general experience because the value of U.S. citizenship was priceless. The standard response, regardless of ethnicity, to any critic of America was " No one is forcing you to stay here".
Sadly. in recent decades after an awakening to the illegal immigration problem across the southern American border with Mexico we began to hear more and more of the changes that cumulatively have eroded the value of what was held to be priceless not that many years ago.
Illegals on welfare, healthcare via the emergency room, bilingual elementary education ( rescinded in California ), store signs, public signs, operating instructions,etc. in both english and spanish. Can you imagine the morass created by every ethnic group back in Lawrence if they had demanded everything be bilingual in their own native tongues? Some politicians and some business men in pursuit of extra votes or bucks have caved in to this notion seemingly without a thought given to the erosion of their own citizenship value as well as all legal americans.
Today, after years of neglect, congress is finally doing something about the problem. What do we get? A senate bill that not only repeats the mistakes of Simpson/Mazzoli in 1986 but grants illegals social security benefits, a guest worker proposal that allows mostly unskilled illegals to compete with our lowest income Americans and per Robert Rector's calculations could give us anywhere from 60 to 100 million immigrant-residents, all from a single culture , that will with certainty overwhelm our unique American culture. Exactly the opposite of the melting pot concept. The melting pot took immigrants- Irish, Italian, Polish, German, French, Chinese, Japanese,latino - and like the classic concept of the economic invisible hand, molded this plethora of cultures into the freedom and liberty loving, prosperous, fair minded American society as each ethnic culture contributed their share to the overall. Lets not let that unique achievement get trampled into just another chapter in the world history books.
Its time to pull out all the stops, get the illegal immigration stopped cold while we change our legal immigration structure to give us the skilled or non-skilled workers as our country needs on a timely basis in order for all to contribute to the " shining city on a hill ".
On his march to citizenship, I vaguely recall something called a half paper, then more vividly his first paper a few years later, then his exam on basic American history and civics for which he laborioously studied and I quizzed him on over the years. Then , one fine day his triumphant return from Boston after being sworn in as a U.S. citizen.
My dad's pursuit of citizenship was certainly not unique. Nearly all other immigrants in those post depression, pre ww2 days in Lawrence, Mass., circa 1939, shared the same general experience because the value of U.S. citizenship was priceless. The standard response, regardless of ethnicity, to any critic of America was " No one is forcing you to stay here".
Sadly. in recent decades after an awakening to the illegal immigration problem across the southern American border with Mexico we began to hear more and more of the changes that cumulatively have eroded the value of what was held to be priceless not that many years ago.
Illegals on welfare, healthcare via the emergency room, bilingual elementary education ( rescinded in California ), store signs, public signs, operating instructions,etc. in both english and spanish. Can you imagine the morass created by every ethnic group back in Lawrence if they had demanded everything be bilingual in their own native tongues? Some politicians and some business men in pursuit of extra votes or bucks have caved in to this notion seemingly without a thought given to the erosion of their own citizenship value as well as all legal americans.
Today, after years of neglect, congress is finally doing something about the problem. What do we get? A senate bill that not only repeats the mistakes of Simpson/Mazzoli in 1986 but grants illegals social security benefits, a guest worker proposal that allows mostly unskilled illegals to compete with our lowest income Americans and per Robert Rector's calculations could give us anywhere from 60 to 100 million immigrant-residents, all from a single culture , that will with certainty overwhelm our unique American culture. Exactly the opposite of the melting pot concept. The melting pot took immigrants- Irish, Italian, Polish, German, French, Chinese, Japanese,latino - and like the classic concept of the economic invisible hand, molded this plethora of cultures into the freedom and liberty loving, prosperous, fair minded American society as each ethnic culture contributed their share to the overall. Lets not let that unique achievement get trampled into just another chapter in the world history books.
Its time to pull out all the stops, get the illegal immigration stopped cold while we change our legal immigration structure to give us the skilled or non-skilled workers as our country needs on a timely basis in order for all to contribute to the " shining city on a hill ".
posted by sam carrubba at 8:25 PM
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