U.S. News & World Report (Opinion):
By Kenneth T. Walsh
July 9, 2014
Here's
a reality check on the immigration issue, which is coming to a boil
across the country: It has been one of the most emotional problems
America has faced for many
generations, and it has always proven very difficult to solve. The same
pattern holds true today.
Tens
of thousands of undocumented and unaccompanied children have crossed
the U.S.-Mexico border in recent months, along with thousands of
undocumented parents and their
kids. Angry demonstrations and arguments have erupted in the United
States over what to do about it.
Republicans
say President Barack Obama made the problem worse by approving policies
to defer some deportations and find ways for the children of
undocumented workers to
stay in the United States. Since then, the flood has grown worse,
straining local resources and creating a humanitarian crisis, as
undocumented children entered the United States with the expectation
that they wouldn't be deported. Obama hasn't clarified his
intentions or his timing on deportations but he is asking Congress for
$3.7 billion in emergency funding to deal with the crisis.
The
current situation seems highly complex and emotional, and that's part
of the history of immigration in the United States. As journalist
Michael Barone has written
for the Wall Street Journal, between 1980 and 2007 more than 10 million
people migrated legally or illegally from Mexico to the United States.
Barone adds that this influx, coupled with migrations from other areas,
unsettled many Americans who feared that
the new migrants would bring too much change and destabilize the
country as they knew it.
As
Barone pointed out, this was only one of many waves of immigration.
Others have included people from Northern Ireland and Scotland, Ireland,
Italy, Germany, Poland
and other Eastern and Central European nations, China and Japan.
And
these human waves have stirred fear in many Americans. Even Benjamin
Franklin, a founder of the Republic, was infected 250 years ago.
Regarding German immigrants,
Franklin said, "Few of their children in the country learn
English....The signs in our streets have inscriptions in both
languages....Unless the stream of their importation could be turned they
will soon so outnumber us that all the advantages we have will
not be able to preserve our language, and even our government will
become precarious." Franklin even said the German immigrants who were
arriving in Pennsylvania in the mid- to late 1700s were the "most stupid
of their nation." In colonial America and for
many years after independence, Catholics from Ireland, Italy, Spain and
elsewhere were openly scorned by Protestants and others born in
America. Various racial, ethnic and religious groups took their turns
enduring the suspicions, hostilities and fears of
the native-born throughout American history. Immigrants from Central
America and Mexico are the latest examples.
"[F]or
perspective," Barone writes, comparing past hostility toward immigrants
to what is going on today, "it is helpful to recollect that the
conflicts produced by previous
surges of migration resulted in much worse strains. More than that, in
the process of dealing with these strains, Americans have developed a
capacity and a habit of accommodating and uniting citizens with very
serious and deep differences. Going back to the
Founding Fathers--with their formula of limited government, civil
equality and tolerance of religious and cultural diversity--each new
surge of arrivals has been greeted as a crisis without precedent, only
to disappear with unexpected speed as the nation faced
new challenges."
One hopes this is how today's immigration crisis plays out.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
No comments:
Post a Comment