Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Immigration

President Obama spoke about immigration reform this afternoon in El Paso, Texas. Having worked in a lot of restaurants, I worked with a lot of immigrants. All but one of my great grandparents either emigrated here or were the descendants of immigrants. Short form, if you're white or anything else but a full-blooded Tribe member in this country, you're an immigrant.

One of the songs I learned in grammar school for Assembly was based on part of the Emma Lazarus poem inscribed on the Statue of Liberty:

"Give me your tired, your poor,
your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
the wretched refuse of your teeming shore;
send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me.
I lift my lamp beside the golden door."

To be anti-immigrant in this nation is to be a hypocrite.

1 comment:

Geo. said...

Good points. I still recall the childhood shock of meeting a school chum's grandmother who spoke perfect English. Arguably, in a biological sense, everybody who was born emerged from somewhere so foreign we don't remember it.