Here is the text from a recent meme I saw:
“Tim Miller
You know what country was a real dysfunctional shithole when a bunch of their people immigrated here? Ireland. Mass Pedophilia cover-ups. Famine. Domestic Terror. Drunkenness. Maybe we’d be better off if the Walsh family had stayed rather than spawning asshole podcasters?”
This was in response to the following post:
“Matt Walsh
We’re constantly told about all of the wondrous benefits that hardworking Mexicans bring to our country. And yet Mexico, with all of its Mexicans, is a dysfunctional shithole that Mexicans desperately want to escape. Something isn’t adding up here.”
“Shithole.” A word our classy president has used to describe other countries, an example of terminology others have decided it was ok to emulate.
As I have mentioned in previous posts, I have done quite a bit of research into my ancestry. My research confirmed most of what I had been told growing up in terms of ethnicity: my dad was Nicaraguan, my mom was Spanish, German and Dutch.
Regarding the “Spanish” on my mom’s side, my grandfather, Jose Ortega, was the lead scout for Portola Expedition and is generally believed to be the “white person” to see the San Francisco Bay. The border crossed my family, so to speak – not the other way around, meaning we were already living in California when California became part of the United States.
The rest of my family on both sides immigrated to the United States. Whether or not I know the “why,” they all came for a reason.
My guess is if everything had been great at home or there was no substantial benefit to making such an arduous and daring venture (my ancestors didn’t hop on a plane – they took long boat rides and made long overland journeys to settle where they did), they wouldn’t have done it. Even my explorer grandfather came for a reason – the promise of fortune and land.
The stories of my ancestors’ lives needed a bit more digging – talking to my family and through research. These “stories” of my ancestors became more real as I came to understand both their lives and their circumstances. In the process, I found out some things that weren’t what I consider “brag” material.
For example, when we were kids, my father would tell us that as a child in Nicaragua, if he and his brother got into trouble with the police, once the police found out who they were, they would take them out for ice cream.
The story would make my sisters and me laugh. Under scrutiny, though, the reason was rather dark. My dad’s father was a schoolmate and life-long friend of Anastasio Somoza Garcia, the dictator of Nicaragua. Somoza, though he was very good to my family, was not a nice guy. A famous quote from FDR goes: “Somoza may be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch.”
Regarding Ortega, through research, I learned he knew Fr. Junipero Serra well and had many interactions with him. Serra’s legacy is more than mixed. He established the California missions but to the extreme detriment of the indigenous population. I wonder how much my grandfather had to do with the subjugation of Native Americans – not a happy contemplation.
It is a conundrum – reconciling pride in my roots with the not-so-prideful parts of it.
My family all immigrated legally. But I would venture to guess that anyone who immigrates, legally or not, are motivated by similar circumstances. They are driven by a want for a better life and, sometimes, simply for survival. (Let’s not forget those who did not immigrate but were kidnapped and forced into inescapable servitude – but I’ll save that for a different post.)
So, I ask you, where did your family come from? Why did they come? Do you have any idea of your family history, the life they led before immigrating to the US, the circumstances that precipitated their move? Because, unless you are part of the 2.6% of the U.S. population who are Native American (https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2022-11-22/the-native-american-and-alaska-native-population-at-a-glance), your family is from someplace else, and they very likely came because they felt they would be better off here.
Regardless of the hardships your family may have faced at home, when they came, they either stole or occupied stolen land. That means you are living on stolen land.
Think about all the efforts to return artwork stolen in WWII. It didn’t matter whether you stole the art or not. It was stolen. To right the wrong, artwork is being returned to their rightful owners or their heirs. Unfortunately, there seems no way to make right what has happened here in the U.S.
You think, this isn’t the same? The land was not “owned,” not deeded. It was there for the talking? But that idea is the white man’s idea based on white man’s laws of ownership, way of life. What is ignored was the established rules and way of life of the population who were here first. I guess the question comes down to whose laws/way of life reign? Those who are living there or those who come?
I often hear we can’t ignore that things need to change in this country. I also hear that the current administration isn’t always wrong and we can’t ignore the things it gets right.
I agree with the first statement. Not so much the second. Unfortunately, I can’t remember the journalist who wrote something to affect that Trump is right about some things but overdoes it. And, that is the problem – the overdoing it. Any right that is being done (and I am not sure there are) is not justified by the enormity of the wrongs being committed.
I am not an advocate of open borders and don’t disagree that we need a better system of immigration. But what is happening is not a course correction. None of what is happening is a course correction.
I believe it is about dismantling our Constitution, our country, and any moral values our country ever possessed. It is about taking from the poor to give to the rich. It is about removing people who don’t look like us to make our country homogenous again, though that is a fallacy – the only time this country was homogenous was before the white man came.
Here is another meme that was shared with me:
“When someone uses the word, ‘illegals’ I am done listening to what they have to say. I live in America, a nation stolen from the indigenous natives, built on the backs of slaves, & made prosperous by the sweat, & blood of immigrants. ‘Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.’ My country is not white. It’s not Christian. It’s American. It’s made up of people from around the globe. Humans aren’t illegal. But your dehumanization, & demonization should be.”
The US has a long history of using and abusing people to grow our country. As the white man conquered, they fought to hold on to their domination. Paths to citizenship were limited, laws enacted to ban immigration, the culture of people stolen, discriminatory laws created.
We were ok with Africans so long as they were slaves. We didn’t even consider them people. But, once freed, a concerted effort was made to ensure they would never be equal.
The same was true of the Chinese. We were ok with them when they were blowing themselves up building railroad tunnels. But, once they started to establish themselves in the U.S., start businesses and communities, we excluded them from entry to the country.
Yet, all immigrants weren’t treated equally.
Immigrants of European didn’t suffer the same fate. Think about the Irish who put in the hard labor to build our railroads, but faced widespread, harsh discrimination. In time, though, their assimilation into the US was accepted rather than fought as had been done with immigrants from other continents/countries.
This is all history – right? Unfortunately, we have not come very far. Look no further than the current administration granting refugee status to white Afrikaners from South Africa while revoking the temporary legal status of people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela* as well as instituting travel bans/severely restricting travel from Cuba, Haiti, and Venezuela cutting off refuge to people living amid pervasive violence**, to see that a course correction on immigration is not what is happening. It is cleansing the color of our citizens and residents.
* https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/supreme-court-allows-trump-revoke-legal-status-500000-immigrants-rcna207271
** https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/supreme-court-allows-trump-revoke-legal-status-500000-immigrants-rcna207271
There can be no denying that America is the powerhouse it is today because of centuries of immigration and the diverse population it created. We are denying the truth of the thing that made us great – immigrants. Why? I think we know the answer.
If you believe in this country, then you must believe first, in the rights granted in our Constitution, and second, with the exception of Native Americans, that we are all immigrants. Regardless of the country of origin or the color of our skin, we are all immigrants. That is America.