The debate in Congress over how to approach immigration issues varies from an attack on 'aliens' and the audacity they have to invade our country to a discussion on how to accomodate guest workers once they are here. An article in today's Washington Post, noting that our Olympic Team in Turin will be the most diverse ever, should remind us once again that the word 'American' (as distasteful as it may be in other parts of the Western Hemisphere) is not an ethnic or racial identification, but a signal that one adheres to the basic ideals that the United States is supposed to espouse. People of European descent in the United States conveniently tend to forget that their lineage on U.S. soil has existed at most for 500 years (a tiny dot in the timeline of human history), and that parts of what is now the United States were once happily settled by people of other races.
Of course, none of this information is new, nor does it add anything particularly refreshing to the immigration debate. However, we should be prepared to examine the nature of that debate and how it came it came to be. We show a schizophrenic response to simple questions on immigration, overwhelmingly telling pollsters that immigration is a good thing overall for our country, while saying in the same breath that more should be done to curb it. Some might say that the first question recalls an earlier period of immigration from European countries, while the question referring to 'curbing' immigration refers to current immigration patterns from Latin America and other parts of the world.
If this is the case, we have some serious questions to answer about what an American is. Since millions of people have immigrated to this country to produce the population that exists today, how can we call people that now want to be part of this country 'aliens'? Their desire to come here exhibits a willingness to be part of the American dream, whether or not that ideal is attainable. Our instinct to build a wall or fortify our borders may come from a fear that the America that will exist 50 years from now may be very different from the one we live in today. Racial majorities today will no longer be such, which has caused considerable anxiety in places like Miami and my home state of Texas.
Article comments
1 - Purple Tigress
America is a geographic location. Technically speaking the USA doesn't have a name. American could also be used to refer to Canadians, Mexicans, Central Americans and South Americans.
Mexico is the United States of Mexico or Estados Unidos de Mejico.
So actually the song, "America the Beautiful," could refer to more that just the USA. It is a sort of ethnocentricism that allows citizens of this names union of states to usurp the word "American" and attempt to use it only in reference to themselves.
Canada also received and offered refuge to people of African descent. Canada was a refuge for escaped slaves and draft dodgers.
2 - RedTard
I don't necessarily think people have a major problem with immigration, it is illegal immigration that creates friction.
People can't understand why they are forced to hire bilingual teachers at a premium to educate people whose parents don't pay taxes when studies have shown that English immersion works as well or better. People are confused about how how immigration breaks down doors at employers and prosecutes business owners yet doesn't have the time to pick up all the illegals in the welfare line.
I like immigrants, their stories, and their contributions to this country. I don't want to see a little Mexico with it's own language and culture set up in the southwestern US. Those sorts of divisions lead us down a dangerous path and millions more Americans are realizing it every year. I only hope we do something about it before it is too late.
3 - Victor Plenty
Migration of workers, whether legal or otherwise, is an unavoidable feature of any economic system driven primarily by market forces. People who fail to see this are doomed to waste time, energy, and vast amounts of money on futile attempts to enforce unrealistic laws.
4 - Dave Nalle
PT, the USA is the only one of the various states on this continent which refers to itself as the United States of America - hence the designation American with a capital 'A'. I think the rest of the people who live in the Americas in general would be americans with a small 'a'.
Dave
5 - Nancy
I agree with RedTard on this one: legal immigrants are very welcome; it's the ILLEGAL part most opponents can't and won't get over, nor should they. I don't understand why those who support illegals can't understand the objection to the "illegal" part, unless they're so morally deficient they have no concept that anyone should have to adhere to the law.
6 - gazelle
what is an american?
Walt Whitman (1819â€"1892)an american is also someone who is making the 'passage to India'
'Passage to India'
Leaves of Grass, 1900
7 - Michael Burns
Purple Tigress mentions a popular perception that the US somehow appropriated a name that should apply to virtually all the countries in the Western hemisphere. However, the use of "Las Américas" in Spanish seems (from my reading) to have been fairly uncommon in Spanish until well after US independence.
In fact, I seem to be able to trace its popularity to BolÃvar's "We are all Americans" call for the countries he'd helped liberate to form a confederation like that of the US. Before that, it was more common in Spanish to refer to specific provincial names, or to call the entirety "Las Indias" (the Indies).
I would bow on this question to a real study of historical documents, but this is the impression I have from a great deal of reading.