US Immigration History

We are a nation of immigrants, or the descendents of immigrants. From the time America was discovered, the Spanish, the English, and the French explored our shores and soon expanded across the continent to the Pacific Ocean. In the first three centuries thousands settled in America, fleeing Europe for religious persecution seeking a new life where one could find economic opportunity, equal rights, and a world free of internecine wars, racial persecution, from disease, natural disasters, and bankruptcy for which one could be imprisonment. Based on skills alone, aptitudes, eagerness for a better life, this was the world of our ancestors, and they merged into American life making us a rich, diverse and powerful country.

After the Civil War and the industrial revolution, America became a melting pot for people from nations all over the world. From farming to industry, professions, science and technology, countless of millions found a better life and passed on their advantages to their children and grandchildren.

Over the past twenty years since Congress and the Executive Office has tried to curtail unlimited immigration, millions of immigrants have come to America undocumented. These undocumented have found themselves a welcome place because they have provided America with workers who do.

What Americans can’t do or won’t do. They work the farms, the restaurants, as mechanics, landscapers, in the trades such as tilers, bricklayers, solderers, carpenters, etc. What is to be done with them? It is estimated there are over 12 million undocumented aliens. It is impossible to deport all of them. Many have spouses and children who are citizens. Our economic frame work depends on the services they provide, and many industries would be unable to survive without them. It would appear that a constructive solution is needed to resolve this problem. Aside from our economic advantages resulting from their needed labor, we must not forget that our great grandparents; grandparents and our parents brought their skills, their ambitions, their drive, which made our lives and our country prosperous and diverse, much as these present day immigrants do. Science, art, education, industry, all of our way of life have been enriched with innumerable advantages from immigration.

If we kick over the ladder in the 21st Century, forcing the return of these new immigrants, we are really limiting our much needed endeavor to achieve globalization. We would be destroying what has made our nation great, and diverse through multiculturalism and real development, which needs in the modern world to be replenished constantly. Without this continuing infusion of new and ambitious minds and skills, we will become stagnant. As a great example of the advantage of immigration, at the beginning of the 2nd World War the Manhattan Project that was so successful in developing the atom bomb which ended the 2nd World War was developed through the contributions of 21 scientists. Of these 21, only 2 were U.S. born Americans. The other 19 came from diverse countries like Germany, Italy, Norway, Denmark, all fleeing dictators in Europe. The benefit of their achievement was enormous and could never have been accomplished without the contributions of this international community.

After the War, as another example, our missile program which led to space exploration was developed by foreigners who had come to America after the 2nd World War. Refugees have created universities in the U.S., have been world celebrated artists, professionals, professors, doctors and scientists. They have provided us untold benefits.

Since the 1960’s to now, vast numbers have come to Asia, Africa, South and Central America in addition to Europe. These immigrants have been a powerful engine, making the U.S. competitive and viable. The great spirit that infused our ancestors is basically the same reason why these 12 million aliens are here. The market for labor needs them. If we assign these people to the status of a permanent underclass, we undercut our own security and our development and a sense of our traditions of fairness and the sense of what our country stands for: As a great a poet wrote, “give me your homeless, your tired, your weak and oppressed, I will provide a home for them.”